The New South Wales government will introduce fresh laws restricting protests outside places of worship, a month after the state’s supreme court struck down legislation giving police expanded powers to move on protesters.
In question time on Tuesday, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced the government’s plan to give police powers to issue move on orders to people who harass, block or intimidate people from entering a place of worship.
The details of the new legislation remain unclear, with the bill to be introduced next week. Guardian Australia understands it was not discussed in Labor caucus on Tuesday morning.
The fresh legislation would narrow police powers which had allowed police to move on protesters who were “in or near” a place of worship, regardless of what the protest was about.
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Last month, justice Anna Mitchelmore ruled that this power impermissibly burdened the freedom of political communication implied in Australia’s constitution, after a challenge.
The catalyst for the original places of worship bill was a protest outside the Great Synagogue where a member of the Israel Defense Forces was speaking. Guardian Australia understands this protest remains the government’s rationale for the new law.
Minns announced the changes in question time alongside a raft of other changes being considered in response to a neo-Nazi rally which was held outside parliament on Saturday which called for the abolition of the “Jewish Lobby”.
The state government is already considering expanding a ban on Nazi symbols to include chants and slogans, after the Hitler Youth chant “blood and honour” was reportedly used on Saturday.
On Tuesday, Minns said the government was also looking into removing a “sunset clause”. Under that clause a provision to the Crimes Act outlawing the incitement of racial hatred would expire in 2028.
The NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, said he believed the government’s fresh attempt to restrict protests outside places of worship would not be captured by the supreme court decision.
He told parliament on Tuesday it was never the government’s intention to restrict peaceful protests “that happened to be near a place of worship”.
“The supreme court’s decision did not affect the offence of intentionally blocking, impeding, harassing, intimidating or threatening a person accessing a place of worship, and that is important.
“The amendments in the bill balance community protections with the freedom of political expression, sometimes that is difficult.”
The government passed a suite of anti-protest laws in February after a wave of antisemitic attacks over the summer, which included a caravan being found laden with explosives in Dural, on the outskirts of Sydney.
As he announced the laws on Tuesday, Minns challenged the Australian federal police’s belief that the Dural caravan incident was “a hoax” by organised crime.
“We also need to address directly the assertion that antisemitism is a hoax, that the Dural caravan plot, the so-called Dural caravan plot, was a hoax … it emboldens extremists, and they used that rhetoric to justify their appalling, obnoxious behaviour on Macquarie Street.”
Minns said on Tuesday there was “no doubt” the rally on Saturday had been “divisive, bigoted, racist and antisemitic”. NSW police confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that no charges had been laid.
Jack Eltis, who submitted the form 1 application for Saturday’s rally on behalf of “White Australia, formerly the National Socialist Network” claimed the group received “paid and free advice” from constitutional and criminal lawyers and barristers who “support what we’re doing”.
They were advised that the banner they were proposing to display didn’t meet the threshold for hate speech laws, “which ironically we were protesting”, Eltis said on Tuesday.
He claimed the group was seeking to register as a political party at state and federal level.
“It’s something we are heavily interested in pursuing.”
The premier and police minister, Yasmin Catley, continued to field questions on Tuesday about why neither they nor the NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, were aware of the rally before it happened. Minns and Catley said they did not know of anyone in their offices being warned.
On Monday, Minns told reporters a review into Saturday’s event, as well as another by the same group outside parliament in June, “would look at what communication took place between police and the premier’s department and the premier’s office”.
“I don’t know whether an email, an errant email in the scores of communications, referenced either of the rallies in the previous month. We’ll have a closer look at that.”
Both the NSW speaker, Greg Piper, and NSW police deputy commissioner Peter Thurtell revealed that they were advised about the rally before it took place.
Thurtell told the Sydney Morning Herald he had apologised to the commissioner after failing to notify him after he was notified five days in advance.
