Antisemitism in Australia is influenced by various imported antisemitic traditions, including conspiracy theories of Jewish power, Holocaust denial and stereotypes of Jews as unpatriotic, miserly, unethical and practitioners of depraved rituals.
According to the latest available statistics compiled by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), there were 246 separate instances of antisemitic vilification, violence and harassment in 1997, and 211 in January-July 1998. The 1997 figure represents an 18 per cent decrease on the previous year, but the January-July 1998 figure of 211 is much higher than the average for that period in the preceding seven years. In general, rates of physical violence and property damage are below average while the rates of threats and intimidation are above average.
Although Australia remains an open and tolerant society, there is mounting evidence of a racist or xenophobic underbelly: a section of the population possibly growing but certainly made more visible by the rise of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party. An increasingly vigorous debate on the nation's racial and cultural identity picked up greater momentum in June 1998 following the Queensland state elections in which One Nation received nearly 25 per cent of the vote and emerged as the country's third party.
Nonetheless, only a small number of individuals and organizations actively vilify Jews and other racial minorities, and they are widely condemned. Most Australians continue to regard antisemitism as unacceptable, and Jews face no form of institutional racism.
Despite copious evidence from the United States, Canada and Eastern Europe, the Australian government refuses to renew action against alleged Nazi war criminals known to be living in the country. This refusal has prompted claims that Australia has become an ideal haven for such persons.
Total population: 17.9 million (1996 Census)
Jewish population: 105,000-110,000 (mainly in Melbourne and Sydney); those identifying themselves as Jewish by religion in the 1996 Census numbered just under 80,000 (0.45 per cent of the population)
Other minorities: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (known collectively as indigenous Australians) 1.6 per cent (1991 figure); Asians 5 per cent; Africans 1 per cent
Religion: in the 1996 Census the following religious denominations were chosen by more than 1 per cent of the population (8.7 per cent chose not to answer the voluntary question): Catholics (27 per cent); Anglicans (22 per cent); no religion (16.6 per cent); Uniting Church (7.5 per cent); Presbyterians and Reformed (3.81 per cent); Orthodox Christians (2.8 per cent); Baptists (1.66 per cent); Lutherans (1.41 per cent); Muslims (1.13 per cent); Buddhists (1.13 per cent)
Constitutional status: federal democracy with a bi-cameral parliament. In February 1998 a constitutional convention voted to sever constitutional ties with the British monarchy, to replace Queen Elizabeth II (or her successor) with a head of state elected by parliamentary majority and to adopt a republican system by 2001. A referendum on the issue will be held in late 1999.
Ruling conservative coalition (since 2 March 1996): Liberal Party-National Party under Prime Minister John Howard
Main opposition party: Australian Labor Party
Other national parties: Australian Democrats, Greens, Independents, One Nation
Next federal election: on or before 3 July 1999
GDP July 1996-June 1997: A$446 billion (US$264 billion)
Growth rate 1997-8: 3.75 per cent (government figure, 12 May 1998)
Inflation 1997-8: 1.5 per cent (government figure, 12 May 1998)
Unemployment 1997-8: 8.4 per cent
Currency: US$1.00=A$1.69 (16 September 1998)
Australian Jews have experienced little or no institutional or organized antisemitism, and their civil rights have never been seriously restricted. This is largely due to the presence of Jews in the country since colonization by Britain in 1788. They have figured prominently in Australian public life. The country's most prominent military figure, General Sir John Monash, was Jewish, as were two of Australia's governors-general (the Australian representative of the British monarchy).
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.
Although the federal attorney-general, Daryl Williams, has not ruled out future investigations, the Australian Federal Police has still not initiated proceedings against alleged war criminals. In January 1997 the former head of the Special Investigations Unit for War Crimes, Robert Greenwood QC, suggested that a 'lack of political will' lay behind the nation's continued failure to pursue war criminals. Also in January the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, Efraim Zuroff, described Australia as 'the ideal haven for Nazi war criminals'. In November 1997 Zuroff reportedly gave the Australian ambassador to Israel a list of sixty-four suspected Latvian war criminals living in Australia, and urged the Australian government to take action against them. The administration's failure to act came under criticism in two particular cases.
In March 1997 the attorney-general announced that the investigation of Australian citizen Karlis Ozols had been closed during the life of the previous Labor government because there had been insufficient evidence to prosecute. Ozols was a Latvian migrant allegedly responsible, as a member of the Latvian security police, for ordering and taking part in the destruction of Jewish villages and Nazi ghettos in Byelorussia in 1942-3. In October 1997 investigative journalists reported that, contrary to the federal attorney-general's claims, the department of public prosecution was aware that sufficient evidence had been collected against Ozols by 1992 to support a prima facie case of genocide. Further documentation obtained under freedom of information legislation revealed that the case had been closed by the previous government to save money. In response to these reports a government spokesperson said the case was still open.
