Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last few months have been some of the most difficult in memory for the Australian Jewish community. The horrific attacks on 7 October have not only created a war in the Middle East, but they are causing an unprecedented rise of anti-Semitism in Australia. In Sydney we have seen anti-Semitic posters at protests, anti-Semitic slurs from members of the New South Wales parliament, motorcycle convoys deliberately travelling through the heart of the Jewish community and boycotts of Jewish businesses. There were already guards outside Jewish schools, now there are more.

Australia has long been a safe haven for people around the world, a chance for people to bring up their families in safety, to work hard and to build a prosperous life. And that's no more so than for the Jewish community. But tragically, it feels like this is changing. In the words of one of my friends: 'Australia is scary, which is awful because it's one of the best places in the world to be Jewish.'

We can have different views on pathways to peace in the Middle East, and we can all mourn the devastating loss of life of civilians in this conflict, but there is absolutely no place for anti-Semitism. A country's multicultural success is founded on the values of respect for all Australians, regardless of ethnic or religious origin. It has never been more important to stand up for those values, and that's why combating anti-Semitism at universities is one of my priorities.

Prior to the Hamas attacks, the Australian Jewish University Experience Survey was released. It found that almost two-thirds of Jewish students reported anti-Semitic incidents at universities, and more than 50 per cent had hidden their Jewish identity. These incidents have gotten worse since 7 October. In the survey of Jewish students that I recently conducted, nearly 200 young people told me about their experiences. They told me about the rise of anti-Semitic social media posts, about Nazi symbols being graffitied on buildings, about disregard for Jewish grieving after 7 October. A young man told me about having food thrown at him, being followed around and being verbally abused for wearing a kippah on campus.

It is well overdue that we combat anti-Semitism at universities and, along with the members for Berowra and Macnamara, my fellow co-chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, we have been doing just that. Earlier last year, the Friends of IHRA wrote to Australian universities and asked them to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to help them better identify and deal with anti-Semitism. I'm delighted that five universities have already done this, and I want more to do so.

The survey also highlighted the specific issues at universities attended by students in my communities, so I'm arranging meetings with the vice chancellors of those universities in the coming weeks to urge them to take stronger action on anti-Semitism. We must go beyond individual universities, though, to systemic reform, and that is why we've presented to the cross-jurisdictional working group on university governance.