Walking between two different Australias

This week I walked between two Australias.

In one, a visiting President addressed a Jewish community still raw from trauma, still grieving, still watchful. The room was full but not fevered. It carried the weight of history rather than the heat of rage. Elderly Holocaust survivors sat beside teenagers in school blazers. There were accents from Warsaw and Baghdad and Johannesburg and Caulfield. Some people sang softly under their breath; others stood in silence, hands clasped. When applause came, it came not as frenzy but as affirmation – measured and grateful.

The flags of both Australia and Israel were flown.

That detail matters. Two democracies, two imperfect states, side by side. Not as rivals. But as homes.

And we were ringed by police standing guard outside, protecting us. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder around the venue and in the streets nearby. Their presence was calm, professional, untheatrical. Inside the hall, when they were acknowledged, we cheered them. As we entered and left, I heard it again and again: “Thank you for protecting us.” Not whispered. Not muttered. Said clearly with eye contact and genuine feeling.

Thank you for standing between us and whatever darkness might spill into our event.

It was an almost painfully Australian moment – a minority expressing gratitude to the state for doing its job. There was something humbling about it. Jews, whose history is punctuated by states that turned on them, thanking police officers of a democratic country for safeguarding their right to gather openly as Jews. No secrecy. No fear of the knock on the door. Just thanks.

In the days prior, I attended the protest against the President’s visit.

There, the atmosphere was entirely different. Chants. Drums. Whistles. Megaphones. The crackle of adrenaline. Placards denouncing Israel as genocidal and the source of antisemitism. Slogans declaring Australia a “white supremacist colonial settler genocidal” country that must be overthrown. The language was not of reform but of indictment. Not of improvement but of eradication.

And then, slicing through the noise with cheering intensity and fury: “F#@* the police.”

Same city. Same officers.

The very police thanked inside the President’s event were denounced outside it. The same men and women standing guard to ensure safety were recast, by chant and rhythm, as agents of oppression. It was a jarring symmetry. In one space, they were public servants. In the other, enemy combatants.

Inside the President’s event, pluralism was embodied. A Jewish community declaring, without embarrassment, that we are welcome in this country. That we know we are fortunate to live here. That Australia, imperfect as it is, has given us a level of safety and belonging unknown in most of our history. We did not speak about overthrowing the state. We thanked it. We did not deny Australia’s flaws. But we recognised its decency.

At the protest, I saw something else: a politics of denunciation. Australia was framed not as a flawed democracy capable of reform, but as an irredeemable crime scene, an irredeemable structure to be violently overthrown. Israel was reduced not to a complex nation in existential war, but to a cartoon villain.

There is a significant difference between critique and contempt. Critique says: we can do better. Contempt says: you deserve to be destroyed.

Critique operates within a shared civic space. It argues, persuades, contests. Contempt seeks moral purification. It divides the world into the righteous and the damned. It allows no nuance because nuance is weakness. It offers no compromise because compromise is betrayal.

And here lies the irony. The community so routinely accused of dual loyalty stood and sang the Australian national anthem. We applauded Australian law enforcement. We expressed gratitude to Australian institutions. The demonstrators who claim to speak in the language of justice chanted obscenities at the nation and the very officers protecting their right to protest.

Inside, the speeches spoke of survival, democracy and peace. They spoke of hope. Outside, the rhetoric was stripped of complexity. It was about eradication, denigration, and the intoxicating thrill of moral absolutism.

Two Australias.

One says: we are fortunate to be here. The other says: this place is rotten to its core. One recognises the fragility of liberal democracy and clings to it carefully, even gratefully. The other treats liberal democracy as tyranny and therefore unworthy of peace.

This divide is not ultimately about a visiting President. It is not even, at its deepest level, about Israel. It is about something more fundamental: whether Australia is a project to be improved or a structure to be overthrown. Whether our institutions, though flawed, deserve reform – or whether they deserve ruin.

I am not naïve. Democracies can fail. States can betray their principles. History is littered with warnings. But I know this: a politics that begins with gratitude is more likely to preserve freedom than a politics that begins with contempt.

This week I saw both visions standing only streets apart. Only one of them looked like it loved this country.

Adam Slonim is an ALP Life Member, spokesperson for Jewish Labor, a podcaster and businessman.