Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I want to begin by stating what I've already stated in the past: we have a problem with our Australian universities. It seems to me they're finding their own ideology these days. That's a matter of fact. They are beyond a joke.

Last year's Australian Jewish University Experience Survey found that 64 per cent of Jewish students experienced an incident of antisemitism during their time at university. Of these, 29 per cent reported that staff had participated and 70 per cent said that staff were present but not involved. In other words, staff just ignored what was going on. They turned their backs and didn't have the courage to deal with it. This is where our Australian universities are today. This is where they're at. Sixty-one per cent of those students said that they didn't make a complaint because they didn't think it would make a difference. Nearly half of them said they didn't make a complaint because their university wouldn't take it seriously.

I've spoken to Jewish academics and students who have told me they feel intimidated and afraid. A student has told me that she tries to hide the fact that she is Jewish and that she feels afraid every time she must walk past one of the pro-Palestinian encampments. In March this year, two Israeli academics who the University of Sydney had invited to speak on campus had to be locked in a room, with anti-Israel activists screaming at them for more than an hour while the university security people were instructed to stand by and do nothing. Also in March, Macquarie University academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said that Zionists had no right to cultural safety, and she helped to spread a leak of the private details of hundreds of Jewish artists. In late April, she and activist group Parents for Palestine organised a kids' excursion where primary school aged children led each other in chants, including 'intifada' and 'Israel is a terrorist state'.