Our policies

Preamble

Trac­ing its ori­gins to the Jews who arrived in Aus­tralia aboard the First Fleet on 26 Jan­u­ary 1788, the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is unique among Dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties. Aus­tralian Jew­ry has played a promi­nent and recog­nised part in Australia’s his­to­ry and has made pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions, out of pro­por­tion to its num­bers, to the devel­op­ment of Aus­tralian soci­ety.

For the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia has indeed been the lucky coun­try bestow­ing upon us the bless­ings of free­dom and respect for human life and dig­ni­ty. Quite sim­ply we are at home here, some­thing that sad­ly has not always been the Jew­ish expe­ri­ence in oth­er parts of the world.

We cel­e­brate the efforts and accom­plish­ments of tal­ent­ed and hard­work­ing indi­vid­u­als and groups from with­in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and are proud of the part they have played in the many cul­tur­al, sport­ing, sci­en­tif­ic, polit­i­cal, social and eco­nom­ic achieve­ments of this great diverse coun­try. Not least among our num­ber have been Jew­ish men and women, many of whom paid the ulti­mate price, who have served at home and abroad in times of war to defend Aus­tralia and the prin­ci­ples of free­dom and jus­tice which our coun­try cher­ish­es.

What fol­lows is the cur­rent pol­i­cy plat­form of the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ). These poli­cies are derived from the beliefs and val­ues of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, which we are con­fi­dent enhance gen­er­al Aus­tralian val­ues of democ­ra­cy and human rights; indi­vid­ual free­dom and the rule of law; social jus­tice and com­pas­sion; mutu­al under­stand­ing and respect; and a fair go for all.

This Coun­cil:
1.1 NOTES that it is the vision of the ECAJ to cre­ate and sup­port a com­mu­ni­ty in which all Aus­tralians, includ­ing all Jew­ish Aus­tralians: (a) feel val­ued and their cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences are respect­ed; (b) have a fair oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet their mate­r­i­al and oth­er needs; and (c) are equal­ly empow­ered as cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate in and con­tribute to all facets of life in the wider com­mu­ni­ty;
1.2 NOTES that as Aus­tralians we take great pride in what we see as the unique­ly Aus­tralian val­ues of social egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, “mate­ship” and a “fair go”;
1.3 REAFFIRMS our pro­found com­mit­ment on behalf of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to the dig­ni­ty of dif­fer­ence, gen­der equal­i­ty, and a belief in the equal­i­ty of humankind;
1.4 PROUDLY AFFIRMS our ongo­ing com­mit­ment to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with indige­nous Aus­tralians, to a mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism that draws peo­ple into, rather than sep­a­rates them from, Aus­tralian life, and to an Aus­tralia that is inclu­sive for all Aus­tralians and respects gen­der equal­i­ty;
1.5 ACKNOWLEDGES that in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, social exclu­sion may result from a num­ber of fac­tors includ­ing: lack of edu­ca­tion­al or voca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties; low lev­els of income; men­tal or phys­i­cal ill­ness or dis­abil­i­ty; immi­gra­tion with­out social sup­port; or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der identity/expression or sex char­ac­ter­is­tics, and that such exclu­sion most often results in indi­vid­u­als being pre­vent­ed through no fault of their own, from build­ing a bet­ter future for them­selves and their fam­i­lies;
1.6 NOTES that pover­ty amongst Aus­tralian Jews is no less preva­lent than in oth­er sec­tors of the Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty and that aspects of inequal­i­ty from which pover­ty stems and which require fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion and sup­port are:
  • Work oppor­tu­ni­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of immi­grants, fam­i­lies with young chil­dren, large fam­i­lies and reli­gious­ly obser­vant fam­i­lies and old­er peo­ple and peo­ple with a dis­abil­i­ty;
  • Access and Equi­ty in the uti­liza­tion of ser­vices – where mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty do not have access to con­tacts, groups and oppor­tu­ni­ties which empow­er them to access the main­stream Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and the wider soci­ety. This can arise from the inabil­i­ty to speak Eng­lish, or lack of edu­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion, or lack of suf­fi­cient income to par­tic­i­pate;
  • Social stig­mas where indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­ence social exclu­sion from the com­mu­ni­ty as a result of men­tal ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ty, or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der identity/expression or sex char­ac­ter­is­tics;
1.7 ACKNOWLEDGES that across Aus­tralia there are numer­ous Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions whose role is to assist mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to over­come social exclu­sion and ame­lio­rate pover­ty. There are com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, aged care ser­vices, and dis­abil­i­ty ser­vices, and there are edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and syn­a­gogues that, inter alia, con­tribute to this work;
1.8 RECOGNISES that the role of the ECAJ is to encour­age organ­i­sa­tions across Aus­tralia to: iden­ti­fy and rec­ti­fy gaps in ser­vices that ought to be pro­vid­ed; encour­age such organ­i­sa­tions to seek oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach out to and pro­vide ser­vices for those who are mar­gin­alised, and to engage Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment depart­ments to assist the com­mu­ni­ty to ensure that the most com­pre­hen­sive ser­vices are pro­vid­ed;
1.9 RECORDS its belief that the max­i­mum ben­e­fit across Aus­tralia will only be achieved by the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty work­ing at both nation­al and State lev­els;
1.10 SUPPORTS the devel­op­ment of projects, espe­cial­ly in small­er and region­al com­mu­ni­ties, which bring hope encom­pass­ing a range of pol­i­cy and pro­gram domains at many lev­els: edu­ca­tion, train­ing, employ­ment, afford­able child­care, assis­tance with hous­ing, a range of dis­abil­i­ty and aged care ser­vices – sup­port for care-givers; and above all – build­ing up at com­mu­ni­ty lev­els a net­work of sup­port­ive ser­vices, ameni­ties and acces­si­ble trans­port facil­i­ties and social men­tor­ing which reduce stig­ma and social exclu­sion from the net­works and vibrant life of our com­mu­ni­ty;
1.11 WELCOMES the efforts of the Fed­er­a­tion of Jew­ish Aged and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Organ­i­sa­tions in assist­ing to achieve these objec­tives.
This Coun­cil:
2.1 DEPLORES all man­i­fes­ta­tions of racist action and speech, includ­ing anti­semitism;
2.2 SUPPORTS the work of the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion and oth­er pub­lic pro­grams to edu­cate Aus­tralians regard­ing the irra­tional­i­ty and evil of racism;
2.3 CALLS ON lead­ers of all main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties to con­sis­tent­ly artic­u­late a vision of Aus­tralia which embraces cul­tur­al diver­si­ty and in which respect for the dig­ni­ty and rights of each Aus­tralian is guar­an­teed;
2.4 CALLS ON all main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties to place racist divi­sive and extrem­ist can­di­dates in the last posi­tions when allo­cat­ing elec­toral pref­er­ences;
2.5 CALLS ON polit­i­cal, civ­il and reli­gious lead­ers to play pub­lic, lead­er­ship roles in empha­siz­ing the unac­cept­abil­i­ty of racism;
2.6 WELCOMES the appoint­ment by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment of a Race Dis­crim­i­na­tion Com­mis­sion­er with­in the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion sep­a­rate to oth­er Com­mis­sion­er roles.
2.7 WELCOMES and sup­ports the adop­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the Nation­al Anti-Racism Strat­e­gy launched by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment in August 2012