In May 1998 the Australian authorities refused to deport the alleged war criminal and Australian citizen Konrads Kalejs to his native Latvia on grounds of insufficient evidence. Public outrage followed Kalejs's return to Australia in August 1997, after he was deported from Canada due to his alleged complicity in war crimes in the Second World War (see Canada, USA, Latvia). Kalejs was accused of war crimes by the USA in 1994 and deported to Australia that year but, by 1995, had moved to Canada. Despite the existence of a wealth of evidence from the US and Canadian investigations, the attorney-general said that it might be difficult to sustain criminal charges. The federal government claims that he could not be stripped of Australian citizenship under existing law. At first, senior members of the Jewish community called for retrospective legislation to be enacted to deal with the matter; later a leaked legal opinion, originally prepared in 1990 for the commonwealth department of public prosecution, suggested that, under existing legislation, war criminals who entered Australia in the 1940s and 1950s could lose their citizenship at the minister's discretion.
Since the Second World War Australian society has changed dramatically. At that time the population of 7 million were mainly of British or Irish descent. Now the 18 million Australians are a society of immigrants from some 150 nations in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and, predominantly, Asia. Nearly a quarter were born outside the country.
Since the 1970s successive governments have followed a multicultural policy that provides protection for minority groups in the areas of community relations, social justice and equality of opportunity.
Historically, racial and ethnic tensions in Australia have centred on conflicts between established communities and more recent waves of migrants, particularly those, in the past, from Southern Europe and, more recently, from Asia. Racial hostility is also directed at indigenous Australians.
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 who continue to endure socio-economic disadvantages. The infant mortality rate for indigenous Australians is four times higher than that for the rest of the population, and their life expectancy is up to twenty years shorter. According to the Australian Medical Association, indigenous Australians have poorer health than any other ethnic group in the world, and are eleven times more likely to suffer from alcoholism than other Australians. Despite comprising less than 2 per cent of the population at large, indigenous Australians make up 30 per cent of the prison population.
Between July 1996 and June 1997, 589 complaints were made under the federal Racial Discrimination Act, including 201 brought under the Race Hatred Act which has been in force since October 1995 and gives victims of racism recourse to civil sanctions. Complaints received by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in this period showed an increase of 90 per cent over the previous twelve months. Although changes in counting at the state level make it impossible to compare the figures with earlier years, the apparently sharp increase has been widely attributed to the activities of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.
Two issues in particular have provided a focus for the increasing attention being paid to race-related matters. The first concerns the up to 100,000 indigenous Australian children who were separated from their parents under a policy of forced assimilation over a period of sixty years, from 1910 until 1970. HREOC's 1997 report on the issue, Bringing Them Home, stated that the policy amounted to genocide and called for an official apology. Prime Minister John Howard rejected that call on the grounds that one generation cannot be asked 'to accept legal responsibility for the acts of earlier generations'. In May 1997, shortly before the report was published, he offered a personal apology to those who had been victimized and, in December, announced a A$63 million (US$37 million) aid package in order to establish a national network of support services for surviving victims. In March 1998, a strongly worded Amnesty International report condemned the government's failure to offer an official apology for the programme.
On 26 May 1998 an unofficial National Sorry Day was held to apologize for the mistreatment of the so-called 'stolen generation' of indigenous Australian children. To mark the event elders of the indigenous community were given 'Sorry Books' signed by 300,000 Australians and granted the keys to several cities. The state government of New South Wales announced that Botany Bay - where Captain Cook claimed Australia for the British in 1770 - would be given a new aboriginal name. The federal government declined any involvement in the day's events.
The second issue concerns the government's proposed land reforms, the Native Title Amendment Bill, which could apply to up to 79 per cent of the country. It was originally drafted following a December 1996 court ruling that held that land claims based on traditional and unbroken links were not necessarily superseded by, but could co-exist with, farming, mining or other leases, and that, in cases of conflict, the leaseholder's claim would prevail. Designed to clarify the rights of both claimants, the bill extended those of leaseholders and restricted those claiming a traditional (or sacred) link. When the Senate first rejected the bill in December 1996 Prime Minister Howard threatened to dissolve parliament and call a federal election should the bill fail, raising the possibility of an early election campaign dominated by the issue of race. With the atmosphere becoming increasingly bitter and the polls showing that an early election could result in a Labor victory with Pauline Hanson's party gaining the balance of power in the Senate, Howard amended the bill to enhance further still the rights of leaseholders. To cries of 'Shame', the bill was passed by the Senate in July 1998. The One Nation party has vowed to abolish any law granting land rights to indigenous Australians.
