Royal Commission Submission

Leadership and Moral Clarity

My submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, reprinted here, emphasises the need to change attitudes and behaviour rather than laws, and to make Jew-hatred socially unacceptable rather than giving comfort to the ideas, ideologies and activities that make it worse.

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I write this as a former Labor MP, as someone with a Jewish partner and children and as someone who is deeply disillusioned with the Labor Party.

In recent years, and exponentially since 7 October 2023, Jew-hatred has become normalised. I believe it is important to call this scourge what it really is - anti-Semitism is a passive term that fails to capture the essence and power of the problem we face, which is Jew-hatred.

I am acutely aware of how this rise in Jew-hatred has occurred because, while not Jewish myself, my partner and our daughters are Jewish and I am closely involved with the Jewish community. I believe this gives me a degree of insight which is both close to, yet distinct from, some others.

As someone with a lengthy involvement in politics and community affairs, I believe many in recent and current leadership roles suffer from a lack of moral clarity and the courage to speak plainly about issues in our society that have built up in recent years, leading to our current crisis.

There is a belief that facing up to and dealing with potential threats may inflame tensions and “raise the temperature”. Attempting to speak to different community groups separately as if they are in silos and seeking votes by appeasing grievances has become common.

By way of background, I joined the Australian Labor Party when I was a teenager. For decades it was a big part of my life. I assisted on campaigns, served on and chaired the Victorian legal affairs policy committee and was elected to the Victorian parliament, serving in Cabinet as Cabinet Secretary. In 2015 I was made a life member. The Labor Party I joined embodied my beliefs and my optimism in the sort of society Australia should be.

My associations with the Jewish community beyond my family were deepened during my time as a member of the Victorian parliament and have continued subsequently. Up to 2010 when I ceased to be an MP, I had never encountered active Jew-hatred of the type that is now common. I was obviously aware of incidents that occurred from time to time and of the security needs of the community, because safety was already a cause for concern, but at that time the danger was thought to be from a very small number of people and largely of the “traditional” right-wing sort.

In recent years, that optimism and faith in the Labor party has been shaken by the party’s descent into identity politics and social tribalism. I developed grave concerns about its direction and the influence of its left-wing members, pressure from the Green party and political Islam.

Until 7 October 2023, however, I thought it was best to remain a member in opposition to this drift.

The party’s position following the Hamas invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023 made me reconsider whether I could or should remain a member any longer. By late 2024, it was clear that in good conscience I could no longer remain a member of a party that in government was playing a role in the division and breakdown of our society. This is of fundamental importance because the way politics has been conducted in this country has played a direct role in allowing the social breakdown we have witnessed.

We all understand it is a central role of governments to protect the community from threats, whether they originate from external sources, such as Iran, or the domestic activists and groups who promote and echo their aims and ideology, wittingly or not.

In the post-October 7 world, the threats to the Jewish community and ultimately to our society generally have grown by orders of magnitude. We saw the potential on the Opera House steps on 9 October and in statements from other Islamic leaders and political activists.

Regardless of legal powers available to them, the federal and Victorian governments failed to take a strong stand against Islamist terror and the campaign to annihilate Israel. They tried to present an even-handed approach which only plays into the hands of the terrorists and the people here who won’t condemn terrorism. They consequently helped legitimise anti-Jewish hatred.

The Foreign Minister’s immediate call for Israeli restraint on October 7 followed by repeated condemnation of Israel’s conduct of the war, no statements of understanding of the military challenges Israel faced, failure to condemn anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activities, failing to strongly condemn the taking over of university campuses for months and city streets weekly, language drawing a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas and other terror groups, the futile and counter-productive recognition of a state of Palestine that does not exist and attempted pandering to Muslim voters, all added up to endorsement of “resistance is justified.”

The bully pulpit available to our political leaders needed to be used and it wasn’t. The outcome has been tragic.

I was an independent candidate in the Prahran by-election through the two months leading up to February 2025. In my old seat, my main purpose in standing was to ensure the Greens would not retain the seat in circumstances where the Labor party refused to contest the election.

During the campaign, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents occurred which I would have thought impossible some years ago. People said to my face that they were not voting for me because my partner is Jewish. I was called a supporter of genocide. My poster was defaced with stickers urging that Israel be flushed down the toilet like shit.

These people had no sense of shame or limits about their willingness to express their extremist views. It had become normalised among a large group in society.

One of our daughters was at university in 2023 and subsequently. She has held positions in university Jewish student organisations. Her experiences have also been unlike any that were faced by her peers only a few years ago.

The taking over of the public square by mobs who intimidate and make our city streets no-go areas for many citizens has been instrumental in allowing this normalisation. This has been a product of the confluence of left wing politics and political Islam. One a Marxist-inspired fusion of anti-colonialism and identity politics, the other a religious superiority world view of domination.

