Julian Burnside retweets image of Peter Dutton in Nazi uniform

Julian Burnside condemned by Jewish groups for sharing a picture depicting Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton as a Nazi.

QC Julian Burnside. Picture: Eugene Hyland

Jewish groups have condemned barrister Julian Burnside for sharing a picture on Twitter depicting Peter Dutton as a Nazi.

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

Mr Burnside has represented Alan Bond and Rose Porteous in court but more recently has advocated for the rights of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

He is a fierce critic of Mr Dutton and the federal 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.

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 that killed six million Jews.

28-03-18 - Julian Burnside tweet about Peter Dutton. Twitter

“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.

Mr Dutton hit back at Mr Burnside yesterday and called his tweet “disgusting”. “I hope Mr Burnside is able to apologise to the Jewish community,” he said.

Mr Burnside said he was not comparing government refugee policies with 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” the Jewish community for its support of refugees but did not apologise to it or Mr Dutton.