Following publication of the national day honours list in January 1998 - in which Cathy Freeman, an indigenous Australian athlete, was named Australian of the Year and former Vietnamese refugee Tan Le was named Young Australian of the Year - Hanson characterized the awards as a 'politically motivated' response to the 'challenges' laid down by her own party, and as a governmental attempt to divert attention from the land reform bill. The prime minister called her remarks 'stupid, petty and ugly'.
Although Australia has traditionally enjoyed a reputation as a haven for refugees, the Amnesty International report of March 1998 (see above) castigated the indefinite detention of asylum-seekers who, it claimed, were being treated like 'second-class prisoners'. Furthermore, since being elected in 1996, the federal government, despite its promise to maintain existing programmes, has cut the quota of immigrants accepted by some 12 per cent; the humanitarian/refugee migrant intake was reduced from 15,000 to 10,000, and the total migrant intake for 1996-7 was 74,000, down 9,000 on the previous year. In 1997-8 the intake quota has been cut by a further 8 per cent. The composition of the intake also shows a shift of priorities, away from the reuniting of family members towards the admission of those with capital or business skills.
The May 1997 results of a Newspoll survey demonstrate the ambivalence of many Australians with regard to immigration and multiculturalism. In the poll, commissioned by the newspaper The Weekend Australian, 1,200 adults of all ages were surveyed. The results show that 64 per cent of respondents think the number of migrants to Australia is too high (compared with 71 per cent in a similar poll conducted in September 1996, the 7 per cent drop occurring in the category of those who thought the intake was 'much too high'). Those who believe the immigration level to be about right increased from 20 per cent to 26 per cent over the same period. The results also suggest that those surveyed want the federal government to cut immigration even further than they are already doing; people over fifty, those earning less than A$30,000 (US$17,750) a year and supporters of the ruling conservative coalition are most strongly opposed to the present immigration level. The most surprising finding of the poll is the extent of support for multiculturalism. Seventy-eight per cent of those surveyed say that multiculturalism has been good for the country in the past, although, they add, it might be harmful in the future. The strongest support for multiculturalism is among younger people, those on higher incomes and Labor voters.
In August 1997 a survey of 1,000 young people (aged 15-20), conducted by the Australian Democrats, found that 63 per cent of the sample believed that Australians are racist, and 10 per cent feel that racism is one of the most pressing issues at present. The party's youth affairs spokeswoman was surprised to see the issue of race given such prominence: 'They have never come out so strongly feeling there was a race debate occurring in the community and that they were embarrassed, in fact ashamed, by some of the things they were seeing in the mainstream press, some of the comments they had heard from people in the schoolyard and even their parents.' While the survey found that young people are against inflammatory comments and in favour of reconciliation with indigenous people, it also found that they are not in favour of increased financial assistance for indigenous Australians.
In October 1997 a survey (commissioned by IDP Education Australia) was conducted at the University of Southern Queensland among nearly 700 prospective students in Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. The findings showed that many Asian students are disinclined to study at Australian universities and colleges because they believe racial discrimination to be a major problem. Asked to compare their perception of courses and attitudes in Australia and in three of its main competitors for overseas students - the US, the UK and Canada - the Malaysian students (for example) believe racism to be a bigger problem in Australia. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, overseas students contribute as much as A$3 billion (US$1.78 billion) a year to the Australian economy. IDP Education Australia announced that, as a result of the survey, it would launch a campaign in some Asian countries under the banner 'Australia welcomes the world'.
Antisemitism does not play a major part in mainstream political life in Australia. However, the rise of two recently formed radical anti-immigration parties, both led by elected members of the federal parliament - Pauline Hanson's One Nation and Graeme Campbell's Australia First - is worrying. Particularly worrying is the rise of the One Nation party which has attracted some 10,000 members (despite claiming 20,000) and is threatening to emerge as the country's third largest party. Both parties oppose Asian immigration, 'preferential treatment' for indigenous Australians and the abolition of their land rights (see Racism and xenophobia) and advocate economic isolationism. While they do not openly express antisemitism - Hanson publicly eschews it - both parties appeal to, and are supported by, far-right groups with histories of antisemitism.
Pauline Hanson was deselected by the Liberal Party two weeks before the March 1996 federal election because of controversial remarks about indigenous Australians. Standing as an independent candidate in the state of Queensland, however, she won a Senate seat. It was her maiden parliamentary speech in September 1996 that made Hanson internationally known. She claimed that Australia was in danger of being 'swamped by Asians', she condemned multiculturalism, the immigration of unskilled, non-English-speaking migrants and programmes established to help indigenous Australians. A public debate on these issues became increasingly passionate without Hanson's views attracting significant censure from the prime minister. Together with reports about violence and abuse directed at Asian migrants, students and tourists, a perceived increase in racism in Australia began to threaten the development of political and economic ties with South-east and East Asia, Australia's principal trading partner and the source of about a quarter of its annual intake of immigrants.
