Chris Minns and his Labor Government have voted down sensible and tougher amendments to their legislation on racism in our community, which would have made our community both be safer and feel safer.

Since the protests on the steps of the Opera House just over 16 months ago, we have seen fire bombings and criminal damage to the offices of MPs; vandalism and arson attacks on synagogues, private homes, businesses, and a childcare centre; offensive graffiti sprayed on homes and vehicles and, most recently, death threats on social media — this is not the tolerant Australia of which we are all proud.

There are already offences in NSW criminal law covering the racist firebombing and graffiti that have much higher penalties than Chris Minns’ reforms this week.

The Coalition sought to increase the penalties of existing crimes through amending the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Racial and Religious Hatred) Bill 2025 and the Crimes Amendment (Places of Worship) Bill 2025, but these amendments were voted down by the Minns Labor Government.

The amendments opposed by Labor include:
• adding the public display of terrorism symbols as a crime,
• increasing the maximum term of imprisonment for publicly displaying Nazi and terrorism symbols to 5 years (more than double Labor’s laws),
• banning face coverings during street protests, and
• giving the community the ability to recover the $100,000 cost per protest on weekends after more than 3 protests per year.

For all their tough talk, Chris Minns and his Government opposed all these measures, failing to take a non-partisan approach to this important issue. Our community deserves better and to feel safe.