NSW’s Hate Crimes Bill 2026 and the new “luring” offence: what LGBTQIA+-targeted criminal charges actually mean if you are facing them
In June 2026 the NSW Parliament passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Hate Crimes) Act 2026, creating a suite of new offences targeting violence and harassment directed at LGBTQIA+ people. The reforms were a direct legislative response to documented patterns of organised attacks in which offenders used dating applications to lure gay and gender-diverse victims to isolated locations before assaulting them and distributing footage online. If you have been charged under the new hate crime provisions, or if you are under investigation for conduct alleged to have been motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity, this article explains what the law now says and what it means in practice.
These are not minor amendments at the margins of the statute book. They create new criminal offences, extend existing offences to cover digital post-and-boast conduct, and make hate motivation a more powerful aggravating factor at sentencing than it was before. The practical consequences for anyone charged under this framework are significant – both in terms of the penalties available and in terms of how courts approach the sentencing exercise.
What the 2026 legislation created
The Hate Crimes Act 2026 made amendments across several pieces of legislation. The three most practically significant changes for criminal defendants are: the creation of a new standalone luring offence; the expansion of the post-and-boast provisions to cover hate-motivated violence distributed online; and amendments to the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) that make hate motivation more explicitly and more easily established as an aggravating factor at sentencing.
The legislation was informed by an investigation by the ABC that documented a series of attacks in Sydney where men posed as LGBTQIA+ people on dating platforms to arrange meetings with gay men, then subjected those men to violence, filmed the assaults, and published the footage online. The legislative response was designed to address each element of that specific pattern while also improving the general framework for hate-motivated offending.
The new luring offence – what it covers
The new luring offence is found in the amended Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). It is committed where a person uses deception about their own sexual orientation, gender identity, or intersex status to induce another person to attend a place or to meet them, where the purpose of the deception is to facilitate conduct constituting a criminal offence against that person. The offence captures the specific technique identified in the ABC investigation: creating a false identity as an LGBTQIA+ person to gain the trust and arrange a meeting with a victim who would not otherwise have agreed to meet.
The maximum penalty for the luring offence is five years imprisonment where no further offence results. Where the luring results in actual bodily harm, the maximum is eight years. Where grievous bodily harm or sexual assault results, higher penalties apply and the matter is dealt with by reference to those underlying offences in conjunction with the luring charge. The offence can be committed even where the planned crime does not ultimately occur – if the accused engages in the deceptive conduct with the relevant purpose, that is sufficient.
This is an important feature of the offence. Police do not need to wait for an assault to happen before making an arrest. Where they have evidence of the deceptive contact and the purpose behind it, a charge can be laid at that point. This changes the enforcement dynamic significantly for this kind of conduct.
Post-and-boast provisions expanded
Post-and-boast offences target the conduct of recording and publishing footage of criminal activity as a deliberate act. The original post-and-boast provisions were introduced following gang violence cases where participants filmed assaults and uploaded the footage to social media. The 2026 amendments extend those provisions specifically to hate-motivated assaults targeting LGBTQIA+ people, creating an offence of recording and publishing material documenting hate-motivated violence.
The expanded provisions operate independently of the underlying assault charge. This means that a person involved in a hate-motivated attack against an LGBTQIA+ victim can face charges both for the assault itself and for the publication of material documenting it. A person who received footage from a participant and then shared it further may also face exposure depending on the circumstances of the sharing and their knowledge of the context in which the footage was obtained.
Evidence in post-and-boast matters typically includes records obtained from social media platforms of when material was uploaded, from which account, using which device, and the subsequent spread of that material through sharing and re-posting. Even material that has been deleted from platforms is often recoverable through platform cooperation or from the devices of people who viewed and saved it before deletion.
Hate motivation as an aggravating factor at sentencing
Section 21A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) sets out aggravating factors that courts must take into account when sentencing. The 2026 amendments strengthened and clarified the provisions relating to hate motivation by expanding the list of protected attributes to explicitly include sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status as attributes whose targeting must be treated as aggravating.
The practical effect is that where a court is satisfied that an offence was wholly or partly motivated by hatred or prejudice toward the victim based on LGBTQIA+ status, the sentence must reflect that as a serious aggravating factor. Courts are required by the legislation to acknowledge the harm caused not just to the individual victim but to the broader community targeted by the offending. This can result in materially higher sentences than would apply to equivalent conduct without that motivation.
The prosecution bears the obligation of establishing hate motivation where it is contested. This can be done through statements made by the accused, social media posts or messages, evidence of planning, the specific selection of the victim and the circumstances of the offending, and expert evidence where relevant about ideological frameworks. Defence counsel will scrutinise this evidence carefully and where the evidence of motivation is equivocal or insufficient, the aggravating factor may not be established.
How these charges interact with assault and other offences
Hate crime charges almost never arise alone. They are brought alongside assault charges, sometimes alongside sexual assault charges, and in post-and-boast matters alongside carriage service offences under Commonwealth law where the material was transmitted using the internet or a mobile network. The cumulative effect of multiple charges arising from a single incident or course of conduct is that the overall sentencing exposure is considerably higher than it would be for the underlying assault alone.
In cases involving coordinated group attacks – where multiple individuals participated in a planned assault – further charges of conspiracy, riot, or affray may be added. Joint criminal enterprise principles can make each participant in a planned attack liable for the conduct of all participants, which can significantly expand the criminal exposure of individuals who played a lesser role in the physical violence.
Bail considerations in hate crime matters
NSW courts treat hate-motivated offending as a serious public order and community safety concern, and bail applications in these matters are scrutinised carefully. Conditions commonly imposed where bail is granted include: prohibition on contacting the victim or witnesses, prohibition on accessing dating platforms or social media, requirements to surrender travel documents, and residence conditions. Where there is evidence of a group involved in coordinated offending, no-association conditions with co-accused are also common.
Where the conduct alleged involves a level of planning and coordination that suggests an ongoing risk, or where there is evidence that the accused has expressed ongoing commitment to the ideology or purpose behind the offending, bail may be opposed entirely and courts will carefully assess the unacceptable risk criteria under the Bail Act 2013 (NSW).
What to do if you are charged
Charges under the hate crime provisions are serious, attract significant public attention, and are prosecuted with considerable resources. Police and prosecutors in NSW operate in an environment of heightened community concern about hate-motivated violence against LGBTQIA+ people, and the legislative intent behind the 2026 reforms is clearly to pursue these matters aggressively. If you have been charged or if police have contacted you about a suspected hate crime, you should obtain specialist criminal law advice immediately. Do not attend any police interview without a lawyer present, and do not make any public statements about the matter.
At National Criminal Lawyers, we advise on hate crime charges, assault matters, and the digital evidence considerations that are central to modern hate crime prosecutions. Call us at 1800 CRIM LAW for a free consultation. Help us help you understand your situation and get you the best outcome possible.
