Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Jewish community in Australia has made a strong and vibrant contribution to what makes our country a wonderful country, whether that be as early settlers or the achievements of people like Sir John Monash, Sir Zelman Cowen or Sir Isaac Isaacs. So senators and members should be alarmed when the Australian Union of Jewish Students finds it necessary to come to our national parliament to talk about the terrible and unacceptable experiences of Jewish students on university campuses across Australia. I joined with my coalition colleague Julian Leeser and with other senators from this place—Senator Catryna Bilyk, Senator Glenn Sterle and others—in hearing firsthand the experiences of Jewish students on our university campuses. They are captured in this report, the Jewish university experience survey of July 2023.

At the very beginning, the first paragraph says:

Jewish students report frequent encounters with antisemitic behaviour while attending university in Australia.

That is not acceptable. In speaking to some of those who made the presentation, we learned that the situation is getting worse and not better. It's a remarkable revelation for a vibrant, prosperous and free country like Australia, to think that a group of students on university campuses should have to live in the fear of terrible attitudes that might trivialise the Holocaust and might be anti-Semitic in their nature. In a free and vibrant country like ours it's beholden on all of us, every group of us and every multicultural community, to stand up against anti-Semitism. (Time expired)