Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some supportive comments in relation to Senator Henderson's private senator's bill. It concerns me that one of the consequences of us living through a period where the country has a low level of ambition and has seen a failure on addressing division in our own community, is that minority groups have been treated unfairly.

This has been a very difficult time to be a Jewish Australian. Since October 7 it would have been one of the most difficult minority groups of which to be a member. That is a great shame for our country because the mark of a good society is how it treats minority interests.

We are all Australian and we are all able to take pride in our country, but the mark of how we treat minorities is so terribly important. It was with great shame and embarrassment that after the October 7 attacks on Israel—the greatest loss of life amongst Jewish people since the Holocaust—that we saw the scenes of celebration in Sydney at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Fancy that, celebrating the deaths of people, of our fellow humans. That was a real low point. There has been, I have to say, regrettably, a huge spurt of antisemitism throughout our community since October 7. It is undeniable that the threats against Jewish people for the crime of being a Jew have not been properly investigated and subjected to enforcement. I'm very disappointed that the state criminal code in my own state of New South Wales has not been enforced to protect people who have been vilified and threatened just for being Jewish. This is a great shame. Right now, the lesson from history is: don't think it will end with the Jews. It will spread and metastasise, and this is a huge failure of leadership and of law enforcement to be specific about it.

This bill, of course, deals with a judicial inquiry into antisemitism in our university campuses, and we know this has been a major problem for students, academics, teachers and staff at universities. It has been well documented that the University of Sydney completely capitulated to the demands of the activists on campus and has subjected the university's governance and investment arrangements to activists, who can pore over the internal affairs of the university.

This is another example of Israel being treated very differently to other countries around the world. We hear a lot from the crossbench, particularly in this place, about Israel, but we don't hear a lot about Russia and other countries. The reality is that there is a strong equivalence between what is happening in Ukraine and what has happened in Israel. We hear a lot about how the war is going in Israel, and everyone in this place feels for our fellow humans and the loss of life, but we also fear and feel for the people who are living through a similar conflict about borders and security in Ukraine.

The attempts to change Australia's foreign policy, I think, are obvious to everyone. Australia is part of the liberal democratic alliance, and it is very important that we maintain fidelity to that alliance, because if we give up on the security of one of our partners then how can we expect our partners to support us? That is a very important point for us all to reflect upon. If Australia that had been attacked in the way that Israel has been, would we honestly expect that our government would take no action to defend the lives of Australians? I think the answer to that question is no.

This bill would establish a process where a judicial inquiry would be able to get to the bottom of what has happened at the universities. The universities have been in the main, I would say, indolent and weak. I call out the University of Sydney for particular attention here, because their capitulation to these activists sets a very worrying precedent.

As I said at the start of my remarks, we have always been a country which has protected minority rights and interests. In relation to Jewish Australians, after the Second World War Australia went out of its way to ensure that Jewish people who had fled the Holocaust and Nazi Germany could be resettled in our country. These people, in the main, have gone on to make an outsized contribution to our country. It is very important that, in protecting those minority interests, we set and maintain a standard that would apply to all Australians, so I say to all my colleagues here in the Senate: we need to tread very carefully here because, if we set a standard whereby one group or one minority interest is not worth preserving and protecting, then what message are we sending to everyone else?

I think it is absolutely disgraceful that it has had to come to the point where the Senate is effectively considering stepping into the shoes of the universities, who have failed to protect Jewish students and teachers. It has been a very hard time to be a Jewish Australian, and I think that is a great shame for us all, particularly given the history of this country, as I say, in resettling Jewish people after the Second World War, but also given our outsized role in establishing the State of Israel after the Second World War and the role that 'Doc' Evatt and other people in the labour movement played in making sure that that happened.

I have to say that I think that if Bob Hawke were still with us we would have been in a much stronger position to be able to repel some of these terrible things that have happened. Leadership is about calling out poor behaviour and ensuring that it is not repeated. I think we've now had eight or nine months of appalling behaviour happening in our community and attempts to change our foreign policy for the worse. This has been allowed to run and run. Leadership is about calling out poor behaviour, correcting it and then endeavouring to bring us all together. There is far too much division in Australia and too little ambition.