This Coun­cil:

3.1NOTES the activ­i­ties of extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tions, the cur­ren­cy of cer­tain racist myths, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of racist mate­r­i­al on the inter­net and the tol­er­ance giv­en to racist com­men­tary by some sec­tions of the main­stream media;
3.2NOTES the inci­dence of racial vil­i­fi­ca­tion and racial­ly-moti­vat­ed vio­lence in Aus­tralia;
3.3AFFIRMS that effec­tive respons­es to racism include moral and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship from pub­lic fig­ures, leg­is­la­tion to give vic­tims of racism legal reme­dies, and on-going pub­lic edu­ca­tion;
3.4COMMENDS those pub­lic fig­ures who have tak­en a lead­er­ship posi­tion against racism, includ­ing anti­semitism;
3.5CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to strength­en leg­isla­tive mea­sures to com­bat racial vil­i­fi­ca­tion in the pub­lic domain and espe­cial­ly on the inter­net and to pro­vide more stream­lined, expe­di­tious and effec­tive reme­dies to indi­vid­u­als and groups who are the tar­gets of pub­lic acts of racial vil­i­fi­ca­tion.
3.6NOTES that the pro­vi­sions of Part IIA of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act have served the com­mu­ni­ty well and have assist­ed in pub­li­cal­ly expos­ing racist behav­iour and in hav­ing such behav­iour pro­scribed.
3.7EXPRESSES CONCERN at pro­pos­als to amend those pro­vi­sions in a man­ner that would reduce or remove impor­tant pro­tec­tions against racial vil­i­fi­ca­tion.
3.8RESOLVES to renew the efforts of the ECAJ to explain its sup­port for exist­ing leg­isla­tive pro­tec­tions against racial vil­i­fi­ca­tion and to advo­cate the reten­tion and enhance­ment of the those pro­tec­tions.
3.9OPPOSES any pro­pos­als for wind­ing back the pro­tec­tions against offen­sive behav­iour based on racial hatred present­ly pro­vid­ed under Part IIA of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act, 1975 (Cth).
3.10NOTES WITH DISAPPOINTMENT that cur­rent sec­tions 80.2A and s.80.2B of the Crim­i­nal Code 1995 (Cth) are unwork­able because:

a. the ele­ments of the offences cre­at­ed by those sec­tions have been for­mu­lat­ed so restric­tive­ly that it is effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble for a pros­e­cu­tor to prove those ele­ments to the crim­i­nal stan­dard; and

b. the avail­abil­i­ty of defences under sec­tion 80.3 to charges under these sec­tions is com­plete­ly mis­con­ceived.

