The Christchurch terrorist attack has highlighted questions around the relationship between hate speech, violence and public political discourse. Are we now in an era where hateful and vengeful language directed toward segments of Australian and other faith and ethnic communities around the world has become normalised? How do we understand the landscape of social harms caused by words and their relationship to action? Are there new ways of balancing freedoms and constraints around public discourse in the digital age? And where does responsibility on these issues lie?