Since its founding in April 1997 the One Nation party has been widely criticized for its views. In August 1997, during a tour of New South Wales, Hanson called for Australia's immigration programme to be limited to people who accept 'Christian values'; she stated that 'true Australians' sing Christmas carols and want only migrants who do the same to be admitted. In June 1998 she called for English-language tests for prospective immigrants: 'Here in Australia, we speak English. . . . I don't want to go to any parts of Australia and not know whether I am walking into a butcher shop or a hairdresser.' In July 1998 One Nation released its official policy document which attacks immigration for destroying the traditional, 'inherited' Australian way of life, and for causing an 'Asianization' of Australia that creates 'largely Asian cities on our coasts'.
The results of the Queensland state elections on 13 June 1998 - the first elections in which One Nation had participated - transformed One Nation from marginal grouping to the nation's third party. Having received 23 per cent of the total vote with a 30 per cent swing, Hanson's party acquired 11 of the 89 seats in the state parliament in Brisbane, most of which represent rural constituencies. One Nation's success was the government's loss, and the Labor Party emerged in control of this most conservative of Australian states. In the aftermath of the election Hanson claimed enough support across the country to hold the balance of power after the upcoming federal election.
One Nation's support in subsequent opinion polls was running between 11-15 per cent nation-wide. It reached its highest point in a mid-July 1998 opinion poll when it was supported by 15 per cent of the nation-wide sample and 19 per cent in southern Australia; 20 per cent nation-wide said they would consider switching to One Nation - from all the major parties - in the next federal election. However, in a nation-wide Newspoll survey of 1,115 voters (published 18 August 1998), One Nation's support had dropped to 7 per cent, and support for the ruling coalition, which had been running at a consistently lower level than that for Labor, had overtaken the opposition.
Despite claims by One Nation leaders that their policies are not racist - that they advocate 'equality' (i.e. no special concessions for minorities), the 'traditional' Australian way of life, full employment and a sensible welfare system - and that those on the far right are not welcome in One Nation, evidence of the party's links with extreme right-wing organizations is readily available. Hanson came under attack in May 1997 when it was revealed that part of her manifesto launched in April, Pauline Hanson: The Truth, had been lifted from the article 'Do we have to forget that Aboriginals were cannibals?' in the November 1996 issue of Lock, Stock and Barrel, a publication of the militia movement (see Publications and media).
The source for Hanson's claim, first made in October 1997 in a parliamentary speech, that a UN treaty aims to establish a taxpayer-funded aboriginal state was exposed in Queensland's mainstream daily, the Brisbane Courier Mail (31 October 1997), to be The New Citizen, a publication of the Citizens' Electoral Councils (CEC, see below).
In early 1998 Hanson appointed Robyn Spencer, the co-founder of the antisemitic and anti-immigrant Australians against Further Immigration (AAFI, see below), as One Nation's leader in Victoria and spokeswoman on immigration.
David Summers, the editor of Exposure (see Publications and media), was One Nation's candidate for Noosa in the June 1997 Queensland elections until adverse publicity - following his statements that the Pope had sold cyanide gas to the Nazis and that Hitler's war machine was financed by Jewish bankers - forced his removal.
Many of One Nation's activists in Queensland are ex-members of the now defunct far-right Confederate Action Party. One of them, Tony Pitt, the secretary of the Maryborough branch of One Nation, has posted on his web-site a list of 'organizations who will help to save us' from defeat by the mainstream parties. The list includes all the far-right Australian parties including the neo-Nazi National Action.
Peter Archer was One Nation's Hunter Valley regional president for months before he was expelled in late 1997 when Tony Pitt secretly recorded him criticizing the party leadership. Archer had previously been an Australian League of Rights (ALR, see Publications and media) activist and a staff writer for The Strategy (see below). Archer subsequently formed the breakaway One Nation Australia Party.
A growing number of leaked tales of autocratic rule within One Nation culminated, in December 1997, in the formation of the New One Nation Party by disillusioned ex-members. It was apparently such disillusionment that provoked 'very senior figures' in the party to leak the carefully guarded party membership list to Australia/Israel Review, which printed 2,000 of the 10,000 names in a special issue of 8-28 July 1998 (see Antisemitic incidents). The promise of more names in later issues was withdrawn after the journal was criticized for publishing the list by sections of the Jewish community.
