James Campbell: Jacinta Allan yet to establish her authority over the government

The mealy-mouthed response from two Labor MPs to Victoria’s full-blown crisis of Jew hatred shows that Jacinta Allan still hasn’t established her authority over the government.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that whoever is in charge in Spring St it isn’t Jacinta Allan.

On Sunday the National Gallery of Victoria was forced into lockdown by protesters targeting it because it has taken donations from prominent Jews who – unsurprisingly – have connections with Israel.

Let’s be clear these protesters are not targeting the NGV because of what Israel has done in Gaza: they don’t believe the country should exist.

Yet on Monday Multicultural Affairs Minister Ingrid Stitt not only refused to condemn the disruption the protest caused, she refused to condemn it on principle.

There is no doubt Allan doesn’t share Stitt’s views.

Jacinta Allan condemned the NGV protest. Picture: David Crosling

On Tuesday she said what Stitt should have been told to say – that “those people who choose to cloak their extremism under the conflict of the Middle East are shameful and should be condemned”.

“Victorians are blessed to have the generosity of philanthropic generosity from families like the Gandels,” she said and “that generosity, that philanthropy enriches us all, and that behaviour we saw where anti-Semitism came to the street on the National Gallery was just disgraceful.”

If Stitt’s equivocal attitude to the protest was the only recent example of a state government minister playing down what is now a full-blown crisis of Jew hatred it would be bad enough.

But it isn’t.

A week earlier primary school kids wearing yarmulkes were called “dirty Jews” at the Melbourne Museum by the teenagers from Gladstone Park who chanted “Free Palestine!”

Ingrid Stitt failed to condemn the disruption the protest caused. Picture: David Geraghty

This is less a month after someone tried to burn down the East Melbourne synagogue with the Jews inside.

And what was the response of Allan’s Minister for Economic Growth Danny Pearson?

He told reporters he thought the government “had done what is needed” to combat anti-Semitism in Victoria.

“We passed legislation to outlaw hatred, so as a government, I feel that we have done what’s needed to be done in order to tackle the scourge,” he said.

Seriously? It’s all in hand is it Danny?

Pro-Palestine protesters outside the NGV. Picture: Valeriu Campan

On one score and one score alone was the minister on the money, when he said this was one of these “isolated incidents” that keep happening in Victoria.

We can rest assured that was the last time a group of Jewish schoolchildren will be assaulted at the museum because that is the last time one will be going there.

That two ministers could offer such mealy-mouthed words which are so obviously at odds with her views, reveals, just as the failure of 20 MPs to turn up to her Caucus retreat did, that almost two years after she took over from Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan has yet to establish her authority over the government.

Originally published as James Campbell: Jacinta Allan yet to establish her authority over the government