Australia
In the federal election on 2 March, the Australian Labor Party (ALP)
government was defeated by the Liberal Party-National Party coalition (the
Coalition) under the leadership of John Howard. The Coalition gained a large
majority in the house of representatives but failed to secure a majority
in the senate. When the Coalition took control of the state government in
Queensland, the ALP was left in office in just one state, New South Wales
(NSW). The Coalition also retained power in state elections in Victoria
and Western Australia.
The Australian economy improved over the year with a rise in gross domestic
product of nearly 4 per cent. Inflation remained low, though unemployment
stayed between 8 and 9 per cent.
The murder of thirty-five people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, by a lone gunman
provoked intense debate over gun ownership. All states passed laws limiting
civilian access to automatic weapons. A number of organizations noted for
promoting antisemitic material were part of an identifiable "gun lobby"
that criticized the new laws as an attack on civil liberties (see PARTIES,
ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS).
Australian Jews have experienced little or no institutional or organized
antisemitism. Civil rights have never been restricted. This is largely due
to the presence of Jews in the country since British colonization in 1788.
Jews have figured prominently in Australian public life. One of Australia's
most prominent military figures was Jewish, as were two of Australia's governors-general
(the Australian representative of the British monarchy).
However, according to Paul Bartrop's Australia and the Holocaust,
1933-45 (1994), informal restrictions, guided by a conscious desire to minimize
the number of Jews entering the country, were placed on the number of Jewish
immigrants to Australia who were refugees from, or survivors of, Nazism.
Nevertheless, 40,000 Jewish refugees from Europe entered Australia between
1933 and 1955.
Historically, racial and ethnic tensions in Australia have centred on
conflict between established communities and more recent waves of migrants,
particularly from southern Europe and Asia. Some racial hostility exists
towards Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are known collectively
as indigenous Australians. Successive governments have followed a multi-cultural
policy that provides protection for minority groups in the areas of community
relations, social justice, access and equity.
Despite ethnic, cultural and racial diversity, levels of racist vilification
and harassment are generally low. However, racist attitudes and practices
are a feature of everyday life for indigenous Australians and they continue
to face general socio-economic disadvantage.
Tensions over racial intolerance were heightened in 1996 during the federal
election. Problems resurfaced later in the year, when various opponents
of multiculturalism and immigration sought to carve a niche for themselves
in the new political landscape created by the Coalition victory.
While the Coalition government confirmed its commitment to an ongoing process
of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, its
first budget cut funding to key indigenous organizations by 10 per cent.
The National Inquiry established to investigate the removal of indigenous
child-ren from their parents, a practice that began in 1910 and continued
until 1970, conducted hearings throughout the year. The government's commitment
to the Royal Commission was questioned when the minister for Aboriginal
affairs commented in October that Lois O'Donoghue, the former leader of
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, could not have achieved
so much if she had not been removed from her birth mother as a child and
raised in a non-indigenous home.
Under the federal Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) 583 complaints were lodged
between July 1995 and June 1996, a fall of 17.5 per cent on the previous
year. In October 1995, the Commonwealth government passed the Race Hatred
Act. The Act gave victims of racism recourse to civil sanctions. By 31 October
1996, 112 complaints had been laid under the Act, the majority being lodged
by Australians of Asian descent. Six of those complaints related to alleged
antisemitism. No new race hate laws were passed in the state legislatures
in 1996. A bill failed to pass through the South Australian parliament despite
cross-party support for the concept of race hate laws. Queensland's existing
law is currently under review.
Australia has had a reputation as a haven for refugees. Despite promising
to maintain existing programmes, the new federal government reduced the
humanitarian/refugee migrant intake from 15,000 to 10,000 in 1996. The migrant
intake for 1996-7 is 74,000, down 9,000 on the previous year. The composition
of the planned intake evidenced a shift from family reunions towards business
migrants.
