This week, Angus Taylor launched the Coalition’s first wave of its “Australian values” migration plan, and in doing so chose to invoke the antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach last December as justification for their actions.
That framing is not just wrong, it is fundamentally dishonest.
Because the Bondi attack had nothing to do with immigration. At all. Full stop.
Federal police have been clear that the alleged perpetrators, Sajid Akram, 50, a permanent resident of over 20 years who came to this country as a very young man on a student visa under a Coalition government, and his Australian born Australian citizen son Naveed Akram, 24, likely acted alone and were not part of any broader terrorist network. This was the action of Australians.
Sajid was killed in a shootout with police on 14 December, and Naveed now faces 15 counts of murder and a charge of committing a terrorist act, and it is through the prosecution of this Australian – not a migrant of any variety – that we will learn why they committed this atrocious act of hate.
The Chanukah Massacre was a horrific, targeted act of antisemitic violence, but it was not a failure of migration policy. At all.
Anyone claiming it was is just flat out lying. Hanson, Taylor, anyone. Just f*!?ing lying.
And yet, every time that point is made, it is brushed aside, ignored, or deliberately sidestepped because it does not fit the narrative being constructed. Take for example James Paterson’s appearance on ABC’s 730 to stump for the policy – the indisputable fact that the Chanukah Massacre was committed by Australians was put to him, and he doesn’t even blink before responding with the lie. Didn’t hesitate in posting the video to his own YouTube channel too.
The idea immigration is somehow at the heart of the hate problem our country is drowning with, and that tightening migration settings is the appropriate response, is not just a stretch, it is a alternate truth fabrication that even Trump would struggle to deliver.
The policy itself makes that contradiction impossible to ignore. At its centre is a proposal to legislate the “Australian values” statement into the migration system, built around ideas like a fair go, mutual respect, tolerance, compassion for those in need, and equality of opportunity. Those are values most Australians would recognise and support. But they are inexplicably being used to justify a framework that is explicitly about exclusion, about narrowing access, and about drawing harder lines around who belongs.
You cannot mandate tolerance while designing discrimination. The policy collapses under the weight of its own logic.
Without getting into how incredibly damaging this approach would be to our rural communities that are so heavily dependent on immigration for everything from farm workers to doctors, can we be honest that this “policy” is just verbal diarrhoea BS that contradicts itself at every turn?
What takes this “announcement” from contradictory mess to offensive and damaging is the way the Bondi Beach massacre is being used to sell it.
An antisemitic attack is being repurposed to justify measures that would deny refuge and security to vulnerable people, and plenty of other decent people wanting to move for all kinds of reasons, on criteria they have no control over. Really?
If policies like this had existed in the 1930s and 40s, how many Jews fleeing the Holocaust would have been turned away at the border, having failed a “values” test or been deemed too risky, too different, too inconvenient? They certainly would have failed the English test and I’m pretty sure Nazi Germany would not fit the bizarre “liberal democracy” proposed criterion.
Jews were, of course, turned away from many ports of refuge during the Holocaust – it’s why Israel exists. Because of people like Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson who aren’t intellectually capable of engaging in nuanced policy debate and only have one trick in their bag, resorting to baseless fear mongering to get cheap votes.
As a seventh generation Australian Jew who knew people killed and injured on December 14, I would really like politicians of all stripes to stop using our pain to justify policies that have nothing to do with what happened. There is nothing more dehumanising, more antisemitic, than taking Jewish grief and turning it into a political tool, particularly when it is being used to support an agenda that entrenches division and suspicion.
Other than pulling the trigger yourself, there is absolutely nothing more antisemitic a person can do than use the targeted massacre of Jews as a justification to deliver the Neo-Nazis the white supremacist policy they want, centre stage in a major party policy platform.
A migration policy built on discrimination does not make communities safer. It does not prevent attacks like the Chanukah Massacre. What it does is fuel division, legitimise suspicion, and create the conditions in which hatred can grow.
It quite literally puts my life at risk. And probably yours – there were plenty of non-Jews caught in the crossfire last December.
Don’t get me started on the fact that Taylor made this abhorrent policy speech on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day).
Whoever came up with this “strategy” needs to be fired. Everyone who supported it needs to be shown the door.
If that means we have no more Liberal Party, so be it.
The party is looking for a new Federal Director at the moment and I can only pray that they take the opportunity to put new blood into that seat and give them the power to overhaul the entire organisation. All Australians need the party to return to the essential conservative but compassionate voice it should be to provide balance and stability in our electoral system.
End rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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