New LGBTIQ Hate Crime Offences: A Band Aid Solution to a Much Deeper Problem

Following an ABC report on ISIS-inspired attacks on gay and bisexual teens in Greater Sydney, which was published during Mardi Gras, the Minns government has this week come to the table with the solution it spruiked last month, which was tougher penalties for engaging in such hate crimes. But a number of commentators are treating this law reform package with caution for a number of reasons.

Introduced on 17 March 2026, the new laws raise the penalties applying to threatening or inciting violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, another new offence relating to the procuring of victims would further be enacted, it extends the offence of “posting and boasting”, so it applies here, and clarifies that if such hate is expressed during a crime then it’s an aggravating factor.

“Gay bashings”, as they were once called, were a significant issue in the Greater Sydney region, over the last three decades of the 20th century, and they were often downplayed by the authorities. The new spate that’s occurring in Sydney and in Naarm-Melbourne has been ongoing since 2023. And while the recent ABC reporting focused on ISIS perpetrators, far right culprits are involved as well.

Part of the caution in the current political climate is that the Bondi shooters, who committed mass murder via the targeting of a Jewish festival, were ISIS-inspired, and while ISIS is an extremist Islam, this can get blurry in media accounts, especially as the Muslim community has been targeted of late, which leaves the conflating of extremists with everyday Muslims a favoured idea for some to push.

Another major gripe from certain legal eagles is that simply upping the penalties that apply to criminal offences doesn’t prevent offending, whilst the move to beef up such laws is further leaving members of the LGBTIQA+ community somewhat wary, as their lifestyles have been criminalised in the past, and NSW police is known to have simply let the historic crisis in gay hate crime fester.

Symbolic measures

The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties set out in an 18 March 2026 statement that it “cautiously welcomes the NSW government’s proposed reforms to strengthen protections against LGBTQIA+ hate crimes”. Yet it warns that the way in which it’s going about this, via the simple raising of penalties and failing to consult community on the new measures, is undermining its goal.

“The Minns’ government has a track record of not consulting properly with civil society on significant proposals and does not escape this criticism just because on this occasion they got some things right,” NSWCCL president Timothy Roberts made certain on Wednesday.

“The community deserves the reassurance that reforms are well considered and developed transparently,” the well-respected Sydney lawyer added. “Community consultation does this and explicitly refusing to do so undermines trust in government at a time when we should be doing the opposite.”

The two-year in the making 25 February ABC report outlines that gay and bisexual teens are being lured via dating apps into public places, like toilet blocks, and then being bashed by groups of black-clad ISIS-inspired men, with such incidents often being recorded and later being circulated online.

The ABC further reports that 64 alleged perpetrators have been charged in Sydney and Melbourne since 2023, and some of the arrested have been ISIS inspired, however others have been spurred by far-right extremist ideologies.

The NSWCCL is adamant that “LGBTQIA+ community deserves to feel safe, and the scale and nature of the attacks demand a serious response”. But it then notes that there is “no substantive evidence” that increasing the penalties applying to prevent specific crimes from continuing works, and it too underscored that if the laws aren’t being exercised right now, then the reforms are just symbolic.

The rights body then suggested reforms that could reduce these crimes, such as “better data collection on hate crimes, improved reporting pathways, and the establishment of specialist policing capability to proactively monitor and respond to LGBTQIA+ targeted violence”. And it further notes that police assaults against recent Mardi Gras participants have left many again mistrusting police.

The guts of the bill

In introducing the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2026, NSW attorney general Michael Daley didn’t single out the ideologies behind such crimes, but rather he reflected on the history of “gay hate crimes” in Greater Sydney and then explained that he never thought he’d be in a position where he was attempting to deal with such divisive crimes at this point in time.

“Offenders have used deception to lure victims, subjected them to serious assaults and robberies, and then compounded the harm by circulating footage of the attacks,” said Daley, during his second reading speech on the bill. “Disseminating these recordings is not merely gratuitous; it promotes the offending, humiliates victims and in some instances echoes or amplifies extremist ideologies.”

The first reform the bill makes is to insert the new offence of procuring victims by making false or misleading representations into the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), under new section 54BA. If passed, this would make it a crime to lure someone by lying to them, in order to then perpetrate a serious assault offence or a robbery offence upon them, and this would carry up to 5 years prison time.

