The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has said he will only ban the slogan “globalise the intifada” if a potential constitutional challenge to a similar ban in Queensland is unsuccessful, the strongest indication yet that the state government may not seek to proscribe the contested phrase at all.

Minns was unequivocal about his intention to ban what he described as “hateful, violent rhetoric” following the Bondi terror attack in December, but sent the issue to a parliamentary inquiry, which he said would enable legislation to be introduced when parliament returned in February.

Despite the inquiry recommending the phrase be banned when it is linked to “incitement of hatred, or harassment, intimidation or violence”, that legislation has yet to materialise. Meanwhile, Queensland has gone ahead with its own ban, also capturing the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which has seen dozens of arrests and pro-Palestine groups vow to launch a legal challenge.

In an interview with 2GB on Tuesday, the premier explicitly linked the fate of NSW legislation to the outcome of that challenge.

“If [the ban] is upheld in Queensland, I’ll do it in New South Wales, I won’t muck around,” he said.

“It looks fantastic for me, perhaps, if I move a piece of legislation in the initial instance, but in three months’ time, if it’s knocked over in the courts, I’ve looked through this via bitter experience and realised we’re in a worse position than where we were.”

It was another step back from Minns, who told a press conference in March that while he was “grateful” another jurisdiction had gone ahead, a ban was “coming in soon” irrespective of how things played out in Queensland. He said he would fight a constitutional challenge in NSW.

But following a successful challenge in April to another element of his post-Bondi legislative agenda – controversial anti-protest laws – his office confirmed he was now looking to the neighbouring state.

The premier’s comments on Tuesday appear to be a further retreat.

The NSW court of appeal’s recent ruling that the anti-protest laws impermissibly burdened the right to political communication seems to have made the difference, the second challenge Minns has lost after the court struck down laws prohibiting protests outside places of worship in October.

The controversy around the inquiry into banning “globalise the intifada” cannot have helped.

It was open to submissions for only three weeks and did not hold public hearings because of the “urgent need” to introduce legislation, leading to accusations it was “rushed over the holiday season”.

Submissions from Jewish groups including the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry called for a ban on phrases which include “intifada”, from the Arabic for uprising or “shaking off”, and used to refer to two uprisings by Palestinians against Israel in 1987 and 2000.

But others, including the Australian National Imams Council and the Jewish Council of Australia, said the phrase was contested, and a ban would disproportionately target Palestinian and Middle Eastern communities.

The inquiry’s final recommendation, conceived to limit a constitutional challenge by linking a ban to incitement of hatred or violence, was criticised as covering conduct that already fell under existing laws.

Anne Twomey, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sydney, whose submission warned against a ban on individual political slogans, told Guardian Australia the premier’s decision to wait on a challenge in Queensland was wise.

“Apart from any legal challenge, [the government] might also consider whether the ban on those slogans in Queensland has been counterproductive, resulting in greater use of them in defiance of the government and as a protest against restrictions on speech.”

Minns’s comments on Tuesday have led some critics to question the logic of his commitment.

Nick Hanna, the legal representative for the protest groups that won the anti-protest laws challenge, who is also representing protesters charged under the Queensland ban, said it was “extraordinary that Minns is basing his decision as to whether or not to introduce laws in this state on the outcome of proposed court proceedings to challenge a different law in a different jurisdiction”.

“As a result, Minns cannot possibly know what the legal arguments the challenge there will entail and what, if any, bearing they will have on the ability of a similar ban to withstand a challenge here.”

The NSW Greens MLC and justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said it was “reassuring that it seems the premier has actually recognised the risks and dangers to his own credibility and reputation through pursuing draconian and invalid laws”.

Minns told 2GB on Tuesday there was a greater need for “civic leadership” in maintaining social harmony.

“It can’t all just be legislative change and outright banning of things.”