Opposition bid to extend Royal Commission defeated

The federal opposition unsuccessfully tried to extend the term of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in parliament on Tuesday.

Member for Berowra Julian Leeser moved a motion to suspend standing orders to allow debate on a motion calling on the government to immediately extend the commission’s reporting date, and on the Prime Minister and his ministers to appear before it.

“It was defeated by Labor who gagged debate,” Leeser, a Jewish Australian, told The AJN.

Leeser, who appeared before the Royal Commission himself last month, told the House the Royal Commission was in its final two week hearing block, which he said was for many Australians the only chance the nation would have to properly expose and address antisemitism.

“But it is a Royal Commission that finishes in a matter of days, and as it stands, it is a Royal Commission with unfinished business,” he said.

His motion noted that the government had initially opposed the commission but relented after public pressure, and that it had determined both the terms of reference and the timetable within which the commission must complete its work. That timetable, the motion said, had imposed severe constraints on the commission’s capacity to investigate the causes, perpetrators and enablers of antisemitism.

The motion also expressed concern that the commission was not set up to deal adequately with those who mask antisemitism as antizionism.

Leeser said the commission had three tasks. On the first, allowing stories of the rise in antisemitism to be heard, he said it had done well. On the second, making recommendations for law and policy reform, he said the final report would have to be awaited.

“The third task is to hold individuals to account,” Leeser said. “And this critical third task is where the Commission has more work to do.”

He contrasted the commission with the child abuse royal commission, where he said bishops and religious leaders long retired were rightfully brought out of nursing homes to account for their conduct.

Leeser said that if leaders and decision-makers were not held to account, antisemitism in Australian institutions would continue, and the message to those never asked to answer for their decisions would be that they were not responsible and that there was no consequence for a failure to lead.

He cited former Federal Court judge and royal commissioner Ron Sackville, who said days earlier that one reason the commission exists, and has such formidable powers, is to “vindicate the experiences of the targets of vile antisemitism” and to hold at least some perpetrators accountable.

“The powers of a Royal Commission exist for a reason. They should be used,” Leeser said.

He said the list of witnesses who had not appeared was long, and identified five categories: the arts and cultural sector, universities, protest organisers, the Australian Human Rights Commission, and prominent Australians who had provided moral leadership.

On the arts, Leeser asked why Creative Australia chair Wesley Enoch and chief executive Adrian Collette had not been asked about grant decisions. On universities, he asked why the commission had not heard from all the vice-chancellors in positions of power at the time, naming former ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell and former University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell, nor from the National Tertiary Education Union or student body presidents.

He said protest organisers had not been put on the stand, and that the Human Rights Commission had not been asked in any serious way to account for its failure to stand up for Australian Jews.

Leeser also named Nova Peris, Mike Kelly and Josh Frydenberg among prominent Australians whose voices he said deserved to be heard.

Addressing the ministers for home affairs and the arts, education, the attorney-general, the foreign minister and the Prime Minister, Leeser called on them to front the commission and explain their decisions in the two years leading up to Bondi.

“Fifteen people were murdered on Bondi Beach,” he said. “Their memory demands that we get this right.”