Burnside partner apologises for own anti-Semitic tweet

The partner of Julian Burnside has deleted and apologised for a tweet that was interpreted as being anti-Semitic and an attack on Josh Frydenberg’s ancestry.

Kate Durham and Julian Burnside. Picture: Fiona Byrne

The partner of Julian Burnside has deleted and apologised for a tweet that was interpreted as being anti-Semitic and an attack on Josh Frydenberg’s ancestry, days after the QC issued an apology for his tweet comparing Israel with Nazi Germany.

Kate Durham had responded to a tweet by the Treasurer by saying: “As I told you once, I suspect Burnside knows more about the Holocaust and its subsequent trials than you. As a teen, the Holocaust propelled him into a concern for human rights & refugees, which can’t be said of you, Your just a Hungarian, just a Liberal. #Fraudenberg.”

Ms Durham said she was and is “unreservedly sorry for my remarks” and in defending Mr Burnside, had made things worse.

She said Mr Frydenberg had been referred to as the “Hungarian candidate” by John Howard in his introduction to parliament and her “stupidity” was in adding to Premier Daniel Andrews’s remark that Mr Frydenberg was “just” a Liberal.

“I did not think anyone was anti-Hungarian, silly me,” she said. “But l didn’t and don’t think Burnside is an anti-Semite; the ­accusations hurt and they have been going on for over two years.”

Ms Durham said the Holocaust had taught Mr Burnside about human rights and it was painful in the extreme to be harassed as anti-Semitic, noting that her sister and stepmother were both Jewish. “I was wrong to imply that, that I suspected Burnside might possibly know more about the trials and the Holocaust than Josh,” she said.

“Emotionally, that is patently untrue, but it was said against an untrue accusation of anti-­Semitism and Burnside was and has always been deeply affected by the Holocaust.”

She said her opinion of Mr Frydenberg had been coloured by his role, as a child of refugees, in presiding over other refugees’ torment when “unlike us he was in a position to change that”.

“These are excuses, you might say, and you would be right. But l am proud of what Burnside has stood for and the almost daily digs and hostility he weathers from the Bar and every other elsewhere,” she said.

Ms Durham said she was sorry “even for Josh if I have hurt him” and sorry for the Greens, “who are blameless in this”.

“This conversation is scary and I’ve learned to my cost not to use Twitter for such a sensitive subject,” she said.

Mr Burnside was unaware of the tweet until he was contacted by The Australian on Sunday.

“If Josh knows a lot about the Holocaust, fair enough,” he said.

“But he’s not said anything about the current, continuing genocide of Uighurs, Hazaras and Rohingyas.

“That suggests his knowledge of genocide is limited to what he’s learned of the Holocaust.”

He also said Ms Durham was “simply not anti-Semitic”.

Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich said Ms Durham carried out a “mean-spirited attack” on Mr Frydenberg that was beyond contempt.

“[She] immorally belittles and cancels the experience of every child of a Holocaust survivor by claiming that her husband knows more about the Holocaust than Mr Frydenberg,” he said.