Jewish leaders congratulate Labor on win, hail Greens’ ‘electoral punishment’

Jewish groups have congratulated Labor on its win and welcomed the return of Jewish MPs, while celebrating rejection of the Greens and their ‘extreme and anti-Israel agenda’.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Jewish leaders have praised voters for the “electoral punishment” given to the Greens, while hailing the re-election of Anthony Albanese and Labor’s historic return to government in a thumping landslide.

Tensions between Australia’s Jewish community and the Albanese government have deepened since the October 7 Hamas attacks, but with Labor’s return to office, Jewish leaders say there is now a chance to rebuild trust and ensure the government follows through on its promises to combat anti-Semitism.

Labor’s Mark Dreyfus, Josh Burns and Mike Freelander, along with Liberal MP Julian Leeser, all retained their seats on election day — a result welcomed by leaders as a sign of support for Jewish representation across party lines.

The most Jewish-heavy electorates in the country delivered higher Liberal primary votes and a repudiation of the Greens in Saturday’s election compared to figures from the rest of the country.

In the four seats with the highest proportion of Jewish voters — based on The Australian’s recalculation of census data post-redistribution — the Liberal primary vote fell by just 0.4 percentage points, 3.4 points better than the national average. The Greens’ primary vote dropped by 1.7 points across these seats, also outperforming the national slump.

For example, in teal independent-held Wentworth, which at 12.1 per cent has the highest share in the country of people who report Judaism as their religion, there was a one percentage point slump in the already low primary vote for the Greens. In Labor-held Macnamara, the second-highest Jewish population in the country at 10.1 per cent, there was a 1.5 percentage point slump in the Greens primary vote.

The Greens suffered a seats defeat at the federal election on Saturday night, with the possibility the minor party will lose all three of the seats in Queensland it won for the first time at the 2022 election and fail to make any of the gains it had hoped to. The party’s share of the national votes was slightly lower at about 12 per cent in Sunday counting.

Even party leader Adam Bandt was enduring a scare in his safe seat of Melbourne, as Liberal preferences flowing to Labor shook his hold on the seat he first won in 2010.

Co-chief executive of the peak Jewish body Peter Wertheim said the Executive Council Australian Jewry had formally congratulated the Prime Minister and looked forward to continuing the “good, mutually respectful relationship”.

Peter Wertheim had formally congratulated the Prime Minister. Picture: Thomas Lisson

“We will continue to urge the government to stand strong against anti-Semitism in both word and deed,“ Mr Wertheim told The Australian.

“Where we have different views on the best way towards a sustainable two-state outcome to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, we will continue to put our case to the government in a constructive and reasoned manner.

“The election results have made it abundantly clear that the Australian people are looking for pragmatism, and have less and less time for ideologues of any kind.

“The electoral punishment meted out by the voters to the Greens and other ideologically-driven special interest groups is particularly noteworthy,” Mr Wertheim said.

“It is gratifying that each of the sitting Jewish MPs Josh Burns, Julian Leeser, Mike Freelander and Mark Dreyfus will be returned, and we congratulate them,“ he said.

The Zionist Federation of Australia also extended its congratulations to Mr Albanese, while acknowledging the “strain” in relations between the federal government and Australia’s Jewish community in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

ZFA president Jeremy Leibler described the election as taking place during a “deeply painful period” for Jewish Australians, with many in the community experiencing unprecedented levels of insecurity.

“This election took place against the backdrop of a deeply painful period for Jewish Australians. The months since October 7 have shaken our community’s sense of security and belonging. For the first time in history, many Jews in this country felt they had to justify their place in Australian society,“ Mr Leibler said.

Despite that, he said, the community remains “proud to live in a country that upholds democratic values and the rule of law’’, and that has historically provided a haven for Jewish life in the wake of the Holocaust.

“The relationship between the Jewish community and the Albanese government has been under strain. There are real issues; foreign policy decisions and responses to anti-Semitism that have challenged a sense of trust. But renewing that trust is in the national interest, and we believe it is both necessary and possible.”

Prominent Israeli community leader Menachem Vorchheimer also said the election marked a “clear rejection of the Greens”.

High-profile Jewish figure Menachem Vorchheimer. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Mr Vorchheimer, who hit the Greens with a human rights complaint alleging failures to address overt anti-Semitism at anti-Israel protests they attended, said the minor party was now “hanging by a thread”.

“With the Greens losing seats and its leader Adam Bandt’s own political future hanging by a thread, the election result marked a clear rejection of the Greens’ extreme and anti-Israel agenda, thereby affirming Australians are overwhelming a nation of shared values, that respect the rights of all people to equal participation,” he said.

Also close was the seat of Wills, in Melbourne’s inner north, where former state Greens leader Samantha Ratnam was attempting to unseat Labor’s Peter Khalil and move from Victorian to federal politics.

During the campaign, Mr Bandt had called for a “renters’ revolution”, but it was the party’s firebrand housing spokesman, Max Chandler-Mather, who was the biggest of the Greens’ casualties. He lost his seat of Griffith in Brisbane thanks to a resurgent Labor boosted by Liberal preferences.

Despite this, Mr Bandt was celebrating what he described as the largest vote in the party’s “history”, adding that the Greens have recorded nearly 10 per cent swings in key target seats and were poised to win between one and four seats in the House of Representatives.

He also declared his party has “kept Dutton out” and stopped the rise of “Trump-style politics” in Australia, using a charged election night speech to celebrate the Opposition Leader’s defeat and to thank pro-Palestinian voters for turning out in force.