Two completely different ideologies converging over Jew hatred. And authorities have allowed this mob rule to continue unchecked in the name of a seemingly unrestricted right to protest.

Right wing Jew-hatred of the older traditional variety is also a cause for concern, but is different to the Leftist/Islamist version as it is relatively fringe and provides progressive governments with an easy whipping boy to prove their “anti-racist” credentials. It’s easy to ban Nazi symbols. This has effectively let the Leftist/Islamist version off the hook to proceed unhindered.

Australia is being subjected to the local version of a movement designed to destabilise the West. It is at least as old as the early Cold War Soviet propaganda that created Palestinianism and the anti-colonialist movement. More recently it has been funded and directed through Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is now perpetuated through our universities, cultural institutions, large segments of the media and leftist political parties.

It is not about freedom in any sense our society understands. Ask the question: why do none of these people protest for the rights and freedoms of Iranians to escape the horrors of the Islamic Republic?

Creating perceived victims and villains and using democratic rights like the right to protest is intended to cause breakdowns in our society.

The right to protest is one thing. What we have seen is not people complaining about a government policy. It is part of an organised campaign throughout the Western world targeting part of our own population. It is organised intimidation.

Taking over large city areas, including institutions that are for the use of the general public, such as the State Library, is beyond protest. The holding of these events virtually weekly for years is beyond protest. The incitement that habitually occurs at these events is beyond protest.

Chanting “all Zionists are terrorists” has recently been held by a Judge of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to be unlawful as a breach of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, which has now been repealed and replaced by different legislation. But it took a courageous private citizen to bring that action. In New South Wales, it took action from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to hold one hate preacher to account.

In my opinion, there is no difference in sentiment between “all Zionists are terrorists” and the others that are regularly employed at these events, such as “death to the IDF” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or to use the authentic Arabic version “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab”. They all have the potential to incite violence, to intimidate and to cause harm.

But I do not believe that trying to legislate generally against “hate” or criminalising particular phrases is the way to proceed. The laws will be vague. Chants will change. Those who they are ostensibly aimed at will use them as weapons. None of the Jew-hatred will stop.

The response that “we will tighten our laws” is really an excuse for inaction.

Through my experience as a barrister, I understand that laws already exist that can and should be used to charge people who threaten, incite violence or cause harm. The authorities should use them. Jew-hatred poses an existential challenge to Australia. To the Australia we love, the Australia we thought we had, the one we want to retain.

There must be an end to governments and their instrumentalities such as the police being timid and unwilling to prosecute. At the very least, such actions would show that our elected representatives and their agencies stand up for our Western values and the Jewish community.

This challenge, the challenge to make it clear where we stand, is not just for governments and bureaucrats. Governments must lead the way but it is a challenge for all of us.

Because I believe most Australians are fundamentally decent, I believe they are prepared to defeat Jew-hatred. Some realise the extent of the challenge, many are yet to understand the full impact of it, because it may seem not to affect them. But it does. That again is why our leaders need to take a stand.

Unchecked, or responded to passively, Jew-hatred will eat away at the type of society we have built over two centuries. It will erode freedoms and change the ways in which we interact and behave. It will change the country.

We saw an example of this after Bondi, when restrictions on freedom of speech were hastily proposed. Everyone’s speech would be restricted but the Jew-hatred would persist, with some no doubt blaming the Jews for the restrictions.

So it falls to our political and institutional leaders to ensure we correct course before it’s too late.

The federal government’s initial resistance to calling a Royal Commission was a bad sign. While the government sought a political response to the Bondi massacre, a tragedy that cannot be seen in isolation, public pressure resulted in a turnaround.

Raising gun laws was a political wedge response, as was attempting to alter freedom of speech.

A political response to Jew-hatred has to be rejected. The Royal Commission provides an opportunity to take another path.

The first step on this journey to save Australia is facing up to what the threats really are.

As events have proved, mouthing expressions like “antisemitism has no place in Australia” is not only pathetically ineffective wishful thinking, it is plainly wrong. It is here and it definitely has found a place among some on the political right and the political left and is endemic in political Islam.

Anti-Semitism, or Jew-hatred, is a singular form of racial hatred that has no counterpart. It doesn’t exist because some people regard Jews as inferior, as is the case in other forms of racism. It is a social cancer based on shifting conspiracy theories of Jewish superiority and power. For those who hold these views, there is no such thing as a good Jew, except a dead one.

It is therefore a profound error to classify Jew-hatred along with other things like racism against black people. It is particularly erroneous to link it with so-called Islamophobia. Jew-hatred has nothing to do with Judaism per se. Many Jews are secular. Many Zionists, including many who founded the modern State of Israel, were secular - and socialists to boot.

