AFP also allege man used social media to contact Victorian state politician
A Victorian man has been charged in connection with alleged death threats and antisemitic comments against a federal politician in the latest incident investigated by a special police taskforce.
The Australian federal police confirmed on Friday a 33-year-old Reservoir man was charged with four counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence and one count of using a carriage service to threaten to kill.
Both charges carry a maximum jail sentence of five years.
Police alleged the man used social media and email to send death threats and antisemitic comments to a New South Wales-based federal politician over a three-day period in January.
The man also allegedly used social media to contact a Victorian state politician.
Police seized several electronic devices from the man’s Melbourne home on Thursday. He was granted conditional bail and is expected to appear in the Melbourne magistrates court on 8 April.
The AFP assistant commissioner, Stephen Nutt, said the taskforce – known as Special Operation Avalite – expected to make further charges and had a number of individuals under investigation.
“Anyone engaging in this type of deplorable behaviour will be investigated, located and brought before the court,” Nutt said.
“Parliamentarians and members of our community should not have to endure vile threats based on their race, religion or ethnicity.”
Anthony Albanese pleaded for the heat to be turned down.
“The truth is that we do live in circumstances where the number of threats that have been made towards elected representatives [has increased],” the prime minister told reporters on Friday.
“People will say things on social media that they would never say to you face to face, and they engage in a way that seems to ramp up from zero to 11 straight away.
“I don’t want to see the sort of polarisation that we see in some of our democracies around the world happen here.”
On Wednesday, another Victorian man was charged over a separate matter after allegedly calling the Canberra office of a political organisation and making antisemitic and abusive statements.
The federal parliament has passed tough new mandatory sentencing laws for hate speech crimes, including minimum mandatory jail sentences of between one and two years.
The bipartisan push for stronger laws on hate speech comes after a spate of antisemitic incidents, including an arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in December and the discovery of a caravan in Dural, NSW, filled with enough explosives to cause a “potential mass casualty event” in January.
Police are investigating whether any of the incidents could be linked but Guardian Australia makes no suggestion that there is a link between any of the cases.
The changes enable minimum jail sentences for threatening force or violence against people on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, described the proposed changes as the “toughest laws Australia has ever had against hate crimes”.
“Anybody who says that hate speech is somehow a subset of freedom of speech doesn’t understand that words can be bullets,” he said.
– with AAP
