Australians have not come to expect much from Anthony Albanese when it comes to moral leadership. But they might be forgiven for having hoped for more from their prime minister less than 24 hours after 15 people were shot dead at Hanukkah celebrations on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Surely, now was the time for the kind of frank speech on anti-Semitism and its causes that Australia’s Jewish community had been waiting to hear for over two years now. Yet, incredibly, Albanese was more interested in talking about reforming Australia’s already strict gun laws.
‘One of the many suggestions that will be on the agenda today is to have an examination of our gun laws to make sure that if there is any tightening or changes which are required, that we put in place mechanisms’, Albanese told the media on Monday, speaking in dull, technocratic terms. ‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m convening the national cabinet as a matter of urgency… We want to make sure that there’s greater uniformity on these issues.’
Yes, Albanese did the obligatory condemnations about anti-Semitism, but it was clearly not what he wanted to be talking about. Which should hardly surprise us. Because, of all the failures of his government, its indifference to the terrifying rise of Jew hatred in Australia must now be judged as its biggest and most unforgivable.
Albanese is a career politician who appears to be unable to view any event except through the lens of how it might impact him personally or politically. Thus, the outbreak of anti-Israeli, and often anti-Jewish, bigotry that has swept Australia since the 7 October 2023 massacre in Israel was met with a calibrated response. He could not seem heartless to Australia’s Jewish community. Yet, at the same time, he had to make sure that Australia’s increasingly large and vocal constituency of Israelophobes knew squarely which side of the fence Labor was on. Muslim independents and the Islamo-left Greens began to pose a serious electoral threat to Labor – notably, in Albanese’s own seat of Grayndler in western Sydney. If allowing a toxic loathing of Israel to fester in Australia was the price for a second term of government, Albanese would pay it.
One of Albanese’s feeble profferings to Australia’s Jewish community was to create the position of a ‘special envoy’ on anti-Semitism. He appointed the distinguished lawyer and businesswoman, Jillian Segal, to this position in July 2024. A year later, Segal published a report, which included incidents from the ‘firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue’ to the ‘firebombing of a childcare centre’ and the ‘repeated targeting with graffiti of Jewish schools and places of worship’ since 2023. Sunday’s events have given her next sentence a tragic significance: ‘ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] director general Mike Burgess deemed anti-Semitism Australia’s leading threat to life.’
Yet Segal’s report was ignored by the Labor government and Albanese. Soon after it was published, we were given a hint why this might have been the case. On a rainy day in August, thousands marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They were mourning the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who played a central role in planning the 7 October pogrom. Haniyeh’s death was confirmed by Israel on 31 July 2024, and the Sydney Harbour march was organised to coincide with the anniversary. The crowd chanted ‘Long live the intifada’ and ‘Death to the IDF’ (Israel Defence Forces). They also waved al-Qaeda flags. A few weeks later, on 21 September, Albanese granted the protesters one of their most important demands: the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Clearly, events have grown too large, too significant for a politician like Albanese. A Labor ‘power broker’ whose adult life has been dedicated to the pedantic minutiae of internal party politics, he is clearly not cut out for a national crisis of this magnitude. All Australians have felt sucker-punched by Sunday’s attack. Bondi Beach is probably the only place that every Australian, no matter which corner of the vast continent they call home, would have visited. The kind of thing that simply doesn’t happen in Australia, the ‘lucky country’, had happened at its spiritual core. And there was Albanese, droning on in his lifeless, managerial tone about tinkering with gun legislation.
Australians are not idiots. Instinctively, they know that gun laws are not why Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, was murdered in front of his family. Or why a little girl, 10-year-old Mathilda, will soon be buried by her family and friends. They were killed by a suspected Islamist because they were Jewish.
There are no easy or obvious solutions to anti-Semitism. As the world’s oldest hatred, it has shown a sinister adaptability throughout the centuries. But the starting point must surely be a desire to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Albanese has failed to do this. He will have to live with consequences.
Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.
