The problem facing Australia is not speech. It is not offensive words, hurt feelings, or unpopular opinions. And it is certainly not a shortage of regulation over what people are allowed to say. The real problem is far deeper and far more inconvenient for those in power to admit.

Hate speech laws don’t address the cause of our social ills. They are an attempt to manage its symptoms while avoiding responsibility for the policies that created it. In that sense, these laws are not a solution at all; they are an overt admission of failure.

Clearly, Australia is becoming a more volatile, fragmented, and anxious society. Political, religious, cultural, and ideological conflicts increasingly spill into public life. Foreign wars now play out on our streets. Ordinary Australians no longer feel safe in everyday spaces, like shopping centres, public transport, or beaches. People go about their lives with a low-level fear that the next attack, the next outburst of violence, could happen anywhere.

This didn’t emerge from the Australian population. Australians did not wake up one day and decide to become divided, suspicious, or hostile toward one another. This environment was cultivated from above, through decades of political decisions, ideological commitments, imported tensions, destructive ideologies, and policy failures that fractured social cohesion while promising unity.

Yet when the consequences of those decisions and policies become undeniable, governments refuse to accept responsibility. Instead of reassessing what went wrong, instead of acknowledging failure, they reach for even more power. They shift the burden onto the people themselves. They tell us that the problem is how we speak, how we think, how we express frustration, fear, or anger about the conditions imposed upon us.

That is victim-blaming at a national scale.

Hate speech laws tell Australians that they must now modify their speech and behaviour to accommodate the consequences of government policy. They must live cautiously, not only fearing violent extremists, but fearing the state itself. Say the wrong thing. Post the wrong comment. Express the wrong sentiment. And you may face prosecution, financial ruin, or social exile.

This is not how a confident, unified nation behaves. It is how a fragile one is governed.

True unity cannot be coerced. It cannot be legislated at the point of a gun or threatened into existence with prison sentences. Unity must be cultivated. It must rest on shared values, shared identity, and shared moral commitments that people genuinely believe in—not vague slogans or undefined concepts.

Governments often invoke vague concepts of “Australian values” or “Australianism,” yet they cannot, and will not, clearly articulate what those words mean. What exactly binds us together? What do we collectively stand for? What moral or cultural foundation underpins this so-called unity? When these questions go unanswered, unity becomes superficial by definition—it is easily fractured.

A society built on an undefined identity cannot withstand pressure for long. And when that pressure inevitably produces conflict, the response is not reflection or reform, but repression.

As such, hate speech laws are not evidence of moral leadership. They are evidence that our governments can no longer inspire loyalty, trust, or solidarity. They are an admission that policymakers have no unifying vision capable of bringing diverse people together voluntarily. So instead, they use force. The only “cohesive” tool they have left to hold society together is the threat of punishment.

Comply, unify, or else.

That is not unity. That is coercion.

Worse still, our governments consistently refuse to honestly name or directly confront the sources of division and violence. When terrorism strikes, they are quick to redirect blame toward politically convenient enemies, often invoking the “far right”, while hesitating to confront the ideological motivations actually responsible for the attack. And why the reluctance? Because acknowledging those realities would require admitting that long-standing ideological commitments, particularly to radical multiculturalism, have failed.

To name the problem would be to implicate themselves. It would require course-correction, and we know they have no intention of doing that.

Multiculturalism was sold as a path to national strength, but in reality, it has often undermined the cultural cohesion that democracy requires to function. Rather than fostering shared identity, it has fragmented society into competing groups with incompatible worldviews, grievances, and loyalties. 

When conflict emerges, governments insist their theory is sound, and the people are at fault. So the punishment falls downward.

And yet, every innocent Australian is a victim of terrorism. Not only those directly harmed, but all who must now live with heightened fear and vigilance. That is the purpose of terrorism: to terrify a population into submission. But instead of decisively removing threats, restoring public confidence, and confronting ideological roots, governments impose speech restrictions on the very people already suffering the consequences.

In that sense, the modern West can be defined by a rather grim paradox: Terrorism spreads fear through violence, while our governments respond by punishing those who express that fear in ways they deem unacceptable.

And this creates something even more dangerous than mere division: distrust. When citizens begin to fear both external threats and their own government, the social contract erodes. Communities dissolve. People no longer believe their leaders are acting in their interests. They see laws not as protection, but as instruments of control designed to conceal incompetence and ideological failure.

In any other profession, this sort of persistent failure would carry consequences. You would lose your job faster at a fast-food restaurant than you would running a nation into social disintegration. Yet Australians are expected to tolerate endless policy mistakes while being lectured and punished for reacting to them.

In short: You cannot impose a faulty ideology on a population and then criminalise dissent when it predictably fails. You cannot threaten people into harmony. And you cannot manufacture unity through fear.

Hate speech laws are not a sign of progress. They are an admission. They admit that society is deeply fractured. They admit that the government’s vision has failed to inspire. They admit that shared identity has been lost. And they admit that the only remaining tool is force.

A competent government would not need such laws, and a successful vision would not require such threats. A united people do not need to be compelled into harmony.

Hate speech laws, ultimately, are not about protecting society from harm. Their true aim is to protect failed politicians and preserve the disastrous and divisive policies they push on the people.