Former health minister Greg Hunt says Jewish community deserves a national parliamentary apology

Former health minister Greg Hunt will call on the Albanese government to make a national parliamentary apology to Australia’s Jewish population for the rise of anti-Semitism.

Former health minister Greg Hunt will call on the Albanese government to make a national parliamentary apology to Australia’s Jewish population for the rise of anti-Semitism and an acknowledgment of the failures that have led to it. Picture: NewsWire/Brendan Beckett

Former health minister Greg Hunt will call on the Albanese government to make a national parliamentary apology to Australia’s Jewish population for the rise of anti-Semitism and an acknowledgment of the failures that have led to it.

Mr Hunt says the government’s mishandling of Israel and the Gaza conflict has aided Hamas’s aims of isolating the Jewish state internationally and had allowed anti-Semitism to flourish in Australia.

In rare public comments, Mr Hunt, a former cabinet minister who led Australia’s Covid-19 response and served under four Liberal prime ministers until his retirement from politics in 2022, says more urgent action is needed to stamp out the scourge of anti-Semitism.

“The Australian government’s actions and inactions have, in my view, permitted the dark forces of anti-Semitism to rise here in Australia far more rapidly and extensively than they would have otherwise done,” Mr Hunt will say in a speech to The Australia Israel Medical Research and Collaboration Foundation in Melbourne on Monday. “This was not the intention – but it was a consequence of action and inaction.”

His comments add to growing calls for greater government ­action on anti-Semitism with former Department of Home Affairs head Mike Pezzullo saying the government must assume that the Jewish community is under active terrorist attack and set up an Operation Sovereign Borders-type multi-agency campaign to combat the rise of anti-Semitism.

Mr Hunt will say the government’s increasingly hostile policy towards Israel during the conflict has “perversely” aided Hamas’s aim of diplomatically isolating Israel on the world stage.

“When Hamas welcomes the Australian government’s approach and Israel rejects its approach, it is pretty clear that something is wrong with how the government has responded to the unspeakable atrocities of October 7,” Mr Hunt will say.

He will call on the government to take three steps to stand against terrorism and anti-Semitism.

The first, he says, should be for the government “to co-sponsor a resolution at the United Nations which makes it clear there should be no two-state solution without Israel, nor until Hamas has been displaced as the government of Gaza and not until the Palestinian government recognises Israel’s right to exist”.

“Second, at home there should be a national parliamentary apology to Australia’s Jewish population for the rise of anti-Semitism and the dark stain it has left on so many lives. An acknowledgment of the failures that have led to this moment would help bring both accountability and healing.

NSW police at the latest scene of anti-=Semitic graffiti, found in Kingsford. Picture: NewsWire/Simon Bullard.

“And third, there should be a national ­bipartisan summit on combating anti-Semitism, involving the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, state and territory leaders, Jewish community leaders and police leadership from all jurisdictions. The simple goal must be a redoubled safety and counter-terrorism plan to combat all forms of anti-Semitism with practical community safety, policing and deradicalisation initiatives.”

Mr Hunt says he believes these initiatives will go part of the way towards calming some of the “horrific wave” of anti-Semitism in Australia over the past 15 months.

The federal opposition and Jewish groups have criticised the government for hardening its position towards Israel in several UN votes including one supporting an “irreversible pathway” to a Palestinian state. That vote led Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accuse the Albanese government of adopting “extreme anti-Israeli” positions.

Mr Hunt says Hamas’s massacre of some 1300 Israelis on October 7, 2023, appeared to have several key strategic aims.

The first was to bring agony and terror to Israel through unrestrained barbarism of the attack. The second was to provoke a response that would draw Israel into Gaza with the purpose of “miring them and defeating them in the sandbox of urban warfare”. In this, Hamas was more than willing to use its own people, including women and children, as human shields. The third was to provoke an allied military response from Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran and perhaps other neighbouring states that would militarily degrade, defeat or destroy Israel.

He says the fourth aim was to isolate Israel diplomatically – something he says Australian ­government policy has aided.

“Fortunately, the continued commitment to Israel of both the Biden and Trump administrations has meant that this isolation, while painful, has not been ultimately successful. But it has hurt,” he says.