Graeme Campbell's Australia First - founded in 1996 as an attempt to mobilize the pro-gun lobby and anti-immigration and other disaffected right-wing groups - also contested the Queensland elections but its candidates sank without trace. Campbell has a long history of antagonism to the Jewish community. In June 1997 he described two prominent Jewish Australians as 'pillars of the Jewish community who seek to flagellate us with guilt'. Australia First maintains links with the ALR, and Denis McCormack, a leader of AAFI, is a member of Campbell's staff. During a television appearance on Channel 9's mid-day show in May 1997, McCormack reportedly characterized Australia's current government as 'Koran, kosher and kow-tow'. In July 1997 McCormack said that he was a consultant to one of Pauline Hanson's senior advisers and the proofreader of her manifesto Pauline Hanson: The Truth (see above).
Peter Davis, elected mayor of Port Lincoln in South Australia in 1995, remains active in support of the AAFI and Pauline Hanson. In March 1997 he chaired a meeting of the ALR, of which he had been a member for thirty years. In a December 1996 Port Lincoln council meeting, nine out of ten councillors resigned en masse as a means of dissociating themselves from Davis; in subsequent elections, however, five of these councillors were defeated by Davis's supporters.
Several mainstream politicians have publicly supported campaigns conducted by the CEC (see above and below). According to the June, July and August 1997 issues of its newspaper The New Citizen, the CEC obtained the signatures of fifteen municipal and state politicians to an open letter calling for the 'exoneration' of Lyndon LaRouche from 'false charges'. Signatories to a previous pro-LaRouche letter (April 1997) included Ross Lightfoot, the politician nominated by the Liberal Party to fill a vacancy in the Senate. Lightfoot also has a history of anti-aboriginal sentiments and support for the ALR. In June 1997 a member of the House of Representatives claimed that fellow member Wilson Tuckey (Liberal) had organized a tour of parliament for two CEC supporters.
Members of mainstream political parties also occasionally make statements or refuse to condemn views that overstep the boundaries of acceptable political conventions. In October 1997 the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, refused to condemn Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia for blaming the currency crisis in South-east Asia on a supposed Jewish financial conspiracy.
Among the far-right anti-immigrant parties, both the AAFI and Reclaim Australia-Reduce Immigration (RARI) continue to field candidates. In a February 1997 federal by-election in Fraser (Australian Capital Territory), AAFI received over 3.5 per cent and RARI over 2 per cent of the primary vote.
In state elections in South Australia in October 1997, two independents linked to Australia First received just over 1 per cent of the vote for the Legislative Council. In December 1997 AAFI obtained over 4 per cent of the vote in Sutherland in a New South Wales state by-election for the Legislative Assembly.
Various antisemitic organizations and paramilitary and neo-Nazi groupings continue to peddle antisemitic rhetoric in Australia. Several groupings, especially in rural Australia, have forged links with One Nation and Australia First. While antisemitism remains an integral part of the ideology of these organizations their principal targets are indigenous Australians and Asian immigration.
The ALR is the best organized and wealthiest racist organization in Australia, with a largely traditional, and ageing, membership. Its newsletters and bookshops disseminate books, cassettes and videos that deny the Holocaust and encourage hatred of Jews and the 'Jewish lobby' (see also Publications and media).
The Melbourne-based CEC (see above) was established in the mid-1980s as an ALR front organization before being hijacked by followers of Lyndon LaRouche (see USA). Its members have, in recent years, attacked prominent members of the Jewish community in its newspaper The New Citizen (see above). The attacks continued even after the paper was forced to settle in a defamation case brought by a leading member of the Jewish community in March 1996. In 1997 the CEC organized mass mailings of LaRouchite material to Jewish communal organizations.
In recent years a debate about gun control legislation gave rise to extremist gun supporters' associations such as the Firearms Owners' Association of Australia and the Australian Right to Bear Arms Association, as well as militia groups such as the AUSI Freedom Scouts, the Loyal Regiment of Australian Guardians and The Australians. At their most extreme these groups call for armed resistance to government 'Nazi' tactics which, they claim, threaten rural Australia's way of life, and denounce proposed gun control laws as totalitarian and part of an international anti-Christian conspiracy. There has been a decrease in activity by these groups since the conservative coalition came to power in 1996 and implemented laws controlling the use and ownership of firearms. Their decline may also be explained by a shift of support to One Nation.
Several small neo-Nazi groups continue to operate in most large cities, including National Action, the National Republican Movement, the Sydney-based Southern Cross Hammer Skinheads, the Melbourne-based White Aryan Resistance (see Holocaust denial), the Australian National Socialist Movement and C-18. Following its 1997 eviction for rent arrears from its shop in Adelaide, National Action opened an office in Melbourne's northern suburbs. In the October 1997 South Australian state elections, the party stood candidates in two constituencies and obtained 3.1 per cent and 3.8 per cent of the primary vote in the Legislative Assembly seats of Ramsay and Taylor respectively, and 0.41 per cent in elections for the Legislative Council.