A poll published in the Australian found that 71 per cent of those
surveyed felt that the level of immigration was too high. Another poll in
the Australian Financial Review found that 33 per cent of the survey
wanted immigration reduced "a lot".
During 1996, several antisemitic organizations raised both their public
profile and level of activity.
The Australian League of Rights (ALR) remained the
best organized and wealthiest racist organization operating in Australia.
During the year, it sought to extend links with mainstream organizations,
and several ALR supporters made controversial public statements (see MAINSTREAM
POLITICS). It also courted the gun lobby (see below), but by December it
had failed to extend its reach beyond its traditional, ageing membership.
The ALR's newsletters and bookshops continued to disseminate books, cassettes
and videos that deny the Holocaust and encourage hatred of Jews.
The dealings of the Melbourne-based LaRouchite Citizens' Electoral Council
(CEC), who are followers of Lyndon LaRouche (see United States of America),
were exposed in June on an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) current
affairs programme and in the Melbourne Age , and in July in a special
issue of the Australia/Israel Review . One member of the house of
representatives called for an independent judicial inquiry into the activities
of the CEC.
On several occasions during the year the CEC's newspaper, the New Citizen
, attacked and harassed prominent members of the Jewish community. The
attacks continued even after the paper had lost a court case against an
ALP branch president and leading Jewish community member (see LEGAL MATTERS).
In 1996 the CEC had seventeen full-time staff and put forward three candidates
in the December Western Australian state election. In the Western Australian
lower house seat of Wagin, it received 7 per cent of the vote.
The debate about gun control led to increased focus on paramilitary groups
and more radical gun supporters' organizations, such as the Firearms Owners'
Association of Australia and the Australian Right to Bear Arms Association.
At their most extreme, these groups called for armed resistance to government
"Nazi" tactics, which they claimed threatened rural Australia's
way of life. Some of the groups have links to the US militia (see United
States of America). Members of the pro-gun lobby denounced proposed gun
laws as totalitarian and an international anti-Christian conspiracy. They
portrayed themselves as patriots seeking to protect Australia from dictatorship.
In attacking proposed legislation, these elements trivialized the horrors
of Nazism by dubbing the prime minister "Hitler" and directly
comparing the gun laws with the anti-Jewish regulations of Hitler's Germany.
In July Ian McNiven, the vice president of the Firearm Owners' Association
of Australia, addressed a rally in Gympie (Queensland) wearing a swastika
armband and impersonating the prime minister.
Attempts were made in 1996 to form a new political organization, the Australia
First Reform Party. The party was intended to galvanize the pro-gun lobby
and disaffected right-wing and anti-immigration groups, and would have involved
Graeme Campbell (Australia First) and Pauline Hanson (Independent, see MAINSTREAM
POLITICS). However, the chances of a united group being created receded
as splits occurred between Hanson and the Sporting Shooters Association
(Australia Reform) on one hand and the ALR, Australians Against Further
Immigration (AAFI) (see MAINSTREAM POLITICS) and Campbell on the other.
The Australia First Party contested one semi-rural seat in the Western Australian
state election, winning 8.6 per cent of the primary vote there.
Several small neo-Nazi groups operated in most large cities. The groups
included Na-tional Action, the National Republican Movement, the Sydney-based
Southern Cross Hammer Skinheads, the Melbourne-based White Aryan Resistance
and the Australian National Socialist Movement.
In January, four people who were reported to be connected to National Action
were arrested by South Australian police in connection with gun-running
and drug offences. Michael Brander, the leader of National Action, stood
as an Independent in the seat of Bonython in South Australia, but only received
1,200 votes. The National Republican Movement, which is known to have distributed
white supremacist propaganda in the past, attempted to recruit school children
to fight "multicultural Nazi" teachers.
In contrast to the previous two years, 1996 was comparatively free of
antisemitism in mainstream political life. Nevertheless, the increase in
opposition to immigration and immigrants after the federal election gave
cause for concern. It has been noted by the Executive Council of Australian
Jewry (ECAJ) that incidents of antisemitism rise when racism against other
minorities increases.
