Australia's Hate Speech Failure | Dimitri Burshtein

The tragic events at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025 expose a deepening crisis in Australian civil society, and one that cannot be remedied through enhanced state power. Indeed, the reflexive governmental response, however well-intentioned, even when driven by community demand, risks exacerbating the very decay it purports to address. When confronted with social breakdown, the political class typically reaches for its familiar instruments of new laws, increased funding, expanded bureaucracies. Yet very few social ills respond to such remedies. As Henry Louis Mencken observed, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”. And the proliferation of state-administered solutions, far from strengthening the fabric of society, often exacerbates the problem by displacing or weakening the mediating institutions upon which democratic resilience ultimately depends. Civil and social cohesion in liberal democracies depends less on regulatory intervention than on the vitality of culture and non-state institutions capable of transmitting shared civic norms. The evidence is not merely theoretical. It is visible in the persistent failure of legislative remedies across comparable democracies to contain ideological pathologies that have cultural, psychological, religious, and historical roots that statute simply cannot reach. 👉 Read the paper here: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/the-legislative-fantasy-hate-speech-culture-and-institutional-failure-2/ 👉 Support CIS Research: 🔹 Become a member: https://www.cis.org.au/membership-2-step-1/ 🔹 Make a donation: https://www.cis.org.au/support/donate/today/ 🔹 Learn more: https://www.cis.org.au/ ______________________________________________________________________________________________ CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. We aim to make sure good policy ideas are heard and seriously considered so that Australia can prosper. Follow CIS on our Socials; Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/ Telegram - https://t.me/centreforindependentstudies 📖 Read more from CIS here: https://www.cis.org.au/ 💬 Join in the conversation in the comments. 👍 Like this video if you enjoyed it and want to see more, it really helps us out! 🔔 Subscribe to our channel and click the bell to watch our videos first: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5c-JkKHb0YxFZ81XBtFCmw?sub_confirmation=1 ⏲️ Missed this event live? Subscribe to CIS to be up to date with all our events: https://www.cis.org.au/subscribe/ 📝 Subscribe to CIS mailing list- https://www.cis.org.au/subscribe/ 💳 Support us with a tax-deductible donation at - https://www.cis.org.au/support/