The tiny, anti-immigrant National Republican Movement was active in the early 1990s when it was associated with posters such as 'Mass Third World immigration: enriching our culture by TB, syphilis, AIDS, hepatitis, rabies, leprosy'. The party is still listed on a far-right web-site as a supplier of 'nationalist literature'. The address given is the Kew (Melbourne) post-office box of Brendan Gidley, a One Nation activist in the Ringwood (Melbourne) branch.
The Australian National Socialist Movement maintains links with the British National Socialist Movement (NSM, see United Kingdom). The group distributed leaflets in Brisbane calling for supporters to 'combat Jewish bankers and politicians'. The Austrian consulate in Brisbane, two private homes and offices of election candidates were daubed with antisemitic slogans and swastikas signed 'C-18'.
The ECAJ maintains the only comprehensive database on antisemitic incidents in Australia. For the period from October 1996 to September 1997, the ECAJ received 246 reports from local monitors of incidents of violence, intimidation and vandalism. This figure represents an 18 per cent decrease on the previous year's figure, but a 19 per cent increase on the average for the preceding seven years. For the period January-July 1998 (inclusive) there were 211 reported incidents, representing the highest figure for the same period ever recorded (the average for that period over the preceding seven years is 132). However virtually none of the 1998 incidents was serious, and many of them followed the July 1998 publication by Australia/Israel Review of a leaked copy of the One Nation party's membership list (see Parties, organizations, movements).
Reports of the most serious incidents of 1997 came at a rate of 8 per cent below the average for the previous six years, constituting the lowest number since the ECAJ established its national database on antisemitism in 1990. These reports for the most part involved vandalism of private property owned by Jews, and were generally confined to the major cities: daubings of antisemitic graffiti on the walls of homes and shops, and on vehicles; the scratching of swastikas into the paintwork of cars; in one case, a brick was thrown through the window of a Sydney home attached to messages 'Jew Boy' and 'mongrels'. There was a marked decrease (from 1995-6) in damage to Jewish communal property. The most serious involved arson attacks on a Jewish educational institution in Sydney.
Most of the reports concerned hate mail, including death threats, Holocaust-denial material (often sent to survivors) and attacks on Jews generated by Identity churches (see Religious antisemitism). Mass postings and hand deliveries of antisemitic leaflets were reported in Brisbane as well as in Launceston, Tasmania. Telephone intimidation (generally threats) was also reported. There was a small increase over previous years in reports of physical harassment, including, for example, students at Jewish day schools in Sydney and Melbourne being verbally abused while in school uniform. Reports of antisemitic graffiti, posters and other minor manifestations rose to the highest level ever recorded.
A neo-Nazi music scene continues to be in evidence in Australia. Although few music shops stock examples of the genre, CDs are available by mail order or via the Internet. As a result of European tours in 1996-7, two Australian neo-Nazi bands, Fortress and Squadron, have attracted an international following. The name of Gideon McLean, the lead singer in the neo-Nazi rock band Blood Oath, was one of those on the One Nation membership list published by the Australia/Israel Review (see Parties, organizations, movements).
The mainstream religious institutions in Australia show no signs of antisemitism, and dialogue continues between most religious groups. However, some sections of the Christian religious community remain antagonistic towards Jews and Judaism. US-style Identity churches, in particular, are thoroughly steeped in antisemitic ideology (see USA). In Australia, the Christian Identity Ministries based in the far north of Queensland, the British-Israel World Federation, the Sydney-based Covenant Vision Ministries and the Church of the Creator - all Identity churches - distribute antisemitic material through newsletters, bookshops and mailing lists.
A common theme of these churches is that Judaism is fundamentally anti-Christian, and Jews are portrayed as practitioners of 'evil' rituals outlined in the Talmud. The British-Israel World Federation maintains that the supposed British race comprises the 'ten lost tribes' of Israel and is therefore God's Chosen People.
Holocaust denial remains an important feature of antisemitism in Australia. Several organizations disseminate denial literature to Holocaust survivors, often using the extensive range of denial texts available on Australian and North American Internet web-sites; they also write letters to newspapers or call radio phone-in programmes demanding a debate on whether or not the Holocaust took place or on its extent.
Denial propaganda is produced by the Adelaide Institute, the Australian Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ALR, the British-Israel World Federation (see Religious antisemitism), White Aryan Resistance (see Parties, organizations, movements) and several small organizations such as Australians for Free Speech. The Adelaide Institute, run by Frederick Toben and David Brockschmidt, produces the Adelaide Institute Newsletter and maintains an Internet web-site described as 'Australia's first revisionist website' (see also Legal matters).
