Rushed Laws, Broken Politics
What happens when grief, fear, and politics collide
We had a terror attack quite recently, the Bondi Beach attack on 14 December 2025, and it was horrific. Fifteen people were killed at a Jewish Hanukkah event, and whether you knew someone there or not, it hit like a truck. It also lit the fuse on a level of political polarisation that’s been getting worse for years, and now we’re watching a bunch of “emergency” laws get shoved through at speed.
I’m not going to pretend I’m the person to debate the meaty legal details, someone more educated in law and politics can do that. What I am going to talk about is the state of politics right now, and what it’s becoming. Because the precedent is dangerous, and it’s making me lose respect for politicians across the board.
You know: first time shame on me, second time shame on you, third time shame on everyone letting this happen.
Rushed laws in scummy ways
We had Event A (Bondi). There was an immediate uproar about security settings, failures, “how did this happen here”, all of it.
And then, as a response, we got massive legislation packages pushed through in a way that feels less like democracy and more like “quick, look like you’re doing something before public outrage eats you alive.”
The big one straight out of the gate was in NSW: the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. That got introduced and fast-tracked through in basically two days (introduced on 22 Dec, assented 24 Dec). That’s not normal scrutiny time. That’s the political equivalent of slapping duct tape over a gas leak and calling it a solution.
Now it should be obvious I’m very anti-authoritarian, read too many George Orwell books to be chill about this stuff, although I have a very high respect for police, ambos and firies, because they go through absolute garbage to keep us safe.
But the laws here are intense, and they were bundled in a way that makes it easier to rush them through, because everyone can find one part they like and just swallow the rest.
From what’s been publicly reported and debated, that NSW package covered things like:
Expanded powers around restricting certain public assemblies / marches after terrorist incidents
New/expanded hate-related measures
Tighter gun-related laws
And this is important: it wasn’t some clean “everyone agreed and voted unanimously” moment. It passed, but there were parties voting differently (including some opposing and some abstaining), which actually proves the point, bundling forces gross decisions. You either vote it down and get branded “soft”, or you vote it up and accept pieces you hate.
That’s the spectacle. And it causes more harm than good.
And honestly? It makes me feel like Australia is drifting further into “authoritarian vibes via procedural bull.” Not because we’re a dictatorship, we’re not, but because we’re normalising rushed, broad laws pushed through under maximum emotion and minimum scrutiny.
And once you normalise that, it becomes a habit.
Federal: the same approach, but bigger
Then federally, we’ve now got the government recalling Parliament for 19–20 January 2026 to rush through another massive package: the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 (exposure draft released mid-January).
This package is also huge, it’s not one clean reform, it’s a whole stack of changes: new offences, bigger penalties, expanded powers (including visa cancellation/refusal powers), mechanisms around hate groups, and even a National Gun Buyback Scheme.
And again, we’re in that same “rush it through” atmosphere. There’s been a lot of talk about the bill being hundreds of pages between the legislation and explanatory material, and only around a week between public release and the vote. That’s not healthy.
Also, it’s not being passed with some magical universal agreement. It’s politically contested. Which is normal. That’s what Parliament is for.
But when the time is crushed, “debate” becomes theatre.
Point-scoring and panic bait
This has led into some incredibly frustrating political point-scoring (and honestly I dislike all parties doing this). Politicians point out flaws, then catastrophise what they mean at a fundamental level, laypeople panic, Instagram rants kick off, everyone gets angrier, and we all get dumber.
I’ve already seen examples of politicians making claims along the lines of:
“Under this law you could say something like ‘Australia is better than China’ and end up with years in prison.”
That’s the kind of line that spreads because it’s scary and simple.
But the real process isn’t “you said a spicy opinion = jail.”
In practice it’s more like: you say something → there’s an investigation if someone reports it → a prosecutorial decision is made about whether there’s enough evidence and whether it meets the legal threshold → then it goes through the courts. And the High Court isn’t some automatic step, it generally comes in for constitutional challenges or appeals, not because every case magically ends up there.
So yeah: that kind of quote is usually panic bait.
But here’s the part people miss: even if someone never gets convicted, broad rushed laws still create churn, investigations, legal tests, costly enforcement, and a chilling effect where people self-censor because nobody knows where the lines are yet.
That’s what happens with broad, rushed policy-making.
“We see this in the UK”
We see a version of this in the UK too: in 2023 there were reports of over 12,000 arrests under certain communications offences, with only around ~1,100 ending in sentencing. (Not “charged”, sentenced/convicted outcomes are different.) But the point stands: broad laws can generate massive volumes of policing and legal processing compared to the number of final outcomes.
That’s the fundamental issue with broad laws. Not always the intent, but the cost, the mess, and the way they get used in the real world.
Issue two: internet anonymity is on the chopping block
This is going to encroach on freedom of the internet, which is why I’m talking about it now.
Victoria has been openly talking about giving more power to law enforcement / legal processes to get information from big tech about anonymised individuals in vilification matters, and there’s a push to fast-track implementation of parts of Victoria’s anti-vilification scheme to April 2026 instead of mid-year.
I’m going to write a separate article on this one because it’s deep and genuinely scary in a very specific way, and I don’t want this to be 50 pages long (sorry again about my giant multi-part social media ban post, that thing was huge).
The bottom line
Fundamentally: rushed laws do not help people. They cost us more, they create more chaos, and they usually need reform later because they were slapped together under pressure.
Should reforms be introduced after Bondi? Yes. Clearly something isn’t working if this was able to happen.
But introduced like this, bundled, rushed, with minimal scrutiny, and turned into a political point-scoring contest? No.
This doesn’t help the grieving families. It doesn’t fix the root issue. It doesn’t protect social cohesion. And it doesn’t protect free speech either, because “free speech” isn’t just what’s legal, it’s what people feel safe saying without being dragged through process as a lesson.
Right now, politics feels less like leadership and more like optics. Band-aids. Blame games. Posturing.
And that’s the part that’s making me lose respect: the point scoring.