Frydenberg calls on Burnside to apologise for retweeting image of Dutton as Nazi

Josh Frydenberg calls on Julian Burnside to apologise for retweeting an image depicting Peter Dutton as a Nazi.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has called on prominent lawyer Julian Burnside to apologise for retweeting an image on Twitter depicting fellow Coalition frontbencher Peter Dutton as a Nazi.

“Julian Burnside depicting Peter Dutton as a Nazi was despicable, was disgusting, and it was deeply offensive,” Mr Frydenberg told media in Canberra this morning. “He should know better.

“He not only should apologise to Peter Dutton, he should apologise to the Jewish community and the community at large.”

Mr Burnside retweeted an image showing the Home Affairs Minister’s face superimposed on that of a Nazi official in a uniform which included the “death’s head” emblem used by the SS unit responsible for concentration camps.

Mr Burnside, a prominent barrister, has represented the likes of Alan Bond and Rose Porteous in court but he has spent the past few years advocating for the rights of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

He is a fierce critic of Mr Dutton and the current Coalition government and added to the retweet of the Nazi photo that Mr Dutton was “the most powerful MP in Australia, and arguably the least scrupulous.”

“He acts as if the rights of human beings are irrelevant, unless they happen to be in his electorate,” he wrote on Saturday.

Mr Frydenberg took aim at the Greens for using extreme language in the political arena.

“The Greens are equally culpable,” he said. “Referring to Dutton as a fascist, racist and neo Nazi, and Jim Molan as a war criminal, they have been consumed by their anger and desensitised to the meaning of their words.

“They show acute insensitivity and an appalling ignorance of history. They should know better.”

Anti-Defamation Commission Chairman Dvir Abramovich said Mr Burnside’s sharing of the Nazi-Dutton photo was “profoundly offensive” to survivors of the Nazi regime, which killed 6 million Jews.

“The idea that Peter Dutton and the government’s policies are in any way similar to the brutal and systematic extermination of millions of Jews … is historically inaccurate and is profoundly offensive to Holocaust survivors and to their families,” he said.

“There is no place for such tasteless equations … and we urge Mr Burnside to weigh his words more carefully, and refrain from invoking such comparisons in the future.”

The Home Affairs Minister hit back at Mr Burnside and called his tweet “disgusting”.

“I hope Mr Burnside is able to apologise to the Jewish community,” Mr Dutton said.

Mr Burnside told The Australian this week that he was not comparing the government’s refugee policies to Nazi Germany.

“However it is important to recognise that the Nazi regime spent years generating in the German community a hatred and fear of Jews, without which the Holocaust would not have been possible,” he said.

“Peter Dutton is not doing things equivalent to the unspeakable acts which we call the Holocaust; but he is cultivating a climate of fear and hatred of some (I emphasise some) refugees.”

Mr Burnside “congratulated” Australia’s Jewish community for their support of refugees but did not apologise to them or Mr Dutton.

“Presumably it suits Peter Dutton for arguments like this to break out, driving a wedge between advocates who broadly agree with each other,” he said.

“I retweeted the image because I regard Peter Dutton as a dangerous force in Australian politics. His strategies should be alarmingly familiar to the ADC (Anti-Defamation Commission).

“The Jewish community in Australia is to be congratulated for its strong advocacy in favour of decent treatment of people seeking asylum. And no wonder: they understand better than most what can happen if fear and hatred are allowed to govern the way people are treated.”

Mr Burnside criticised former prime minister Tony Abbott in 2015 on Twitter for comparing Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to Hitler’s propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.

Executive Council for Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim said Mr Burnside had now “descended to the same level.”

“One expects political debate about asylum seekers to be robust and forthright, but it is a disgrace for a publicly-known figure like Julian Burnside to republish a trivialisation of genocide,” he said.

“He should withdraw the comment and apologise immediately.”

- with Richard Ferguson