Australian, Jewish history ‘long intertwined’
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reinforced his government's commitment to Israel while speaking at an Australia–Israel Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Melbourne.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reinforced his government’s commitment to Israel, telling an Australia–Israel Chamber of Commerce luncheon, “The friendship between our two nations has been a constant.”
Speaking at the Palladium at Crown last Friday, the PM stated, “Australia supports democracy in Israel, just as we support it across the world,” then added, “The mark of any true friendship is not just our willingness to stand up for each other, but also our candour. True friends want each other to be the best they can be. We continue Australia’s support for a two-state solution. Israelis and Palestinians deserve to prosper in peace behind secure and recognised borders. The government I lead will take a principled approach to these issues.
“Just as that will remain firm, so will the bonds between Australia and Israel, bonds nourished by the long and important Jewish presence in the story of modern Australia, as well as the important economic relationship that our two nations can have, that can grow and thrive in the future,” he said.
“It is a source of pride that Australia played the role it did in the founding of the modern State of Israel. Of course it was a Labor leader, Doc [Herbert] Evatt, who played such a central role in the United Nations,” he said.
With Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in attendance, Albanese made his case to the Jewish community about supporting the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, stating, “Being in Melbourne today, it’s appropriate to pay thanks to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, together with B’nai B’rith, the Ark Centre and Stand Up for supporting a Voice to Parliament.”
Reflecting that Australian and Jewish history have “long been intertwined”, the PM recounted the milestone protest over Kristallnacht outside the German embassy in December 1938, staged by Yorta Yorta Indigenous activist and trade unionist William Cooper and his Australian Aborigines’ League, “nearly a decade before the State of Israel’s establishment”.
Albanese lauded community figure Mark Leibler’s principled advocacy for the Voice, noting, “I was moved recently by his reflections in The Australian Jewish News. In his words, ‘The story of the stand William Cooper took on behalf of our people hit me like a bolt of lightning.'”
Continuing to quote from Leibler’s April 7 opinion piece in The AJN, the PM noted the co-chair of the Referendum Council that led to the Uluru Statement saw Indigenous Australians as “scarred by dispossession, disrespect and racism – the same weapons that have been used against the Jewish people for millennia”.
Albanese recounted another initiative of Cooper’s. “Nine decades ago in 1933 – five years before his consulate protest – he was addressing another injustice, as he began drawing up the petition that constituted the first call for something akin to a Voice to Parliament. Think about that. 1933. William Cooper was talking about a Voice to Parliament equivalent. As I say, if not now, when are we going to get this done? … The Uluru Statement from the Heart does speak to our hearts.”
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