Richard Marles: No place for anti-Semitism, prejudice
Anti-Semitism in Australia has reached levels not seen in his lifetime, according to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles after a Jewish school was vandalised in Melbourne.
Richard Marles
Mr Marles visited Mount Scopus Memorial College’s Gandel Campus in the city’s east after graffiti was found scrawled on its perimeter fence on Sunday.
“The levels of anti-Semitism that we have seen in the past few months are more than any that I’ve seen during my lifetime,” he told reporters at the school on Monday.
“The sorts of words that we saw written on the walls of this school have no place in our society and it is critically important that at this moment, the nation stands up against this anti-Semitism.
“There is no place for Islamophobia either and there is no place for prejudice against communities in this country.”
The school’s principal, Dan Sztrajt, said the community was hurting.
“What happened outside the front gate is a product of uncheck racism, unchecked anti-Semitism directed at this community,” he said.
This incident follows other anti-Semitic and Islamophobic occurrences that have been inflamed by violence in the Middle East.
On October 7, the designated terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1200 people and taking more than 200 hostages, according to Tel Aviv.
In response, Israel has launched a bombing campaign and counter-offensive in Gaza that, according to the local health ministry, has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, injured more than 80,000 and displaced more than 1.7 million.
Nationals leader David Littleproud said he understood there were pressures in the Middle East but Australian communities needed to maintain cohesion.
“I get there’s tension in the Middle East but it should stay in the Middle East – that needs to stay there,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“What we saw on the weekend was abhorrent – I mean that sort of stuff we saw back in the 30s and 40s.”
The federal government is working on new hate speech laws that will enforce criminal penalties for serious instances of vilification based on sexuality, gender, race and religion.
It is unclear whether the opposition will support the bill as Mr Littleproud has said they would need to see the detail of the bill first.
“We’re not going to rush into this,” he said.
“We need to see the detail and make sure there’s no unintended consequences and then we get the balance right between this great thing that we have called freedom of speech and democracy.”
Report: Kat Wong/AAP
While Richard Marles feels the need to equalise the situation by putting in a mention of Islamophobia, we won’t get anywhere. Mere words that are meaningless coming from the words of our politicians. ‘There’s no place for antisemitism in this country.’ – well, yes, there is; it’s here and it’s thriving, so governments and police had better act instead of waffle on about it.