Southwick critical about Royal Commission silence

Caulfield MP David Southwick has criticised the Royal Commission on Antisemitism for failing to call him as a witness, saying his office wrote to the commission repeatedly and lodged a submission without receiving an explanation.

“We’re very disappointed at the fact that we have not been called and didn’t even really hear back as to why,” the Victorian MP told The AJN.

He said he was also disappointed that Goldstein Liberal MP Tim Wilson and former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg have not been called, describing it as troubling that people willing to bear witness are being passed over.

Southwick said his office had absorbed much of the community’s response to antisemitic incidents since October 7, work he estimated took up “the best part of 70 per cent” of his job.

His office had been “ground zero for many of our community to be able to respond, to provide support”, he said, and had heard accounts directly from people who experienced antisemitism before those cases were taken to police and government.

“There would be lots of accounts of individuals that have come to us that would never hit the Royal Commission,” he said.

He pointed to the firebombing of the Adass Israel Congregation, recalling that he had already checked his bags in for a flight to Sydney when news broke.

“I pulled the bags off the plane, cancelled my flight, got down to the Adass where the firebombing took place,” he said, describing a day spent helping remove Torah scrolls and supporting congregants.

He also cited billboards defaced on the anniversary of October 7, which fell on a Jewish high holiday “when the peak community organisations were not available or not working”.

Southwick said it was “very strange” the commission had not approached a member of parliament with “probably one of the largest, if not the largest, Jewish electorates in Australia”.

Had he been called, he said he would have argued for “more leadership and more consequences”, and for stronger police powers against those who “deliberately seek to intimidate others”. He would also have pressed for a permit system for protest marches and far greater investment in early years education.

“If youth are targeting other youth, then what are we doing to educate those youth? Because that’s coming from somewhere,” he said.

He said an Israeli flag he displayed in his window after October 7, alongside an Australian flag, was still being used against him online more than a year after it came down, with critics labelling him a “Zionist pig” and questioning whether his allegiance was “to Israel or to Victoria”.

Southwick said he remained a supporter of the commission, describing its lasting value as testimony “that will live forever, regardless of what those outcomes are”.