The 1997 edition of the ACLU's annual handbook by John Bennett, Your Rights, accuses 'Holocaust films' of inciting racial hatred against Germans, and attacks the 'Jewish lobby' and Jewish communal organizations.
In June 1997 Senator Bob Collins (Northern Territory) told the Senate that those of his constituents who responded to a newspaper advertisement in support of One Nation had received a copy of (and subscription form for) a racist and antisemitic newsletter called An Eye for an Eye which denied the Holocaust. Collins subsequently received a letter from its editor Blitz Stark: 'I was an active soldier in Nazi Germany . . . witnessing exactly what was happening to the Jews . . . I have researched for a very long time the "truth" behind the holocaust. So do not try to patronize me with your extremely limited . . . knowledge about Hitler and the Jews.'
Various 'revisionist' groupings, most notably the ACLU, have tried to exploit the Australian government's refusal in November 1996 to grant David Irving a visa on the grounds that he failed to meet the requirement in the Migrant Act that an applicant be of good character. However, in July 1997 the Bulletin, the leading national news magazine, reported that 69 per cent of Australians opposed Irving's entry into the country.
The mainstream media in Australia are not sympathetic to antisemitism. However, a handful of columnists and commentators express crudely racist sentiments. Also of concern is the occasional lapse in editorial standards that allows antisemitic material to be published as part of letters to the editor.
For example, an article in the mainstream daily Canberra Times (circulation 42,500) described President Clinton as 'a prisoner of the Jewish lobby . . . in thrall to the wealthy Jewish lobby and the moral blackmail of the Holocaust' (26 April 1997).
The publications of the ALR regularly purvey similar notions. In 1997 On Target claimed that President Clinton is a 'captive of the most formidable Zionist Jewish influence in history', and that antisemitism is promoted by Jews to gain political advantage. Another ALR publication, New Times, asserted that 'Jewish power groups' are using 'the myth of the mass gassings' as an instrument of 'blackmail'.
Three New Age conspiracy magazines, Nexus, New Dawn and Exposure, continue to support far-right and militia groups though they are publishing fewer articles with antisemitic content than previously. In addition to the editor David Summers's interviews with Pauline Hanson, Exposure has recently published articles on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which Summers markets) and propaganda of the US militia movement. In June 1998 Summers was a One Nation candidate in the Queensland state elections (see Parties, organizations, movements). Nexus also publishes antisemitic letters.
The militia movement continues to purvey antisemitism in its newsletters and journals, such as Lock, Stock and Barrel and The Strategy. Lock, Stock and Barrel warned in August 1997 against the threat of a so-called Zionist New World Order in which Jews, NATO and the United Nations conspire to rule the world by 'Asianizing' Australia. The Strategy was described by Senator Ron Boswell in a parliamentary speech in 1997 as an 'antisemitic, racist and extremist rag' (see Countering antisemitism). Every issue features a review of the US Liberty Lobby's weekly Spotlight (see USA) and, in its July 1997 issue, it 'exposed' an international Zionist conspiracy.
A volume of antisemitic conspiracy theories, Hansonism: Trick or Treat? (1997) - dismissed as too extreme even by the ALR - was written by Don Veitch, a former CEC member and founder of the David Syme College of National System Economics. Veitch and his book were taken up briefly by One Nation adviser David Ettridge who circulated 100 copies to branch members; extracts were also posted on the party's web-site. In December 1997, however, after Veitch fell out with the party, One Nation branches were instructed not to refer to the book again.
A large sector of the print media serves the various ethnic communities in Australia. For the most part these publications do not concern themselves with the Jewish community. There are, however, exceptions. For example, in the 1 January 1997 issue of the weekly Polish community newspaper Tygodnik polski (circulation 4,000), an article attacked Jews for collaborating with the Bolsheviks. In 1996 the same paper had stated that Jews had collaborated with Poland's enemies and that five leading Nazis had been Jewish.
While the Arabic and Islamic media tend not to concern themselves with Jews, some publications serving these communities do print material that is hostile to Jews and/or Israel (see also Legal matters). An Nahar - a publication previously censured by the Australian Press Council for its extreme views - continues to publish such material: one 1997 article referred to Israel as the 'enemy' who exaggerated the Holocaust so that it could influence world opinion and expropriate land. The anti-western Australian Islamic Review and Nida'ul Islam also publish similar articles. The former calls on its readers to arm themselves against the Zionists and claimed, in one 1997 editorial, that 'Arabs are finally waking up to the devious ways of Zionists'. The latter publishes accounts of antisemitic conspiracy theories, attacks Jews as the enemy of Islam and calls for this 'sacred land' to be 'purified of Jews and Christians'.