Several statements and activities of federal candidates and politicians
came under question in the year: Bob Katter (National Party) was censured
by his party leader because he had labelled his detractors "little
slanty-eyed ideologues" in February; another National Party candidate,
Bob Burgess, who had in January referred to naturalizations as "de-wogging
ceremonies", failed to be elected but increased his share of the vote;
Pauline Hanson, a Liberal candidate, was disendorsed by her party two weeks
before the election because of controversial remarks about indigenous Australians
(see below). However, she stood as an independent candidate in the federal
state of Queensland and won her seat. In her election victory speech, she
claimed to have won for the "white community . . . anyone apart from
the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders".
In September, the debate about race flared again after Hanson made her maiden
parliamentary speech. Hanson claimed that Aus-tralia was in danger of being
"swamped by Asians" and opposed multiculturalism and immigration
of unskilled, non-English speaking migrants, and condemned programmes established
to help indigenous Australians.
Hanson's speech received extensive coverage in the domestic and international
media. The debate gathered momentum over the next two months without attracting
significant censure from the prime minister. Together with reports about
violence and abuse directed against Asian migrants, military personnel,
students and tourists, the perceived increase in racism in Australia threatened
the development of political and economic ties with Southeast and East Asia.
Several other political figures made pronouncements that strayed beyond
acceptable political conventions. Peter Davis, an ALR member for thirty
years who was elected mayor of Port Lincoln (South Australia) in 1995, pledged
his support for AAFI and Hanson in 1996. In an interview in the Adelaide
Advertiser in October, Davis, who is opposed to multiculturalism, argued
that children of inter-racial partners were "mongrels". At a specially
convened council meeting on 21 October, nine out of ten of his fellow councillors
resigned, disassociating themselves from him. In December elections, five
of these councillors were defeated by candidates who supported Davis.
The mayor of Coffs Harbour in NSW also used a mayoral address to attack
inter-racial marriage and advocate a return to the mono-cultural White Australia
immigration policy.
Conversely, the high-profile ALP minister for Aboriginal affairs lost his
seat to an above-average swing. The president of the ALP suggested that
the results threw doubt on Australians' commitment to racial tolerance.
Both AAFI and Reclaim Australia-Reduce Immigration (RARI) contested the
federal election. AAFI stood in twenty seats in NSW and gained an average
3.3 per cent of the vote. In Victoria, it contested thirteen seats and gained
on average 1.7 per cent. AAFI was strongest in the traditional ALP seats
of Werriwa and Banks, both in NSW, where it polled over 3,000 votes.
In the Blaxland federal by-election, held in June because of the retirement
of former prime minister Paul Keating, AAFI won 13.6 per cent and RARI gained
8.9 per cent of the primary vote. After votes were redistributed, according
to two-party preferences, RARI received 30.9 per cent.
Referring to the "Hanson phenomenon", the leader of the National
Party in the senate lamented that "otherwise rational people, community
leaders and so on, fell in with this mob-lynching mentality".
The Jewish-born mayor of Woollahra (a Sydney suburb with a large Jewish
community) was forced to apologize in February for a letter that he had
written to a Jewish barrister in 1992, in which he declared that he "wouldn't
work for Jewish clients". Under pressure from the NSW Jewish Board
of Deputies and his own council members he later stood down as mayor.
ECAJ, who maintains the only comprehensive database on antisemitic incidents
in Australia, received 275 reports of incidents of violence, intimidation
and vandalism between October 1995 and September 1996 from its local monitors.
This represented a 12 per cent increase on 1994-5.
Compared with the previous year, serious or violent incidents increased
by 26 per cent. Hate mail decreased by 9 per cent, telephone intimidation
rose by 86 per cent, and antisemitic graffiti, posters and other vandalism
rose by 10 per cent.
