Totalitarian race and sex ‘anti-hate’ laws must be repealed by One Nation

Daniel Wild of the Institute of Public Affairs warned six months ago on the dangers of so-called anti-hate laws, such as the latest legislation, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026.

By MICHAEL SLOVANOS

A FUTURE One Nation-led government must repeal or at least amend the Racial and Sex Discrimination Acts that allow radical leftist ideologues to use courts and government-funded legal action to persecute people who oppose or even question their political agenda.

The NSW Supreme Court last week dismissed an appeal by Kirralie Smith and her organisation Binary Australia, upholding a landmark ruling that found they unlawfully vilified two transgender biological males playing in a women’s soccer team.

Meanwhile the Full Court of the Australian Federal Court recently dismissed an appeal by Senator Pauline Hanson, upholding the landmark 2024 decision that her 2022 social media post telling Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” unlawfully breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

“If they can come after a high-profile political figure such as Senator Hanson, then they can come after any Australian,” says Dr Andrew Bushnell, the director of the Law and Freedom Program and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, in relation to the Federal Court’s racial vilification decision against One Nation leader Hanson.

Dr Bushnell, called the Federal Court’s ruling a “disgrace” and argued that Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act places an illegitimate and unnecessary burden on free speech and political debate.

In Mrs Smith’s case the Supreme Court largely upheld last year’s decision from the NSW Local Court, including $95,000 in damages to the victims. The court ordered that Smith and Binary Australia publish a public statement about the decision, which must remain pinned on their social media channels for three months.

In 2025, Smith and Binary Australia were found to have “incited hatred towards, serious contempt for and severe ridicule of” the two “trans women” (transgender men), who she targeted in a newsletter and series of social posts for playing football with their local clubs.

The case remains the first time someone has been found to have unlawfully vilified a person for being transgender under NSW law.

According to the court, “this is an important reminder that freedom of expression does not extend to unlawful vilification, and that trans people deserve the same legal protections from hate as everyone else” and “those who target vulnerable communities with hatred and harassment are out of step with the law, and will be held accountable.”

Given the circumstances of the case, the two transgender soccer players had some reason to complain of harrassment after Smith and a group of seven or eight men wearing brightly coloured wigs went to the sports ground at Wingham, on the mid-North Coast of NSW, to mock the transgender players.

Yes, some mockery and verbal harrassment was involved, leading to separate court actions resulting in an Apprehended Personal Violence Order (APVO) against Smith to protect the players from further intimidation. There were no threats of violence against the two tranny players.

But it was also a public protest against transgender invasion of women’s sports, a global political operation by cultural Marxists, that has been legalised in Australia by anti-sex discrimination laws – a point stressed by Mrs Smith’s lawyers.

The IPA’s Dr Bushnell makes the same argument, stating that using 18C against a high-profile figure like Senator Hanson suggests any Australian expressing controversial opinions on topics like immigration could face similar legal action, costs of which can be crippling for someone without the type of public support given to Mrs Smith.

Dr Bushnell argued that the Hanson vs Faruqui case was not about genuine hate speech but rather a political opponent using broad legal definitions to stifle public debate. He called for the decision to be appealed to the High Court and advocated for the total repeal of Section 18C, arguing it is incompatible with democratic debate.

Mrs Smith’s case was weakened by what the court called an “inflammatory, unverified (online) post regarding player safety”, alleging “two female soccer players were hospitalized over the weekend after being forced to play against a male appropriating womanhood”.

In the court Mrs Smith was forced to acknowledge that she had zero evidence to support the claim, leading the court to find that “broadcasting these fabricated, high-stakes safety claims directly incited severe public hostility against the transgender athletes.”

Fair-minded people worldwide who are involved in female sports deeply despise invasion of those sports by transgender men, a situation acknowledged by the International Olympic Committee, which has banned transgender athletes from women’s events. Australian law is out of step.

However, anti-discrmination laws have always had a cultural-Marxist undertone designed to stifle and control employer preferences and advance initially the causes of feminism and gay rights, then shifting to transgenderism and the broader LGBTQ+ movement.

This cultural-Marxist movement essentially seeks to undermine Christian and other civilizational values taken from the Book of Genesis where God creates male and female and ordains the idea of marriage, but transgender activists like the Canadian cyclist and gender studies professor Veronica Ivy (who formerly called him/herself Rachel McKinnon) want to overthrow that value system.