Albanese finally calls for national cabinet meeting
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally called for such a national cabinet discussion to occur, from 5pm on January 21.
More than 24 hours after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promised that a Coalition government would convene national cabinet meetings to address antisemitism – and just hours after another arson and graffiti incident in Sydney – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally convened the national cabinet on Tuesday afternoon.
The decision came after Albanese that morning attended the site where a Sydney daycare centre close to Maroubra Synagogue and Mount Sinai College was firebombed and scrawled with “F**k the Jews”.
According to a statement released after the meeting, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw gave a briefing on the latest intelligence, while the PM reaffirmed that the full resources of the AFP and federal intelligence agencies would be available to the various state police operations. The leaders also agreed to establish a national database to track antisemitic incidents to better inform and coordinate their responses.
“National cabinet agreed that Commonwealth, state and territory attorneys-general will work to ensure best practice is shared across jurisdictions,” the statement added.
The convening of the national cabinet came after calls by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), special envoy to combat antisemitism Jillian Segal, Dutton and Jewish Liberal MP Julian Leeser, among others.
ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim welcomed the announcement to establish a national database.
“We have been advocating in support of this measure to successive governments for the last five years. We would urge governments to go further so that the database tracks all hate-motivated crime, as governments have been doing in the UK, Canada and the US for more than 30 years,” he said.
“We hope that this modest but important measure is just a first step.”
But Leeser noted that in the meeting, acting Tasmanian Premier Guy Barnett had argued for tougher laws and increased penalties, including mandatory minimum sentences, to deal with antisemitism.
“Yet this was not the outcome of the National Cabinet meeting,” Leeser said. “The Prime Minister and all the Premiers and Chief Ministers need to be asked why they did not support the Barnett position and why they are not doing all they can to deal with antisemitism in our country.”
Commenting on Albanese calling the meeting, Leeser said the government was “slow to act and half-hearted at best”.
“Frankly, this psychosis in a small part of the community should not have spiralled over these past 15 months. It did so, because it wasn’t treated with the seriousness it deserved,” he said.
Leeser said the national cabinet must review sentencing, including having mandatory minimum sentences, must hear from Segal about the gaps in the law, should also look at Australia’s human rights bureaucracies and should also consider whether schools are providing adequate education on the Holocaust and Jew hatred.
He also reiterated the need for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on campus and said there “should be a zero tolerance for extremist politicians who keep inciting hatred against Australian Jews”.
Liberal NSW Senator Sharma told The AJN the meeting was “well overdue”.
“The coalition has been calling on him to convene a national cabinet for well over a year, and his own specially appointed envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, had recommended to him the same,” Sharma said. “He [Albanese] had dug in his heels and stubbornly refused to do so.”
Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Senator James Paterson noted that Dutton had written to the Prime Minister as early as November 2023 to call for a national cabinet.
Patterson said Albanese “has been dragged kicking and screaming to finally do so, 14 months later, after it has gotten completely out of control.”
On January 20 during a visit to Central Synagogue in Sydney, Dutton posed the question to Albanese: “If now is not the time for a national cabinet [on antisemitism], when is it?”
In response to Albanese’s change of heart on January 21, Dutton said that while it is better late than never, “There’s no sake having a meeting for the sake of ticking a box . . . There needs to be tangible outcomes from that meeting”.
At Central Synagogue, Dutton said that among other measures, a Coalition government would legislate minimum six-year prison terms for all acts of terrorism, minimum 12-month terms for publicly displaying Nazi symbols and salutes, and symbols associated with terror groups, and make it a publishable hate crime to urge or threaten violence towards a place of worship.
“If elected as prime minister, we [the Coalition] will provide the resources, the legislation and the will to stamp out antisemitism in our country and to send a very clear message that that is not going to be tolerated in any form whatsover – and that will happen from day one.”
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