Attacks were made on Jewish communal property in most major cities. However,
little of the damage caused might be classified as serious. During the year
synagogues were vandalized in Queensland, Western Australia, NSW and Victoria.
In several cases, windows were smashed and graffiti daubed. In April, a
synagogue office in Perth was ransacked and the curtain covering the Ark
was damaged. Also in April, the words "Jews will die" were carved
into the door of a Sydney synagogue. In Queensland and NSW, Jewish graves
were damaged.
There were several reported cases of assault and harassment. Students at
Jewish day schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth reported verbal harassment
at school. In a few cases, damage to property or personal harassment occurred
in people's own homes, including that of a Sydney rabbi.
There was a sharp rise in the number of antisemitic phone calls recorded
by communal monitors. These included bomb threats against synagogues and
death threats against communities. Community groups and individuals received
antisemitic hate mail that included death threats, Holocaust denial and
attacks on Jews because of their alleged immoral as well as supposedly anti-Christian
and anti-white practices.
Continuing use was made of the Internet to transmit antisemitic propaganda
and hate messages. Some of these messages were directed at individuals,
others came in the form of contributions to discussion groups on religion
or politics. Australian racists took part in international discussion groups
and racist postings to local electronic discussion groups were made from
non-Australian addresses.
The debate over the author Helen Darville (aka Demidenko), which emerged
in 1995, continued to simmer. Darville received two of Australia's most
prestigious literary prizes in 1995 for her debut novel, The Hand that
Signed the Paper. The novelist, calling herself Demidenko and claiming
Ukrainian ancestry, promoted the book as a fictionalized account of the
Second World War based on the recollections of her family. It was later
discovered that the author had no Ukrainian background; her parents were
migrants from England and her name was Darville. Charges of plagiarism also
beset the author, and of particular concern was the novel's reliance on
the historical distortion that wartime murders in the Ukraine were the result
of a cycle of violence and revenge initiated by Jewish communists.
In 1996 two books were published about the controversy. Robert Manne's The
Culture of Forgetting Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust and Andrew Reimer's
Demidenko Debate were both intended as discussions of the literary
and cultural implications of the episode. However, Reimer's book was criticized
by the associate director of the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies
in Sydney as being less academic and more of a polemic, as Reimer suggested
that "more conservative elements of Australian Jewry" had inflamed
the affair to combat secularism and assimilation.
The mainstream media in Australia are not sympathetic towards antisemitism.
However, ECAJ noted an increase in material that included allegations of
the existence of a powerful "Jewish lobby" in Australia, that
denied the Holocaust, or that linked Judaism with critical opinions about
Middle Eastern politics. Instances such as these most often occurred in
letters to the publications. In November, the Australian Press Council defended
the Launceston Examiner 's refusal to publish a letter from Frederick
Toben (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL).
A small rural Victorian newspaper, the Yarrawonga Chronicle , which
has a circulation of 3,500, carried a real estate advertisement in January
with the wording "Jewish stock take" apparently referring to cheap
prices. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria later apologized to the Jewish
community.
ECAJ identified instances of antisemitism and other forms of racism that
remained unchallenged on radio phone-ins. Of particular concern was the
racist and sexist position taken by several phone-in radio hosts modelling
their rhetoric on American "shock-jocks". Occasionally their diatribes
extended to antisemitism.
One presenter on an Adelaide radio station (5DN) was reprimanded and suspended
by the station in April. He had called for the return of Hitler to deal
with an American Jewish performer whose work at the Adelaide Festival had
offended him. Sydney phone-in host Ron Casey (2GB) was forced to apologize
for offensive comments made to Jewish callers on his show. Meetings between
the local Jewish community and the radio station administration led to Casey
visiting the Sydney Jewish Museum. Also in April, Melbourne phone-in host
Neil Mitchell (3AW) said that the "Australian government" was
frightened of criticizing Israel "because the Jewish lobby in this
country is so strong".
