Groups urge investment in dialogue

Fifteen per cent of Australians reported a negative or very negative attitude towards Jewish people in 2025, up from 13 per cent in 2024 and nine per cent in 2023, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has heard.

The figures, from the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s annual Mapping Social Cohesion study, were given in evidence by chief executive Anthea Hancocks and senior manager of social research John van Kooy.

Van Kooy said the 2023 result was not a starting point but the end of a plateau of between eight and nine per cent running from July 2020, which “began to increase starting in 2024”.

He cautioned against reading the figure as a measure of antisemitism, describing the survey’s single item on attitudes towards people of different faiths as “a necessary but not sufficient” condition for understanding the problem. He also warned against comparing percentages between groups. The overall Scanlon Index of Social Cohesion stood at 78 in 2025, against a base of 100 in 2007.

Asked about the conditions behind the figures, van Kooy pointed to declining perceptions of fairness, declining financial security, and falling levels of belonging, pride and support for diversity.