Perpetrators of anti-Semitic crimes can face up to two years in jail under a new package of laws aimed at stamping out racially and religiously-motivated violence, NSW Premier Chris Minns announced on Thursday.
The premier has repeatedly vowed to catch offenders behind the escalating incidents including graffiti, firebombs and most recently a thwarted plot targeting the Great Synagogue and the Jewish Museum in central Sydney.
The announced changes include a new criminal offence for intentionally inciting racial hatred, with a proposed maximum penalty of two years behind bars.
Mr Minns said NSW could not wait for federal laws, as his Labor counterparts in Canberra yielded to demands for mandatory minimum sentences for new hate speech legislation which were expected to pass federal parliament on Thursday. Â
"If it subsequently emerges that a Commonwealth piece of legislation is tougher, more stringent, applies to more offences and supersedes state laws, fine, no problem," Mr Minns told reporters.
"But I just don't want to take that risk."
The proposed laws will be introduced to state parliament next week.
Shadow Attorney-General Alister Henskens said the announcement came before the government meets with a committee which provides advice on religious issues.
"There is a sense that this has all been rushed through by Chris Minns," he told Sydney radio 2GB.
Crossbench members in the upper house were also due to be briefed on the proposed changes on Thursday afternoon.
The changes will put forward a new offence directed at the display of a Nazi symbol on or near a synagogue with an increased maximum penalty of up to two years in jail.
Graffiti laws will be amended to create an aggravated offence relating to places of worship.
Another law will target people intentionally blocking, harassing, intimidating or threatening worshippers from accessing their local synagogue, church or mosque.
The premier said the laws had been drafted in response to horrifying anti-Semitic violence, but will apply to acts targeting all religions.
"The circumstances that we are confronting in our community are so extreme that it requires changes to the law," he told reporters.
The changes come despite a November review of the state's hate crimes that recommended against broadening the laws or introducing other offences to curb public incitement of hatred.
Like most Australian state and territory laws policing the inciting of hatred, NSW requires proof that the offender threatened or incited physical harm to people or property.
Since December, a synagogue has been firebombed, multiple cars torched and swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans scrawled on vehicles and buildings in areas with large Jewish communities.
Meanwhile, the discovery on Sydney's northern outskirts of a caravan filled contained explosive material and addresses of Jewish targets has exposed a communication breakdown between NSW and federal authorities.
Mr Minns was notified a day after the caravan was found on January 19, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was left out of the loop until the day the public found out on January 29.
The Australian Federal Police is investigating whether overseas actors paid local criminals to carry out some of the anti-Semitic attacks.
