Much has already been written and said about the Australian Government’s proposed plan to combat antisemitism. The issue has sparked debate across politics, academia, and civil society. While I welcome any serious effort to address hate, I feel compelled to add my own thoughts – not to diminish the importance of tackling antisemitism, but to reflect on what this plan says about the broader way we, as a nation, respond to racism and injustice.
* * * * *
The Albanese government’s plan to combat antisemitism in Australia – led by Special Envoy Jillian Segal – arrives with strong words, heavy penalties, and an urgent moral tone. On the surface, it appears righteous: a nation taking a stand against hate. But I can’t help but feel that behind this plan lies a troubling inconsistency – one that reveals more about political priorities than about principled leadership.
Yes, antisemitism is real, it is vile, and it must be confronted. But so too are Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate, anti-Middle Eastern bigotry, and the centuries-deep racism directed at First Nations people. Yet these don’t seem to stir the same moral panic in Canberra.
Where is the envoy for anti-Middle Eastern racism? Where is the national plan to combat the relentless dehumanisation of Indigenous Australians in the media, the streets, and the justice system? Where is the legislation to protect Muslim women from harassment on public transport, or Palestinians from being silenced in university campuses?
The uncomfortable truth is this: the government’s response to racism appears selective. It prioritises one form of hate while remaining conspicuously silent on others. And in doing so, it sends a clear message – not all suffering is treated equally.
Central to the controversy is the government’s embrace of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which includes examples that blur the line between antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli state. Human rights groups have rightly warned that this could be used to silence political speech – particularly pro-Palestinian voices – in universities, media, and public discourse. It risks criminalising dissent, not just hate.
I’ve witnessed racism all my life; to First Nations people, Middle Eastern people, and Asian people. I’ve heard the slurs. I’ve watched the smirks. But it’s never been deemed urgent. No envoy ever called a press conference on behalf of those victims.
And now, I watch as the government races to legislate against one form of vilification while leaving others to languish in the “too hard” basket – or worse, treating them as politically inconvenient.
This is not about comparing wounds. It’s about consistency. Either we are against hate, or we are not. Either we protect freedom of expression, or we do not. Either we stand with all communities, or we stand with none.
To be clear: antisemitism is not a niche issue. It is serious. It is dangerous. But it cannot be addressed by trampling over free speech or by privileging one community’s suffering above others. That’s not justice – it’s hierarchical empathy, and it deepens the very divisions we’re meant to heal.
If Australia wants to be a leader in combating hate, then let it begin with universal principles, not political favourites. Let it defend the rights of Jewish Australians and Palestinians, Muslims and First Nations people, African Australians and Asian Australians.
Until then, this isn’t a national plan to end racism: It’s a national plan to manage perception – and to leave others standing in the margins, asking once again: “Why doesn’t our pain matter too?”
Also by Roswell:
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I’m against all anti-isms, and wish to endorse pro- attitudes. One can be vocal or silent. In Australia, let us all explain, amplify or declare, while being prepared to listen, consider, accept. Ms. Segal is extreme, unfair, unacceptable. This government, if it actually does wish to resolve an issue, must be full and open, balanced…(we surely have far to go and much to do.)
Zionists make me feel unsafe. What is the Albanese government doing about that to make me feel safer?
If this “exercise” is intended to remove hatred, then choosing Jillian Segal has to be absurd.
Just watching her attempting to diminish any form of criticism for her cult highlighted her absence for tolerance. She was there to smite all and sundry.
If the Jewsish community feels misunderstood then join the club, and get onto the waiting list for some mental repair.
Being bonkers is quite widespread, and their cult is not that special.
The decision to appoint Segal was simply stupid. Unless of course it was a deliberate strategy: appoint a person with known biases expecting a completely OTT report which can be regretfully shelved and claim to have done the necessary. Or is that too cynical?
Can this report be renamed to clearly show it is only about Jewish people, and not about all Semitic people such as Arabs and Palestinians.
