Statement on the Antisemitic Presentation at QUT
For 16 months, I have repeatedly called attention to the scourge of antisemitism and extremism, spreading from the dark recesses of the internet into the public square, and infecting our communities and campuses.
This week, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, antisemitism has found a new host in, of all places, an ‘anti-racism symposium’ at the Queensland University of Technology – my alma mater.
Here, a slide was projected which described “Dutton’s Jew” as someone “hates Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims”, is anti-immigrant, and “thinks of antisemitism as the only form of racism”. The idea that a Jewish person can ‘belong’ to someone else; that Jewish people are by their nature, racist; and that all Jewish people are conservative is not only incorrect – it is utterly offensive.
The incident brings to mind the ill-fated UN Durban Review Conference on Racism, at which Iranian President Ahmadinejad, a Vice Chair of the conference’s organising committee, denounced the Holocaust, denied Israeli sovereignty, promoted heinous tropes, and declared that Zionism – the movement to protect Jews from racism – was “the complete symbol of racism”.
Public universities should be places for inquiry, invention, and ideas – not the hate and antisemitism which we have seen this week and over the past 16 months. And we must be clear: this is not just a problem for Jewish students and staff.
The Australian Union of Jewish Students said in their submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into antisemitism in Australian universities, that the growing normalisation of extremist support and rhetoric “creates a hostile environment for all students on campus and a particularly uncomfortable one for Jewish students”.
In their submission to the same inquiry, QUT claimed that “racism, cultural stereotyping, religious discrimination and other forms of discrimination are not tolerated at QUT”. It is my expectation that QUT will respond to the incident accordingly.
But the remedy to Australia’s antisemitism in crisis isn’t in the singular response of university campuses. What we need is strong and principled national leadership. Instead, we have a careless and clueless Federal Labor Government systematically campaigning against Israel and the Jewish people for its own crass political ends.
To that end, I call on:
The Federal Education Minister to withhold Federal funding from the Queensland University of Technology until it investigates this matter and acts decisively to stop the spread of antisemitism on its campus;
The Federal Labor Government to establish an independent Judicial Inquiry into Antisemitism on Australian Campuses, beyond the politics and partiality of a parliamentary inquiry; and
The Prime Minister to step up on antisemitism or stand down from office.
Enough is enough. Australians demand strong leadership on antisemitism. We’ve seen the price of unbridled antisemitism – it is violent and virulent. It looks like the pogroms, concentration camps, and mass murder of the Holocaust. It looks like the massacres of October 7, 2023. And it starts with cowardice in the face of crisis.
