Scott Morrison almost got it right

There appears to be an assumption that Christian ministers already have to be licensed by their denominations in some sort of way. This is not correct. Most denominations have their own internal licensing, but Christian ministers don't have to belong to a denomination.

Jesus wasn't licensed, and just like him, it's possible for someone to proclaim themselves a follower of his and set up their own church. As long as they can fill the collection plate and keep food on their table, they will be able to keep preaching.

And if you could license preachers to prevent 'hate speech' who would define that?

At the moment under the new Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 hate speech is speech that leads to harm defined as physical injury, violence, threats of violence, intimidation, coercion, destruction of property, serious psychological harm, and encouragement or normalisation of violence.

This is harm in respect to groups and members of groups defined by race, religion, nationality, national origin, and ethnic origin. There was a proposal to include LGBTIQA+ as well. These bills have a habit of mission creep. How long before these attributes are included. Gender might be included as well.

Has Morrison thought that what might be used to nullify some Islamic theology might also be applied to stop Christian churches from preaching their traditional values? We all saw what happened to Israel Folau over an Instagram post where he reproduced a passage from the New Testament.

What Morrison proposed is conceptually flawed and dangerously open-ended, but that's not the biggest problem. The Liberal Party is supposed to be the party of the individual and the party of small government. It's the party of free speech. It's the party of hard truth.

The test of what can and can't be said has to be judged by what people do, and how they interfere with others' rights, not what they say. It's not a matter of theology, but of hard evidence.

The Islamic community might be the best-placed to ferret out disseminators of hate, and if they won't, then the state will have to. That doesn't mean giving the government greater powers, that means using the ones they have now. It means using human intelligence assets who can infiltrate these communities, as they infiltrate other communities.

It also means using the bully pulpit. At the moment we have seen claims made by organised Islamic groups that calling on their community to do more amounts to an allegation of collective guilt and 'Islamophobia'. This must be addressed, as it would not hold true for other communities. Either the federal government addresses this, or the Leader of the Opposition and others with influence will.

If terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, then the Imams have to explain why of the 33 banned terrorist organisations in Australia, 24 have a connection to Islam, three are ethno-nationalist, and six are neo-Nazi. Or that between 1979 and 2021 there have been 48,035 Islamic terrorist attacks worldwide killing 210,138, representing approximately 35 per cent of terrorist attacks worldwide and 55 per cent of terrorist deaths. Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus barely register in the statistics.

We also know from polling in the UK that, for example, 29 per cent of British Muslims have a positive view of Hamas, 39 per cent don't believe Hamas committed murder and rape on October 7, and 45 per cent think Jews have too much power over the UK government.

I can't give you the figures for Australia because no one has done the polling, but do you think they would be significantly different here? And if they aren't, which community do you think is best positioned to deal with the problem – the Islamic one, or the broader Australian community?

At the end of the day this is a social problem more than a legal one, and we all bear some responsibility, not just Muslims, to root it out. At least Morrison spoke out. I wish he had done so more wisely.https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/02/scott-morrison-almost-got-it-right/