Ms Segal herself being Jewish does raise the question of bias
On 30 September 2024, the Australian Government announced the appointment of Mr Aftab Malik as Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia in Australia. This followed the appointment of Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
As Special Envoy, Mr Malik will listen to and engage with Muslim Australians, the wider Australian community and all levels of government on the most effective way to combat the growing problem of Islamophobia. Mr Malik has been appointed for a 3-year term from 14 October 2024 and like the Special Envoy on Antisemitism will report back to the Australian government.
While Mr Malik is tasked with advising government on ways to combat Islamophobia, his office – the Office of the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia (OSECI) – and his statements, are independent of government.
Mr Malik is recognised as a global expert on Muslim affairs by the UN Alliance of Civilisations, and has spent almost a decade working in the New South Wales Premier’s Department, promoting social cohesion and countering hate and extremism.
His report will be equally as interesting as that of Ms Segal.
The question for Australia is, just how many special envoys do we need ?
Couldn’t we just adopt a “treat others as you would have yourself treated” mentality? Or is that Judao-Christian and there fore unacceptable to just about everyone 😛
Seriously, the anti-semitic push right now is disingenuous considering the atrocities being perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza, where’s the outrage !!
Keitha
It has been interesting during NAIDOC week to hear various commentators discussing the imperial colonialism that saw traditional lands appropriated in Australia for European settlement, frequently with bloody frontier skirmishes as the original inhabitants, the aborigines, were pushed back by a superior force.
Precisely the same thing is currently happening in Gaza and on the West Bank albeit with massive use of modern weaponry and technology to effect genocide on the Palestinian people on a vast scale. But the objective remains the same – to seize the land for the use of others with the often flimsy rationale that the seizure was authorised by a superior entity: a sky-fairy.
But when the outrage is expressed by academics or just ordinary people they are silenced and deemed to be racists (antisemitic).
Lyndal, your remark knocks over the complicated structure of propaganda in one hit.the collapses in one hit.
I’ve been shouted at in the streets, had racists abuse hurled at me, racist threats, rubbish thrown from passing cars at me. I am white, but out and about with my granddaughter, a child who is ethnically Chinese, or in earlier years with my 2 nephews (both less than 5 yo at the time) who are also Asian.
Australia is and always has been a racist country. Only Zionists have the money and influence to be taken seriously in their complaints, even when they are committing genocide as they complain. And what is now being proposed by Segal is outright repression and total censorship. It is aimed at shutting down any debate, and exposure, of the Israeli genocide.
xstians were terrible in the hitler era. They have been ashamed ever since.
ps funny terry oops Cuckoo that palestinians get a capital but Aborigines don’t.
Oh dear ….. What an unfortunate appointment. Gillian Segal & husband are reported as donating $50,000 to Advance Australia, the FRWNJ ”club” of racists who hate everybody who has a body tan in winter. Moreover,
.
1. Judaism IS NOT ZION@ZISM as currently practiced by the ZION@ZI Israeli Knesset and their AMORAL ZION@ZI IDF imposing GENCIDE IN GAZA for the profit of the armaments industry of their partner in crime, the USA (Universal Surveillance Always).
.
2. ZION@ZISM is an imperialist ideology from about 1891 in response to European anti-Jewish feeling. It asserts the easily disputable right to a land area owned for generations by Indigenous Palestinians with the current ZION@ZI policies of displacing & dispossessing surviving Indigenous Palestinians for a post-war building boom when carpet-baggers create the GAZA Gold Coast benefiting among others, Trumpery entities.
ZION@ZIS are the enemy, not followers of Judaism. Perhaps the askenazi now located in Palestine should return to their European birth countries.
Uhm ….. Why is there such a fuss about ZION@ZIs whingeing??? Australian voters rejected equality for Aborigines who have a 65,000 year claim to the Australian land mass, considerably more than the piddling claims by the ZION@ZIS to the dubious political boundaries of ”Israel”.
What was that?? Aborigines are not important and immigrant ZION@ZI have more claim to Australia because back in the 1930s they sent a lone missionary to SW Tasmania to determine whether that wild country was suitable for ZION@ZI settlement?? Meanwhile, Australian Aborigines wait for the High Court of Australia to follow legal precedent and return the land to the rightful owners who were displaced & dispossessed by English & European colonist settlers since 1788.