The legislation seeks to amends section 93Z of the Crimes Act which contains the offence of publicly threatening or inciting violence on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex or HIV/AIDS status, so that the penalties that apply to this offence will be increased from 3 years prison time to 5 years and the fine will be upped from $11,000 to $22,000.

A new aggravated form of this offence is further to be inserted into new subsection 93Z(1A), which involves the public threatening or inciting of violence against a person, on the basis of one of the attributes that the laws protect from hate, and this violence is then forthcoming. This new crime would carry a fine of up to $44,000 and/or up to 7 years prison time.

The bill further seeks to amend the performance crime offence, under section 154K of the Crimes Act. This 2024 law is also known as “posting and boasting”, and it involves people filming their criminal behaviour and then posting it online to brag to others, then facing an extra 2 years gaol time being added to the maximum penalty that applies to the crime they posted and boasted about.

Posting and boasting currently applies to motor vehicle and break and enter offences, but this new amendment seeks to extend this to serious assault offences and robberies.

A further law reform is slated for section 21A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW), which contains lists of aggravating and mitigating factors, which are factors that apply when judges are sentencing offenders, whose crimes have involved such factors. Aggravating factors make penalties more severe, whilst mitigating factors serve to lessen the length of sentences.

The bill too inserts new subsection 21A(5B) into the section 21A law to clarify that the subsection 21A(2)(h) aggravating factor of having been motivated by hate or prejudice in perpetrating a crime, including in respect of sexual orientation and gender identity, that this factor applies when an offender demonstrates or expresses their hatred or prejudice, during, after or following their crime.

Dangerous conflations

In speaking at the recent 28 February 2026 Pride and Protest pre-Mardi Gras parade rally held on Gadigal land before Sydney Town Hall, Socialist Alliance member Rachel Evans referred to the recent ABC report on the attacks on gay and bisexual teens in Sydney and Melbourne, outlining that “this is appalling” and that those present stood against the crimes.

However, Evans then emphasised that while the ABC did focus on the ISIS-inspired assailants, what it “did not mention is there are white supremacist Nazi groups also luring gay men”. “And let us be clear,” Evans continued, ISIS is not pro-Palestinian, as the activist suggested that the reporting was an attempt to stifle queer community support for ending the genocide in Gaza.

To be clear, none of these commentators are fans of ISIS. They are raising concerns because of recent conflations made by the premier that linked the pro-Palestine movement’s protests to the ISIS-inspired Bondi massacre. The other concurrent issue is that Muslims have been increasingly demonised of late, blatantly so on occasions, and racists find it convenient to label all as extremist.

ISIS is a transnational Salafi jihadist militant organisation established circa 2013. It is an extremist ideology that promotes violence that was borne out of the ravages of the US war in Iraq and the war in Syria. The group’s aim is to establish a caliphate or Islamic state. ISIS is widely recognised as a terrorist organisation globally. And it has nothing to do with regular Islam.

To be seen to be acting

“We should all be a bit sceptical of Minns’ law-and-order approach to rising homophobia, transphobia and queerphobia,” said Pride in Protest member Luc Velez in a statement posted online following the tabling of the new legislation on Tuesday.

“From a history where the criminal law was one of the primary tools to inflict harm on queer people, queer thinking is naturally wary of legislative approaches that basically seek to throw more people into gaol, or keep them there for longer,” he added.

The initial 1978 Mardi Gras parade was a protest involving the local LGBTIQA+ community calling for the end of the criminalisation of their lifestyles. Homosexual acts were illegal in NSW until 1984, when they were decriminalised. The NSW police set upon the first Mardi Gras protesters and brutalised them. The Sydney Morning Herald then outed the participants in the paper the next day.

Researchers revealed in 2013 that they’d found 88 murders they considered gay hate crimes in NSW over 1976 to 2000. This sparked an NSW police inquiry that determined there was enough evidence to find 27 of the fatalities were caused by such prejudice. And it’s widely understood that the lack of law enforcement concern about the killing of gay men enabled the incidents to continue on.

Velez further pointed out that Minns’ solution to these gay hate crimes relies on queer people reporting attacks to the police, and many in the community don’t trust them simply because of the homophobic and transphobia long understood to be a part of policing culture. Velez adds that in sending more people to prison, they won’t “magically come out less homophobic”.

“An approach that centres the reforms queer people are actually campaigning for – like antidiscrimination reform and expanding queer education – would go a lot further to address the underlying ideologies behind homophobic violence,” Velez posited in terms of a valid alternative solution.