Senator Ralph Babet isn't exaggerating. He's right. Victoria's newly announced "Anti-Hate Taskforce" isn't an act of moral leadership, it's a chilling extension of state-sanctioned thought control, cloaked in therapeutic language. Behind the performative virtue and slogans lies a very dangerous proposition: that the government should decide what you're allowed to think, say, or share.
Let's be clear: hatred, abuse, and incitement to violence are already illegal in Australia. Harassment, stalking, vandalism, and threats? All covered. So why the need for a shiny new taskforce with Orwellian overtones?
Because this isn't about stopping hate. It's about redefining it, expanding it, and using it as a lever of state power, power that is selective, ideological, and fundamentally unaccountable.
What Senator Babet describes is part of a global pattern, where Western democracies are abandoning their civil liberties traditions under the guise of "protecting communities."
In the UK, thousands are arrested yearly for "malicious communications," a phrase so elastic it now includes stating biological truths online. In Canada, pastors and parents are facing legal sanction for "misgendering." In Ireland, new laws threaten prison time for possessing so-called "hateful" material, even privately, with no definition of what that means.
Now, under Premier Jacinta Allan, Victoria joins the parade of soft tyrannies, adding its own "Anti-Hate Taskforce" to the growing infrastructure of moral surveillance.
But who decides what counts as "hate"? The government? A panel of academic activists? A bureaucrat with a humanities degree and an Xaccount? Once the definition of hate is subjective, it becomes a political tool, one that can and will be turned against anyone who deviates from elite orthodoxy.
Today it's neo-Nazis. Tomorrow it's climate sceptics, men's rights advocates, Christian ministers, parents opposing gender ideology, or citizens asking why our immigration system no longer works.
Contrary to progressive mythology, free speech is not a threat to vulnerable communities, it is the essential protection of all communities, especially minorities.
It was free speech, not censorship, that allowed Jews to denounce rising anti-Semitism in Europe. It was free speech, not state power, that protected civil rights advocates in the American South. And it is free speech, not government taskforces, that gives space for truth, debate, satire, whistleblowing, and reform.
The power to censor "hate" is always wielded by those in power, and those in power always define it in their own image.
Senator Babet is warning us that this is not about hate, but about control, specifically, control over dissent. If you can redefine words, you can reclassify criticism as extremism, and disagreement as harm.
This is how civil liberties die, not with a bang, but with a standing ovation for "inclusion."
While Victoria's streets slide into lawlessness, while violent assaults increase and energy bills skyrocket, the government's priority is ... policing your thoughts online.
It's a cynical deflection. Crack down on speech to look strong, while you let the actual fabric of law and order rot. Create moral panic to distract from policy failure. Suppress dissent before the next round of economic bad news arrives.
And worse, this is all happening with the help of the very institutions that are supposed to question power, including universities, state-funded media, and sections of the legal establishment.
Let's restore the basic principle: free societies must tolerate speech that offends. If speech must be filtered through the feelings of the most easily offended, then there is no freedom at all, only a permission slip from the mob.
Senator Babet is correct to remind us that once we accept the logic of criminalising emotion — "harm," "offence," "discomfort" — we are one step away from criminalising belief itself. And belief cannot be governed by committee.
Censorship never remains narrow. Once the machine is built, it grows. Today, it punishes those raising uncomfortable questions about race; tomorrow, it punishes you for quoting the Bible, objecting to drag shows for children, or criticising gender policies in schools.
As Babet rightly notes, laws that begin as shields often become swords. The same police power now deployed to silence anti-Semitism will eventually be used to prosecute critics of radical Islam, border policy, or trans ideology.
What Victoria needs is not another ideological taskforce or bureaucratic buzzword-factory. It needs a resurgence of political courage, the reaffirmation of universal civil liberties, and a healthy dose of constitutional backbone.
Free speech is not negotiable. It is not an "instrument of hate," it is a safeguard against tyranny. And those who fear free speech fear one thing above all: accountability.
Senator Babet is doing what every principled representative should: defending the people's right to think, speak, and question the state. He deserves support, not just from conservatives, but from anyone with a memory of how freedom is lost.
In the end, history doesn't look kindly on governments that tell citizens what they're allowed to say.
https://news.senatorbabet.com.au/p/victorias-thought-police-the-anti
"Another week means another government taskforce in the socialist State of Victoria.
Honestly, Victoria must be running some sort of frequent flyer scheme for bureaucratic overreach.
The State Labor Government can't fix the housing crisis, or the energy crisis, or the youth crime epidemic.
So they'll declare that your opinions and thoughts are a crisis and fix those instead.
We had a classic case of it recently when Premier Jacinta Allan announced the Orwellian Anti-Hate Taskforce. It's a name so noble it practically demands a standing ovation.
But peel back the branding and you'll discover it has less to do with stopping synagogue arsonists and more to do with criminalising dissent.
This isn't about fighting hate, it's about fighting people who disagree with the Government.
Premier Jacinta Allan, never one to let a civil liberty go unregulated, assures us it's about "the bigger picture."
And by "bigger picture," she means tighter control, control of your speech, control of your thoughts.
If she has her way, you and I won't be able to post something that goes against the Government approved narrative on Facebook without a visit from the algorithmic inquisition.
The government allows mayhem on the streets, pretending they are powerless to stop it, as cover for legislating more and more laws to crack down on everybody's civil liberties.
We already have laws against harassment, threats and vandalism.
What exactly does a new taskforce offer that existing legislation does not? I'll tell you, but it should be obvious, the anti-hate taskforce offers Premier Jacinta Allan and her cronies a fresh opportunity to monitor, label, and suppress ideas that stray from the state approved narrative.
Because nothing says "we're the good guys" like potentially giving bureaucrats the power to decide what counts as "hate."
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Today it's anti-Semitism in the spotlight but tomorrow? They will be cracking down on views that promote the rights of biological females over males pretending to be females or views that don't support mass immigration, climate scepticism, and perhaps the suggestion that the ABC isn't the gold standard of journalism.
Hate you see is a moving target, and the government holds the rifle.
How long before quoting the Bible or saying "there are two genders" lands you in prison? How long before "I disagree" is reclassified as "emotional terrorism"? Think I'm exaggerating?
Just look across the pond to the UK, where more than 12,000 people a year are arrested for posts on social media.
A country that once gave the world the Magna Carta now gives us police knocking on doors because someone made a post on Facebook or X (Twitter) that a woke fool found offensive.
Here's the irony, some Jewish organisations are enthusiastically applauding the creation of this taskforce and demanding more laws to protect Jews. But give it time and the same mechanisms created to protect them will inevitably be used against them.
It's already happening in Britain, where a 71-year-old man was arrested for criticising radical Islam. Hate laws are like boomerangs they always return.
Free speech isn't a threat to democracy. Free speech is democracy.
And suppressing speech doesn't make a society kinder, it just makes it more dishonest, until eventually it explodes.
Jacinta Allan's reactionary taskforce isn't about stopping hate, it's about enforcing compliance, it's about converting disagreement into "vilification" and criticism into "extremism."
Victoria doesn't need another taskforce. It needs a government with more spine, fewer slogans, and a working definition of freedom that doesn't come with a 28-page exception clause.
We need fewer politicians pretending to be moral saviours while outsourcing common sense to unelected panels of professionally offended bureaucrats.
Because if we don't stop this creep now, this slow suffocating drift into censorship, one day soon your opinion will be a crime. And your silence? Mandatory.
Senator Ralph Babet.
United Australia Party."