The Canberra Times , which has a circulation of 42,500, blamed the
failure of President Clinton to resolve the crises in the Middle East in
part on "his dependence on Jewish funding of his election campaign".
It followed this editorial with an article that asserted that Clinton was
"a prisoner of the Jewish lobby". The Melbourne-based Herald
Sun (circulation 566,000) ran a story about a dinner at the prime minister's
residence attended by twenty business leaders under the title "PM woos
Big Money". The report named only the three Jewish businessmen who
were present.
There was much debate in the Australian media preceding the decision to
refuse David Irving an entry visa into the country (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL).
Several publications defended Irving's right to a voice in the country on
the grounds of free speech, while others went so far as to reproduce his
views.
A large sector of the print media serves ethnic communities in Australia.
For the most part these publications do not concern themselves with Jews;
however, during 1996 there were some instances of concern. Newspapers serving
the Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian communities all featured articles that
attacked Jews for exploiting or oppressing their readership's compatriots
in Eastern Europe. For example, Tygodnik Polski (circulation 4,000)
claimed that Jews had collaborated with Poland's enemies and stated that
five leading Nazis had been Jewish, an assertion repeated by the newspaper's
editor.
The generally moderate Arabic-language newspaper El-Telegraph published
an article in April alleging that the Jewish "death machine" was
working to "apply" The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in
murdering Lebanese citizens in Qana.
Al-Moharer Al-Australi, a pro-Iraqi and pro-Libyan publication with
a presence on the Internet, published material that attacked "the Jewish
lobby", which it alleged ran the US government.
The Australian Islamic Review published a letter in May that attributed
the Melbourne Age 's reporting of Israeli actions in Lebanon to "substantial
Zionist ownership of the media, or the media's fear of losing Zionist advertising".
Another letter warned readers of the evils of the Jews. Nida'ul Islam
published an article that claimed that Zionists dominated "the
ruling centres of most of the world capitals" through the "spheres
of economics, money and media" and called for a jihad against
"the filth of the Jews".
Several far-right publications, such as Nexus, New Dawn, Exposure, The
Strategy and Lock, Stock and Barrel , purveyed antisemitic information
through their articles and by publicizing antisemitic texts, lectures and
mail order literature.
In 1996 there was a continuing inter-faith dialogue between most religious
groups. How-ever, some sections of the Christian and Muslim religious communities
were antagonistic towards Jews and Judaism. US-style "Identity"
churches (see United States of America), in particular, expressed their
religion through antisemitism. In Australia, the Christian Identity Minis-tries,
British-Israel World Federation, Covenant Vision Ministries and the Church
of the Creator-all "Identity" churches-distributed antisemitic
material through their newsletters, bookshops and mailing lists.
"Judaism is fundamentally anti-Christian" was a common theme of
those churches that adhere to conspiracy theories. Jews were portrayed as
practising "evil" rituals that are claimed to be outlined in the
Talmud. The British-Israel World Federation maintained that the British
race was the "ten lost tribes" of Israel and that they were therefore
the "Chosen People" of God. One article in its newspaper, The
Kingdom Herald , depicted Jews as "robbers" who controlled
banking and who were full of "spiritual hatred". The author argued
that the white races needed to "halt the headlong retreat before the
modern representatives of our ancient foe".
The Covenant Vision Ministry in Sydney published a magazine, Covenant
Vision , that claimed that Jews worshipped Satan, controlled President
Clinton and aimed to enslave other peoples. The Christian Identity Ministries
in far north Queensland reproduced and distributed Holocaust-denial, US
militia and Nation of Islam literature (see United States of America).
Holocaust denial remained an important feature of antisemitism in Australia
during the year. Several organizations distributed denial literature to
Holocaust survivors, wrote letters to newspapers or called radio phone-ins
demanding a debate on the existence or extent of the Holocaust.
