Mid-East migrants to blame for anti-Semitism rise, says Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott has blamed migrants from the Middle East for the surge in anti-Semitism across Australia and called for tougher migration restrictions.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott and Israel's ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon at the October 7 vigil at the Israeli embassy in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Tony Abbott has blamed migrants from the Middle East for the surge in anti-Semitism across Australia and called for tougher migration restrictions.

In an address to the Danube Institute-Heritage Foundation forum in Washington, the former prime minister also criticised the role of universities in becoming a channel for migration into Australia.

“Thanks to many individual migrants, countries like Australia have finer food, better universities and a more sophisticated high culture. Without migrants, many industries would find it harder to operate,” Mr Abbott said.

“But in part because of recent migrants from the Middle East, as well as neo-Marxist ideas about Jews’ ‘white privilege’, there’s also massively increased anti-Semitism, typified by our October 9 day of infamy on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.”

In most Western countries, he said, anti-Jewish tirades and near-riots had started even before the atrocity of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“Yet authorities have danced around prosecuting or deporting hate preachers, clearing encampments and banning disruptive protests because they don’t want to be accused of a non-existent Islamophobia, especially by the militant leaders of poorly integrated immigrant communities, which in Australia, and even more in Britain, now comprise a large proportion of some cabinet ministers’ electorates,” Mr Abbott said.

Large-scale migration, he said, put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing and infrastructure, and could strain social cohesion.

Many recent migrants, he said, were concerned about the prospect of subsequent immigrants and their impact on the fabric of their new homeland.

The former prime minister hit out at universities for becoming a backdoor migration route.

“Immigration has such ramifications for the economy, for society, and potentially for security too that it has to be closely managed by national governments, yet too often it’s effectively subcontracted out to educational bodies, using overseas students as cash cows, businesses too shortsighted to train and pay locals, or even to people-smugglers preying on those desperate for a better life,” he said.

“Reducing the current very high levels of migration from comparatively poor to comparatively rich countries means overcoming the vested interests of those who benefit from it; namely schools and colleges selling an immigration outcome in the guise of ‘export education’; employers who want cheap and abundant surplus labour, and; ethnic activists looking for numbers to boost their political clout.”

A non-discriminatory immigration policy, Mr Abbott said, did not mean accepting everyone from anywhere all the time.

“Sovereign nations can’t let immigrants self-select via paying an educational institution or a people-smuggler,” he said.

“The best way to ensure immigration is working for our existing citizens as well as for our new migrants is to base it around specific employment: if someone has a specific job offer, from a specific employer, at a fair market wage, with a foreign worker tax to be paid by the employer to the government to help cover infrastructure, and can stay em­ployed and out of trouble for five years, then that person and his or her immediate dependants would undoubtedly make a fine Australian family, paying tax and contributing meaningfully from day one.”