TRANSCRIPT - SKY NEWS WITH KIERAN GILBERT - WEDNESDAY, 21 JANUARY 2026

TV INTERVIEW

NEWS DAY + KIERAN GILBERT

WEDNESDAY, 21 JANUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Hate crime laws and legislation, migration

KIERAN GILBERT: Let's return now to the events here at Parliament House this week and the passage of the government's hate crime laws. Joining me is the Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke. Minister, thanks for your time. We've been splintering on the Coalition side. Would it have been better for the nation if there was to be a unified bipartisan position on this hate crime issue?

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS TONY BURKE: Well, I wish we'd had agreement from the entire Parliament on everything we put forward, I really do. Importantly to the extent that we could, we brought the Parliament together enough to be able to make sure that two significant pieces of legislation made it through and people are safer as a result of those pieces of legislation making it through. The legislation itself, we would have liked it to have been even stronger. But there is no doubt now that we will have the strongest checks on gun licenses that Australia has ever had and we'll also have the strongest hate laws that Australia's ever had.

GILBERT: What do you say to the suggestion by Michael McCormack, but others as well, but he was sitting where you are last hour and says it was too rushed. That's why there's been chaos within the Coalition ranks in terms of different votes within their Shadow Cabinet. Did you rush them? Was there enough time for them to digest exactly what was at stake here?

BURKE: Well, the Coalition wanted it even faster than we did. The Coalition call was that this was all going to happen before Christmas. We made clear last year what the type of legislation would be, what the issues would be and the Coalition had already been calling for the full implementation of the antisemitism report from the Antisemitism Envoy. They'd been calling for exactly that sort of legislation and we'd made clear what we were going to do with respect to firearms as well. The moment we had legislation; this is not one of those situations where for Parliament to meet and then you spring it on everyone. We put out an exposure draft and we amended effectively the exposure draft before it even got to the Parliament.

The reality is some of the Coalition were saying they wanted to split the bill so they could vote against both parts. The position was all over the place. What mattered was that we put community safety first and that we got the best legislation through that this Parliament would provide.

GILBERT. So, it wasn't rushed in the end, in your view?

BURKE: Well, no, it went much more slowly than what the Coalition themselves had been calling for. It's very rare for a government to put out an exposure draft in advance of Parliament sitting, but we wanted people to have a chance to be able to work through the issues. Sadly, that meant that one of the very key recommendations from Jillian Segal's report about having serious vilification offences, sadly, it meant that it became clear that couldn't make it through the Parliament.

GILBERT: Peter Wertheim wants you to go back to that. Not the only one, but he's one of senior Jewish figures and others who say that needs to happen. Are you open to that? If the Coalition comes back to you or other parties and say, look, we're willing to negotiate.

BURKE: I suspect you've been interviewing me here on Sky News for close on 20 years, talking about hate laws. During that time I've always wanted our hate laws to be tougher than they were. I'll never experience bigoted hate in that form, given my background and faith in Australia, but so many of my friends will, and I've always wanted us to have stronger laws. I think we have to deal with the reality, though, which is simply if we can't get a majority after a massacre, then I'm not sure what it would be that would give us a majority.

GILBERT: Are you satisfied that there are enough checks and balances in the legislation as it stands, when it comes to the groups that will be targeted? Because Nationals, Matt Canavan, others making the argument that it's too broad, the definition that we're talking about when you talk about physical psychological harm and so on.

BURKE: When they talk about that, they miss the key gateway before a decision even gets to a Minister, which is the fact that the process has to begin with advice from ASIO. It's only when ASIO have said there's a threshold there for a Minister to consider a group to be banned, that it can even get to a Minister. Now when they look at it, they say, ‘oh, look, there's all these other bits when the Minister considers’. The Minister doesn't even get the option of cancelling an organisation effectively.

GILBERT: So it can't be politicised?

BURKE: No, no and it was really important to me. Normally, as a Minister, the instinct is always give yourself the power. It was really important to me to make sure we had laws that would last, because this is a big step, because we're talking about organisations that don't themselves call for violence, which has always been the terrorism threshold. But there's an acknowledgement post Bondi, that the whole temperature of bigotry against the Jewish community in Australia made it more likely that an attack of that sort would occur. Also as part of the story for other attacks, like the horrific stories that have come out of Melbourne for those school kids. Now, the temperature matters. So if you're going to ban organisations that fall short of direct calls for violence, you need some real safeguards, and I don't think there's a more respected safeguard that you could have than ASIO.

GILBERT: One of the other powers that's gone through as part of the legislation. More powers for you in denying visas. Who will you be looking at? Who will be denied entry as part of these changes?

BURKE: A lot of these go to the sorts of people I've already been denying visas to, but effectively the legal process is really complex at the moment, and for some people it can be two months of work before the department's got a brief for me or one of my Assistant Ministers to deal with. They end up going to the court, Candace Owens took me all the way to the High Court. These decisions get challenged. I wanted to make it much simpler so that the situation was robust. But the best guide to the sorts of people we don't want in Australia are the decisions that I've been making, where I've been taking a harder line on this than any of my predecessors for a generation.

GILBERT: If there are people talking about, not just public figures, but regular citizens of foreign countries who might say they don't agree with Israel, the existence of Israel, if there is, you know, that sort of anti-Zionist rhetoric, are they the sorts of people that would be a red flag to you?

BURKE: Look, I'm not going to prejudge individual examples. What I'll say is, now bigotry is enough to make sure that it gets the attention, and then we also need to establish that by coming here there would be harm. So, there'll be some people where the harm bit can be a difficult equation. But put it this way, I've asked for these powers. I've been going hard, but I've had court cases, we've had all these challenges. There's some arguments that I've used that had been knocked out, but the visa cancellations themselves have survived.

GILBERT: I know you've got a busy afternoon ahead of you, just one last issue, if I can touch on it, because it's going to be a massive issue this year, in fact, probably till the next election. The issue of migration and whether elements of our society are assimilating accordingly and doing what the Prime Minister said, leave grievances at the customs door and I'm particularly talking about extremist Islamist viewpoints that unfortunately and tragically manifested in that atrocity in December. Are you ready to have that debate and to crack down where needed in terms of our migration?

BURKE: Oh, completely and some of the visa cancellations I refer to have been of that nature. It's also true, though, because if we only talk about one of the potential harms, we're not talking about other things. There have been a number of Nazis who I've also cancelled that don't fit with that sort of ideology you've just referred to, but are just as evil and in terms of antisemitism, are just as bad.

GILBERT: Tony Burke, I appreciate your time. Thanks for making the time on a busy week for you.

BURKE: Great to be back.

ENDS