Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of this private senator's bill, the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2), and I congratulate my dear friend and colleague Julian Leeser MP for his role in relation to advocating for this and also, of course, Senator Sarah Henderson, who has been at the forefront of this debate. I'll make a number of points in relation to my contribution.

What I want to do at the start is respond to the point which has been made by some members who've spoken against this bill. They ask: why have an inquiry that looks just at the rise of antisemitism in our universities and at how universities have managed that issue? I say this to you: quite simply, our Australian Jewish community is asking us, the Australian parliament, to convene this inquiry. When any part of our community—our society—exhorts us to establish an inquiry into issues relating to their victimisation and to the intimidation and harassment of that group and looks to us, the Australian Senate, to lead the way and to set up a judicial inquiry with appropriate powers and appropriate impartiality to look into an issue that is of particular concern to them, I think we have a moral obligation to reflect very, very carefully on that request, wherever it comes from.

I want to quote from the representatives of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which is the federal representative body of the Jewish community in Australia. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry is the peak body. This is what they've said in relation to this private senator's bill:

A judicial inquiry, as originally called for in May by Mr Leeser, would allow Jewish students and staff to give evidence in a closed hearing, without having to fear reprisals from the fanatical fringe of anti-Israel or Jew-hating students, or victimisation from anti-Israel and antisemitic faculty members. There would be no opportunity for political grandstanding by any party, and the sole focus would be on getting to the truth.

I'll just focus on some elements of that statement made by our Jewish community in calling for this inquiry, calling for this bill to be passed. There is a fear that, if Jewish students and staff are not provided the opportunity to give evidence in a closed hearing, they will be subject to reprisals and further intimidation. This is very sobering. I say to those opposite: you should carefully consider your position before you vote against this private member's bill, because the Australian Jewish community is calling for this judicial inquiry into antisemitism on our campuses and how our universities are managing this issue. That's the first point.

The second point I would like to make is that, on the same day that Julian Lesser MP announced his intention to bring forward his bill, I attended my old university, the University of Queensland, at the invitation of the organisers of Camp Shalom to engage in a silent protest with them in response to the antisemitism they were seeing on my own university campus. I participated in that night-time silent protest. We went silently to the building of the office of the vice-chancellor and held up signs that simply said, 'Keep us safe.' That's all the Jewish students and academics were seeking: a commitment from the university to keep them safe. Even in the course of us engaging in that silent protest, there was vile abuse directed at the students and the faculty members participating. Even in the course of that silent procession, there was vile abuse. I commend all the participants in that silent protest for their discipline in terms of ensuring that they didn't do anything to respond to that vile abuse. There was dignity in that silence.

I subsequently wrote to the vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland, Professor Deborah Terry, and told her about what I had witnessed on my university campus. I also conveyed to her the fact that Camp Shalom, the Jewish camp on the University of Queensland, was subject to vile acts of intimidation that very night after I left. I read a heart-rending email from a student at that university who was in the camp with his two-year-old son about the impact of that on his two-year-old son and how heartbreaking it was for him. That was on my university campus. I also referred to the fact that there'd been a terrorist flag flown on the university campus, the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has been declared a terrorist organisation by a number of our closest allies. They're responsible for aircraft hijacking, kidnappings, assassination and murder—absolutely despicable. A terrorist flag was flown on my university campus. There was also the incident relating to intimidation of a UQ academic where a protester went into their office and urinated in their office and called on them to resign. We have seen it all—swearing, flag stealing and sign tearing. We've seen all of it.

Then what did the University of Queensland do? It entered into an agreement. It gave a commitment to the protesters who are in the other encampment. It issued a statement of commitment dated 1 June 2024 to those other students. In that commitment that goes for three pages—I have it here—it doesn't even mention antisemitism. They couldn't bring themselves to even mention antisemitism. That's my university. In the context of this debate, they couldn't bring themselves to even mention antisemitism. It's absolutely disgraceful.

This is what Camp Shalom member and liaison for the Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism, Yoni Nazarathy, said. These are the words of a Jewish academic at my university:

… seems like a commitment for keeping the door open to more harassment, vilification, hate speech, and anti-Semitism on campus. The university has had a very slack response to a series of hate and vandalism events on campus during the past month.

With this, the statement negotiated with the anti-Israel camp has no explicit mention of anti-Semitism—

extraordinary—

and opens the door for a series of more demands from anti-Zionist protesters.

As such, the contributors to Camp Shalom have agreed to physically set up the camp on campus during the graduation days, July 8 to 12, in protest.

Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies President Jason Steinberg said the university's decision to acquiesce to the protesters was absolutely abhorrent. He said:

What they've done is opened the door for anti-Israel, anti- Semitic activists to change the policies of the university … which was already an unsafe place for Jewish people; now it's an even more unsafe place.

Following that, alumni of the University of Queensland have written an open letter to the Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Mr Peter Varghese, and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Terry. The letter says:

Whatever anyone's view about the current war between Israel and Hamas terrorists, there is no excuse for bringing the hatred of that war into Queensland. That's what the anti-Israel supporters on your campus are doing in Queensland—they are directly attacking Jewish staff and students through their words, graffiti, posters and violent acts.

One of the signatories to that letter—and I commend him for it—is previous Chief Justice and Governor of Queensland, Paul de Jersey, an outstanding Queenslander. He has raised this issue as a former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and as former Governor of Queensland. This is an issue of grave, grave concern to the Jewish community in Queensland and to the Jewish staff and academics at the University of Queensland.

I call upon the Labor party to reconsider its position if for no other reason than because the Jewish community of Australia is calling for this bill to be passed. How can you stand in the way of a bill calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on our university campuses and the management of that policy? How can you stand in the way of that inquiry when the Australian Jewish community is united in calling for it?

I commend the mover of the bill, and I certainly look forward to supporting it.