Morrison Proposes Licensing Framework for Muslim Preachers in Australia

Former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison gave a speech in Al-Quds–Jerusalem in Israel on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2026, in which he lamented the ISIS-inspired Bondi Beach massacre and then went on to explain his proposal to establish an accreditation scheme to monitor Islamic preachers, which in turn, would tend to demonise the entire Muslim community.

Morrison’s imam framework calls for a national register, training and conduct requirements and a disciplinary authority for their councils. At first glance, the ex-PM is suggesting a method to stop people getting geed-up by Islamic preachers and committing another Bondi. 

But further consideration reveals an attempt to build on current divisive sentiment to launch a demonisation campaign against Muslim Australians.

In outlining his proposal that the Australian government, a body that continues to recite the Christian Lord’s Prayer on convening parliament, should impose a restrictive legal framework upon the Muslim community’s spiritual belief system, after he spent most of his time in the nation’s top office attempting to promote religious freedoms, reveals that there is something untoward in his proposal.

The former PM’s speech has come at a moment in time when his party, the Liberals, is so low in the approval rating polls, some are declaring its time is over. And Morrison has already progressed this same persecute Muslim line at a 2011 shadow cabinet meeting, when he suggested that the Liberals capitalise on growing concerns around Muslims to garner more support in the next federal election.

But this time Morrison’s proposal is different, as it’s being made in the context of US president Donald Trump having launched a demonising campaign and then an immigration drive against undocumented migrants, which served to shore up his support and then centralise power once in office, and it appears that the former Australian PM is angling for something similar for the Liberals.

Christian Australian thought police

In speaking at the 2nd International Conference on Antisemitism, Morrison described the wave of antisemitism he considers is being experienced in Australia, and he then added that “given the specific involvement of radicalised extremist Islam in the Bondi terrorist attacks, Australia’s response must pay explicit and specific attention to this issue. And I’m not just talking about immigration”.

The 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre that targeted a Jewish event involved a father and son murdering 15 people and injuring dozens more. In perpetrating this heinous act, the men were inspired by ISIS, which is a transnational Salafi jihadist militant organisation.

ISIS does not practice regular Islam, in a similar manner to which most white Australians do not adhere to the extremist logic of local white supremacist terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who gunned down 51 Muslims at prayer in Christchurch in 2019. In fact, Australia has never claimed any sort of responsibility or need to reform the belief systems of its white citizens as a result of this incident.

Morrison is talking the establishment of “a peak body that goes beyond representation to be given the authority and tools to enforce membership standards”. And he considers that if Islamic religious texts are not printed in English, then there must be a translation, so they can be checked. This suggests that Muslim Australians are hiding information from the English-speaking establishment.

“Mosques and Islamic organisations should commit to safeguarding standards, supported by independent complaints and review bodies with audit powers that extend to dangerous teaching and unhealthy influencers, particularly among the young,” explains Morrison, as he lays out what would be an effective occupation of the faith of Muslim Australians by local authorities.

The ex-PM too suggests that the Foreign Interest Transparency Scheme, a policy the Turnbull government rolled out to provide transparency around the “nature, level and extent of foreign influence on” local politics, should be extended to apply to Islam and any “foreign funding, direction, training, doctrinal alignment or governance links with overseas religious authorities”.

“Keeping wolves from the flock”

Morrison further suggests that some Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain “have taken deliberate action to confront radical Islamist ideology”. They have “reasserted state authority over religious teaching”, he explained. 

However, these are states where Islam is the official religion, not nations of no official religion, that have traditionally been rooted in Christianity, as Australia has been.

“After the worst mass terrorist attack on a Jewish community anywhere in the world since October 7, Australians must confront not only the security and intelligence failures exposed by these attacks, but the fragility of our own society that was shredded by the antisemitism unleashed in Australia after October 7, long before these murders were committed,” the former PM continued.

Morrison then progressed the local hasbara line used to cast rising sentiment against the Israeli state for its mass slaughter of the Palestinians of Gaza to rather be antisemitism, or prejudice towards Jews. He suggested that “universities, cultural bodies, media and even religious organisations” have become infected with this form of prejudice.

Known to be a MAGA-affiliate, Morrison too quotes US philosopher Jordan Petterson, whose ideas are popular amongst those hanging out in the online manosphere and serve to uphold white heteronormative patriarchal values.

In citing Petterson, Morrison referred to the Eurocentric idea that “‘the Jews are the eternal canary in the coal mine’ and that their persecution signals the collapse of a society”.

Suppressing the pro-Palestinian movement

Morrison’s rein in the top office over 2018 through to 2022 served to guide the nation in the direction of the precipice that it is now hovering upon. The Morrison government progressed culture wars against LGBTIQA+ people and migrants. Indeed, many of the last Liberal government’s policies hinted at those now being progressed by the US Trump administration but were not as extreme.

In his recent speech in Israel, Morrison conflated the pro-Palestinian/antigenocide movement in this country with the Bondi Beach massacre. This is the same line NSW premier Chris Minns has drawn.

The ISIS inspired attacks have nothing to do with support for Palestine, however, as ISIS does not support the Palestinian cause. So, this link is being progressed by conservative forces seeking to shut down this movement.

The former head of the Liberal Party further suggested that “for the overwhelming majority of Australian Muslims and imams these reforms should change little”. However, individual Muslims, who don’t fall foul of his idea for a government-run scheme to assess the validity of their religion, may find the framework scrutinising their community to be overbearing, targeted surveillance.

Morrison then suggests that two years of pro-Palestinian protests had led to “an estimated 100,000 people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge”, which he considers to be a motivating factor behind the Bondi shooting, despite this mass outpouring of civil society sentiment being against genocide. This event has repeatedly been misconstrued as antisemitic.

The ex-PM further asserted, just like Minns, that everyone at the demonstration was calling for “a globalised intifada”, when no one involved in the local movement has ever favoured chanting this phrase. However, the NSW government is now moving to prohibit the three words “globalise the intifada” in public, even though no one has been prone to use them in this manner.

In conveying his proposal, however, Morrison won’t likely do many favours for his floundering party in terms of shoring up waning support, as while he was making his statements, the One Nation party is climbing in the polls, with a political platform that more reflects Morrison’s past and current political priorities than it does the party he used to lead in Canberra.

But the likelihood is that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has taken note of Morrison’s dangerous proposal. In fact, the far-right politician has been attempting to demonise Muslims herself for years. And just like Morrison and Trump, Hanson, in eyeing off the top office, is well aware that the targeting of a particular minority could go a long way to establishing a broad powerbase.