Minister’s Sydney office vandalised in ‘cowardly’ attack
Transport Minister Jo Haylen has branded as disgraceful and cowardly the targeting of her electorate office with graffiti, including the word “antisemite”.
In what the Summer Hill MP said was the fourth incident of its kind at her office in Sydney’s inner west, the word was sprayed across the front window under her name.
Graffiti sprayed on the front window of Jo Haylen’s electorate office on Saturday. Credit: Facebook
“Honour your oath, separate church and state,” was also scrawled on a window of the Marrickville Road premises.
According to NSW Police, the vandalism took place about 1pm on Saturday. Officers are investigating.
“Yesterday, my electorate office was subjected to a disgraceful and cowardly attack of vandalism,” Haylen said in a statement.
“This is the fourth time my office has been subjected to this kind of criminal attack.
The images were posted to social media page Inner West Council Watch.Credit: Facebook
“These kind of criminal acts are designed to intimidate and divide our successful multicultural communities. I will not be intimidated by them, and nor will the rest of our inner west community.”
Haylen said she had total confidence police would track down those responsible and “subject them to the full force of the law”.
The graffiti attack on Haylen’s office occurred a day after it emerged that a cafe owned by the son of a Holocaust survivor in Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s eastern suburbs had the word “Nazi” carved into its back door.
The incidents follow a series of antisemitic attacks in Sydney, including an attempt to burn down Newtown Synagogue this month.
Leon Sofalis was arrested at a Pyrmont hotel on Thursday, when he was Tasered by police.
On Sunday, he briefly faced Parramatta Bail Court on a raft of property damage offences and for displaying Nazi symbols.
He was refused bail and is to appear in the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Premier Chris Minns labelled the latest graffiti incident “despicable”, and designed to “divide Australians against Australians”.
Minns has been forthright in his condemnation of the wave of antisemitic violence in Sydney, and on Sunday he rejected the claim that publicity of the incidents was spurring copycat attacks.
“I think that there is a real concern about copycat behaviour. The best remedy for that, I don’t believe, is to pretend it’s not happening or sweeping it under the carpet,” he said.
“The best remedy, and NSW Police are doing this, is to arrest those who are responsible for it quickly and publicly demonstrate that if you commit these acts you’re going to be rounded up by the police and the full force of the law will be applied to you.”
Two men have been charged in relation to the bid to set the building alight, while 10 in total have been charged so far under Strike Force Pearl, the task force established last month by NSW Police to combat the spate of hate crimes.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw revealed last week that investigators were looking into whether overseas actors or individuals had paid local criminals in Australia in cryptocurrency to carry out some of the crimes.
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