Al-Moharer Al-Australi, a pro-Iraqi and pro-Libyan publication with an Internet web-site, published material in 1997 'exposing' an Israeli government conspiracy to infect Palestinian children with AIDS in Israeli hospitals. The journal alleged that the virus was being spread by Mossad agents posing as tourists in Egypt.
Continuing use is made of the Internet by Australian racists. Some electronic hate messages are directed at individuals, others are sent as contributions to discussion groups on culture, religion or politics. E-mail espousing Holocaust denial is sent to Holocaust survivors. Most of the far-right Australian organizations have become highly professional in the creation of web-sites - and links to racist web-sites internationally - and the dissemination of both Australian-authored and imported information by newsgroups and bulletin boards. One contributor to a Pauline Hanson supporters' newsgroup asked: 'Why do we have bloodthirsty Jews here [in Australia]?'
Internet sites of particular concern are maintained by the Adelaide Institute (see Legal matters), National Action, Al-Moharer Al-Australi (see above), and The Covenant Vision Ministry (see Religious antisemitism).
The Queensland government is considering amending its criminal code to give courts the power to imprison vandals who daub violent hate messages. In 1997 the South Australian government passed laws imposing criminal and civil sanctions for acts of racial vilification.
The number of complaints dealt with by the HREOC in 1997 rose 90 per cent over the previous year (changes in counting at the state level make it impossible to compare overall figures). In July 1997 the central office of HREOC successfully resolved a complaint lodged by the ECAJ in 1996 against the Arabic-language newspaper El Telegraph. Part of the settlement involved the paper's publication of articles about international antisemitism, one of which included an acknowledgement of 'the many partisan writers and propagandists in the Middle East who deliberately invoke The Protocols [of the Elders of Zion ] to encourage racial hatred of the Israeli State and the Jewish religion'.
The HREOC decided not to consider the substance of the ECAJ's 1996 complaint against Olga Scully, a Tasmanian associate of the Adelaide Institute, concerning the distribution, via a market stall and mailings, of antisemitic material, on the grounds that the ECAJ and its officers were not deemed to be the aggrieved parties. In November 1997, however, the ECAJ appealed to the federal court, and HREOC's decision was set aside in February 1998. HREOC is now obliged to reconsider the complaint.
In January 1998 two imprisoned neo-Nazis lost their applications for leave to appeal their convictions and sentences for offences including firebombing Chinese restaurants in Perth and conspiracy to drive Asians from Western Australia. Jack van Tongeren and John van Blitterswyk, both formerly of the Australian Nationalist Movement, are 7 years into their sentences of 18 and 14 years respectively. Van Tongeren told the court: 'When you're faced with an invasion-sized immigration of Asians that is to the detriment of the Australian people, then some people have a responsibility to fight back.'
In February 1998, after protests by Jewish and Islamic groups, the Australian government took the unusual step of attaching conditions to the visa granted to US Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (see USA). In the two-day Australian leg of their 'world friendship tour', Farrakhan and his all-male party visited Alice Springs and Sydney, and talked to groups of indigenous Australians about race-related issues.
The ECAJ attributes the recent decline in some forms of antisemitic activity in part to an increasing investment in Jewish communal security, and in part to the fact that Jewish organizations are taking legal action against leading perpetrators.
With the growth of One Nation, a number of high-profile politicians have emphasized the right of all Australians to be treated with equal respect. In June and September 1997 Ron Boswell, leader of the National Party in the Senate, made a series of powerful speeches attacking Hanson and her party (see Publications and media). Most Australian state parliaments have passed motions condemning racism and affirming cultural diversity. The Australian governor-general, Sir William Deane, has championed cultural diversity and the rights of indigenous Australians.
Hanson's public appearances in most major cities around the country are met by demonstrations and counter-rallies. For example, in Newcastle in May 1997 a rally of 1,200 Hanson supporters was met by 2,500 demonstrators while a further 2,000 took part in a multicultural rally. In the same month 1,000 protesters demonstrated against Hanson when she attended a fund-raising breakfast in Perth. In March 1997, 500 people demonstrated outside the National Action bookshop in Melbourne. In October 1997, 400 protesters gathered in Brisbane to demonstrate against a One Nation meeting.
Mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches are working to counter racism inside and outside their communities. In particular, in May 1997 the Uniting Church, Australia's third largest denomination, issued a statement acknowledging mistreatment of Jews by Christians, and accepting that a link existed between the teachings of Christianity and antisemitism. Relations between the Jewish community and the Anglican Church also improved.
Several sporting bodies, including those in charge of rugby league and Australian rules football, have recently introduced anti-racist codes of conduct.
Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee
© JPR 1999