Holocaust denial was promulgated by the Adelaide Institute, Australian Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), the ALR, the British-Israel World Federation, White
Aryan Resistance and several very small organizations such as Australians
for Free Speech. John Bennett of the ACLU used his booklet Your Rights
to attack the "Zionist lobby" and Jewish community organizations,
and accused films about the Holocaust of inciting racial hatred against
Germans.
The Adelaide Institute, run by Frederick Toben and David Brockschmidt, continued
to produce its newsletter and Internet home page, "Australia's First
Revisionist Website", in 1996. The home page included archives of work
and interviews by Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zundel, Gemar Rudolf and David
Irving (see France, Canada, United Kingdom).
In a radio interview on ABC's local Adelaide station (5AN) in November,
Frederick Toben argued that "it appears that the gassings [of Jews
during the Holocaust] were . . . technically impossible". In his December
newsletter, Toben complained about selective grief for victims of the Second
World War: "While the holocaust [sic] memorials and museums flourish
for the alleged victims of Nazism, the German soldiers and civilians have
not been laid to rest and their memories blessed. . . ".
In November, David Irving (see United Kingdom) was refused an entry visa
to Australia at an appeal hearing, on the grounds that he failed to meet
the requirement in the Migration Act that an applicant be of good character.
He intends to launch further appeals.
In March the Melbourne CEC (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS) agreed
to settle a defamation case initiated by a prominent member of the Melbourne
Jewish community. As part of the settlement the organization must pay legal
costs and publish an apology to Michael Danby, following its 1993 publication
of a series of false allegations about Danby's activities in the Jewish
and political communities. At the time Danby was editor of the Australia/Israel
Review.
During 1996 the Australian Federal Police continued investigations into
eleven suspects alleged to have committed war crimes during the Second World
War. However, no prosecutions were brought and the director of public prosecutions
allocated no resources to the matter.
During the federal election, the Coalition government promised an A$2
million education campaign over two years to counter racism. After ten months
in office, no further plans had been announced. However, as a result of
the debate on racism in Australia, the federal parliament passed motions,
supported by all major parties, that condemned attempts by politicians to
foster racism for electoral benefit and reaffirmed the right of all Australians
to be treated with equal respect.
Mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches actively sought to counter racism
and antisemitism inside and outside their communities. The Lutheran church
issued a statement acknowledging mistreatment of Jews by Christians, the
antisemitism of Luther and Lutheran complicity in anti-Jewish propaganda
in the Second World War. The statement declared that antisemitism ran contrary
to Christianity. The Anglican church banned antisemitic and racist groups
from using its facilities.
The memoirs of a Melbourne resident, Abraham Biderman, won two major literary
awards for non-fiction. The World of My Past told of his experiences
in the Lodz ghetto and later incarceration in Nazi concentration camps.
The Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs sponsored advertisements on television
as part of a campaign against prejudice.
Australian antisemitism is influenced by various imported antisemitic
traditions. Antisemitism manifests itself in theories of local and global
conspiracies of Jewish power and influence, Holocaust denial, hostility
of Jews to Christianity and Islam, and myths of Jews as practitioners of
evil rituals, as unpatriotic and as mean and unethical.
Antisemitism is a factor in Australian Jewish life but is more of an "intellectual"
than "street" phenomenon. Despite this, ECAJ recorded 275 separate
instances of antisemitic vilification, violence and harassment. This is
the highest number of instances recorded by ECAJ since it began its national
database on antisemitism in 1990, and is a cause of some concern.
The year in review saw renewed and vigorous debate on Australia's racial
and cultural identity. This gave some groups an opportunity to vent their
opposition to immigration and immigrants. Nevertheless, Australia remains
an open and tolerant society. While there is mounting evidence that an underbelly
of Australian society is racist, there is only a small number of individuals
and organizations that actively vilify Jews and other racial minorities,
and they are the subject of wider community criticism. Without question,
antisemitism continues to be unacceptable in mainstream Australian life
and Jews continue to be seen as a vital part of the Australian community.
© JPR 1997