Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Until earlier this year I had never been to the Adass Israel Synagogue. When I heard about the firebombing there on 6 December last year, it rocked my sense of what it means to be a Jew in this country.

A few weeks before, at the Kristallnacht commemoration, I had met Beate Hammett from Hornsby, now in her 90s. Her father had been the chief architect in the Jewish community in Berlin. Beate was honoured at the commemoration because, on that fateful night in 1938, two of the beautiful synagogues that had been designed by her father were destroyed by fire. The images of Adass Israel in Melbourne in flames brought home the memory of Kristallnacht and the worst moments in our history.

In early January I visited the synagogue. The visit was very emotional. What the pictures don't convey is the burnt, damp smell that still pervades the air. The scenes are shocking—the twisted-metal air conditioners, the charred remains of chairs and the burnt honour boards, now impossible to read, that contained the names of people whose lives had been dedicated to the community. There's the cavity in the wall, stripped bare to the brick shell, where the Torah scrolls, the holiest objects in the synagogue, were kept. There's the knowledge that there were people in the synagogue when it was bombed and that lives could have been lost.

The community lost more than just a building. The synagogue is more than just bricks and mortar. It's a place where people go to mark some of the most significant moments in their lives—for weddings and bar mitzvahs. It's a place where sons sit with fathers and where mothers sit with daughters, learning their prayers and our traditions across the generations. It's where people come to say Kaddish and remember their parents. But Adass Israel was not the end. It was the beginning of a phase of escalation of unprecedented antisemitic violence, which has no place in this country. We've seen the firebombing of cars in Woollahra and Dover Heights outside the former home of prominent Jewish communal leaders. We saw the firebombing of a childcare centre which serves the Jewish community of Maroubra. We saw the attempted arson attack on a synagogue in Newtown and antisemitic graffiti on another in Allawah. In my own peaceful electorate, a caravan was discovered with a list of Jewish communal institutions and enough explosives to cause the largest terrorist attack on Australian soil—an attack with the potential to kill hundreds of our fellow Australians. People in suburbs with high Jewish populations now go to sleep with helicopters whirring above their heads and police and armed guards patrolling the streets, because that is what is needed to protect them in Australia in 2025. We have a domestic terrorism crisis in this country, the sort of which Australia has never experienced.

In my electorate, as in most electorates, there are very few Jewish people, but there are so many Australians who hate what has become of our country today—a country where antisemitism has been allowed to flourish because of the inaction and half measures of this government. If you criticise this government, Labor and the teals say you're politicising the issue. This is despite the fact that Jewish communal leaders, former Labor MPs and Labor Party members are making the same criticisms that I, the Leader of the Opposition and my colleagues are making. Let me be clear. I will not cop criticism for standing up for my family, my community or the country I love in the face of a government that has constantly let down the Jewish community and every law-abiding Australian, who just want to live in a country where they're afforded the full protection of the law.

Australians want to see this government do all that they can, but the Prime Minister and the government have failed to do all they can. There has been moral equivalence right from the very beginning. The Prime Minister, other ministers, the teals and others failed to call out the uniqueness of antisemitism and recognise it as a standalone hatred. What we have seen are half measures and weakness when what we needed was strong measures and strong leadership. The government has been reactive. It has not led. They took months to bring in the hate symbols law that we first proposed. They took months to appoint a special envoy on antisemitism, and then they failed to heed her advice on crucial matters. They did not coordinate all the law enforcement in the intelligence services and state and federal police when this issue first reared its ugly head. They did not do all they could to curb the violent protests on our city streets. They allowed Jew haters to run amok on our campuses and failed to call a judicial inquiry. This parliamentary committee scares no-one, as the performance of vice-chancellors indicates and the racist QUT anti-racism conference highlights.

The Prime Minister had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to call a national cabinet, which didn't produce stronger penalties or tougher laws, and the Attorney-General has failed to root out antisemitism at the Human Rights Commission. The foreign minister's conduct is regarded with disgust by thousands of Jewish people, calling for her not to represent our country in Auschwitz. The time for half measures and moral equivalence is over. The only thing that will solve antisemitism in this country is tough measures, strong leadership and stronger laws. That is what is needed in Australia today.

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