Debate and criticism of a religion must be allowed for in a liberal democracy. Criticising Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism can freely occur without fear of being called a racist and rightly so, because these religions have no basis in race. Criticism of Islam, however, often carries with it the prospect of being labelled a racist, even though Islam is not a race-based religion either.

Concern about Islam is not paranoid or unreasonable. The number and percentage of terrorist and other violent incidents perpetrated by people saying they are acting according to the tenets of Islam is reason enough for people to be concerned.

This is not about all Muslims or about being discriminatory. It is about the right of people in Australia to express views and ask questions about the serious and present danger that is political Islam. If we can’t do this, we are creating a form of blasphemy law which is repugnant to our liberal democracy.

It is particularly offensive to have Jew-hatred (called anti-Semitism) repeatedly linked to Islamophobia by political leaders and others when they feel the need to condemn another anti-Semitic act as if the two were the same.

“We condemn all acts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” Why pick Islam to mention whenever there’s an attack on Jews? Is there a tit-for-tat going on in Australia where the Jews attack Muslims and the Muslims attack Jews? No there isn’t.

Even more appalling is when the perpetrators of the Jew-hatred are themselves acting in the name of Islam. This doesn’t have to involve actual physical violence or acts of terror like firebombing a synagogue. The mob at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 is an example.

Yet afterwards we heard a lot of condemnation of “anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

There is clearly concern by many in positions of leadership in Australia that any criticism of Islam will lead to undesirable consequences. Either loss of votes or violence.

Hence the appeasement that we have seen. Allowing the mob protests to continue unabated. Calling for Israeli restraint. Criticising Israel and not Hamas and Hezbollah. Failing to criticise the various UN acts of bias against Israel and the International Criminal Court process. And recognising a non-existent state of Palestine while such an entity has no government or recognised borders.

The upshot of all this appeasement dressed up as political management has interestingly not been Muslim support for the federal government. Rather it resulted in the Prime Minister being humiliated and abused at Lakemba mosque for - wait for it - being too supportive of Israel.

And notwithstanding the tragedy of Bondi, Muslims in Australia are claiming to be the victims themselves. Islamophobia.

Social cohesion is said to be under strain. The simple view, seemingly taken by the government, is that this is due to some people being a bit intense or over-excited. The real problems are not named or spoken about. Instead we hear repeatedly how we are a successful multicultural country.

That may have been true once and post-war migrants broadly fitted into Australia well. The reasons for this are varied, but general acceptance of Australia and our society as worthy, decent and positive had a lot to do with it. The vast majority of migrants wanted to live in the sort of society they met on arrival. They could and did culturally fit in.

We are now seeing something different, and not just from migrants. The confluence of Leftist politics and political Islam has another common feature - a profound dislike of Australia and our society. For the Left, “so-called Australia” is a guilty settler-colonial project with blood on its hands. For political Islam, it is a dissolute and feeble Western society ripe for overthrow - it is undeniable that in more recent times we have taken in many migrants who hold to these views and leaders in mosques are active in proselytising these views. Jew-hatred is endemic and encouraged in many Middle Eastern countries and this needs to be recognised.

So the problem needs to be named and needs to be examined with a view to countering its poison.

We must unite as a country around some common principles and values.

“Social cohesion” is a weak term that holds no cultural water, but the unity we need comes from agreement around a series of principles and values and a willingness to defend them. This does not come from bland and vague slogans, condemning the present generation for perceived past injustices, treating every culture and practice as equally worthy or appeasement of extremism.

If the tragedy of Bondi, the other violent acts such as the Adass Israel synagogue firebombing and the innumerable other acts of Jew-hatred that have become familiar are to serve any positive purpose, it is that we recognise that actions and attitudes from the top down have allowed Jew-hatred to mushroom, threatening our Jewish community and the liberal democratic Australia we want to preserve.

History is replete with examples of divisive factions in different countries stirring hatred and demanding action against the Jews. But once the Jews were thrown under the bus, the demands didn’t stop. And here in Australia, if they win this battle, the Leftist/Islamic coalition will keep making demands until we don’t recognise our country any more.

To counter this threat Australia needs to be on nothing less than a war footing. Rather than pursuing tweaks to our laws, we need our leaders, political, educational and cultural, to make Jew-hatred unacceptable and stand unequivocally for Western values, liberal democratic principles and the rule of law. They must actively defend Australia and its progress since European settlement into an advanced developed nation. They must reject inter-generational guilt. They must speak openly and allow others to speak openly about the threats we face.

By making Jew-hatred completely unacceptable we can stand with our Jewish community and also help save Australia from the fate that is befalling other countries like the United Kingdom.

Those in power in Australia at all levels of government and in our institutions need to be told, in unequivocal terms, to take a stand.

Moral force is required. The Royal Commission is armed with the moral force to help make this a reality.