Where is the authority that represents the Australian peoples fears and anxieties that the Australian political class is leading Australia’s into WW3 and nuclear Armageddon?
Where is the authority that represents the fears and anxieties that Australia like the US has been infiltrated by traitorous paid Zionist Israeli goose stepping foot soldiers masquerading as patriotic Australian politicians who act in the best interests of a racist rogue foreign terrorist regime?
Interesting discussion on Insiders today.
The Israeli/Zionist faction will not agree to a one state solution where Palestinian Arabs and Israelis adopt a single democratic state blending Gaza with Israel and eliminating all barriers and checkpoints AND the Israeli/Zionist faction will not accept a two-state solution.
Doesn’t leave much wriggle room, does it ?
Well said, everyone.
After Rome I and Rome II failed in the Levant to gain commercial / strategic control, the Jews of Palestine where offered ‘safe haven’ in Europe, whilst the ‘West’ sought to obliterate it and the fertile crescent to facilitate a ‘gateway’ for themselves to and from the East.
The Europeans, bar none, then proceeded to oppress, subjugate, and murder the Jews wholesale in the European ‘safe haven’.
Of course, before that, in the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ (later principally Germany) the term ‘antisemitism’ was coined both to distinguish religiosity, and more deeply to distinguish the ‘superiority’ of the ‘Aryan’ race over the ‘Semites’. By the mid-late 1800s, in the ‘West’ it became common political and social parlance regarding the Jews in their (unsafe) haven of Europe & later America – the Ashkenazi. Politics and arcane law, as ever, leveraged and raged with matters, cultural, religious, civilized/uncivilized, nativist, colonialist and superior/inferior – all devices used by kings and bishops as propaganda for conquest.
Arabs, Ethiopians, Assyrians (also ‘semites’) and others such as Persians and Muslims were of little consequence at the time – the arrogant idiot kings and bishops of the ‘West’ considered they’d earlier been brushed aside and would be again, and that they weren’t in eastern / southern / northern Europe under and irritating the political noses. Albeit they had been and continued to be a bother to some Jews’ ‘quest for their Kingdom’ ambitions. An objective ‘binary’ that would later become convenient.
The ‘West’ set about a ‘deal’ with the new political Zionists, whereby the convenient binary could be used to bring about both a successful conquest by the ‘West’ to control the ‘gateway’, and a return of the Jews (Ashkenazi) to an enthno-religious ‘Holy Land’ – ultimately, what would become Israel in Palestine. From this time, in the ‘binary deal’, the term ‘antisemitism’ became a political device of conquest and obliteration.
Through WWI the ‘binary deal’ was pressed into the ‘West’ operations in the Levant and Fertile Crescent by imperialist Britain, France and Russia, by the ‘Mandate’, the Balfour Agreement, and the Sykes Picot Agreement (where Russia was betrayed – again). The propaganda and arcane law of the kings and bishops of the ‘West’ had entrenched its objective by actions and writ, albeit at the cost of obliteration of lands and people of the whole of Europe, the ‘West’ had gained ground in the gateway.
The ‘West’ muddled on through poverty & huge costs (particularly Germany), the League of Nations, then WWII, where Nazi Germany reeked its revenge on all, and so the ‘West’ via the UN enabled the ‘binary deal’ to be fully enacted – The political Zionists (despite the Palestinians) were provided with their ‘Holy Land’ (to be duly expanded), and the ‘West’ the opportunity to control the ‘gateway’. What a ‘deal’!
The anachronistic term ‘antisemitism’ had gone full turn to become a device of a new propaganda to disguise the ‘binary deal’ for the political Zionist Ashkanazi and the brutal hegemonic aspirations of the ‘West’ (now principally the Americans) to proceed to subjugate, control and thieve from the Middle East, North Africa and Central and South Asia.
‘Antisemitism’ is now a culture-crushing linguistic padlock fashioned by hate aiming at guilt, to divert from and whitewash the hornet’s nest and bloodbath ensuing from the century-old ‘binary deal’.
An anachronism and linguistic padlock, I can never ascribe to.