3.11

CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to pass leg­is­la­tion to cre­ate an indictable offence based on the fol­low­ing mod­el:

§*** (1) A per­son who, oth­er­wise than in pri­vate, inten­tion­al­ly or reck­less­ly pro­motes or advo­cates the use or threat­ened use of vio­lence against, or who harass­es or intim­i­dates (although no actu­al­ly bod­i­ly harm is occa­sioned), anoth­er per­son or group of peo­ple because of, or by ref­er­ence to, the actu­al or pre­sumed:

(i) race, colour, descent or nation­al, eth­nic or eth­no-reli­gious ori­gin; or

(ii) reli­gious belief or affil­i­a­tion; or

(iii) sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion; or

(iv) HIV/AIDS sta­tus; or

(v) gen­der identity/expression; or

(vi) sex char­ac­ter­is­tics,

of the oth­er per­son or of some or all of the mem­bers of the group, com­mits an indictable offence.

(2) “Harass­es” includes mak­ing threats or engag­ing in seri­ous and sub­stan­tial ver­bal abuse.

This Coun­cil:

4.1RECOGNISES Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple as the first Aus­tralians, with unique cul­tures, lan­guages and spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships to the land and seas;
4.2PURSUES a vision of an Aus­tralia that pro­vides equal rights and life chances for all;
4.3AFFIRMS the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion as the basis of an Aus­tralian Com­mu­ni­ty which respects the diver­si­ty of val­ues, cul­tures, ideas and the con­tri­bu­tion of all peo­ple;
4.4SUPPORTS Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Australia’s Nation­al Pro­gram of Action which encour­ages organ­i­sa­tions and indi­vid­u­als to turn their good inten­tions into action;
4.5

AFFIRMS that the ECAJ will con­tin­ue to devel­op and imple­ment a Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Action Plan that includes actions, time­frames for imple­men­ta­tion and per­for­mance measures;Areas for action may include the ECAJ using its net­works to:

  • raise Com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness and under­stand­ing of the his­toric, social and eco­nom­ic fac­tors which con­tribute to the cur­rent lev­els of dis­ad­van­tage con­fronting many Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties.
  • influ­ence gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to address the sys­temic issues that keep many Abo­rig­i­nal and Strait Islander peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties in poor health and pover­ty.
  • sup­port human rights based approach­es to eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment pro­grams in Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander com­mu­ni­ties; and
  • lead inter-faith alliances to devel­op and pro­vide tar­get­ed finan­cial and capac­i­ty build­ing sup­port to select­ed projects which strength­en Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander organ­i­sa­tions’ gov­er­nance, man­age­ment, ser­vice deliv­ery and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment.
4.6ENCOURAGES the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Aus­tralia to increase its knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of the iden­ti­ty and expe­ri­ences of Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples and reflect this aware­ness in our social rela­tion­ships and our sup­port for their advance­ment;
4.7CALLS UPON the gov­ern­ments, busi­ness and civ­il com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple of Aus­tralia to take action to reduce the rel­a­tive dis­ad­van­tage many Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple may face by improv­ing edu­ca­tion, health, hous­ing, employ­ment, gov­er­nance, social and com­mu­nal rela­tion­ships and law and jus­tice;
4.8CALLS ON Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions around Aus­tralia to speak out in favour of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the annu­al events, Week of Prayer for Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Nation­al Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Week
4.9NOTES that the Ulu­ru State­ment from the Heart (‘the State­ment’) was made by Indige­nous Aus­tralians direct­ly to the Aus­tralian peo­ple as a whole, hav­ing been endorsed by a gath­er­ing of 250 Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander lead­ers fol­low­ing a four-day First Nations Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion held at Ulu­ru, which in turn fol­lowed a con­sul­ta­tion process that was unprece­dent­ed in Aus­tralian his­to­ry for its scale.
4.10

ENDORSES as just, rea­son­able and achiev­able the Statement’s call for:

  • a First Nations Voice to Par­lia­ment in the form of an advi­so­ry body on pol­i­cy affect­ing Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple, to be enshrined in the Aus­tralian con­sti­tu­tion.
  • a Makar­ra­ta Com­mis­sion to over­see agree­ment-mak­ing between the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment and Indige­nous peo­ple.
  • a truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process to be facil­i­tat­ed by the Makar­ra­ta Com­mis­sion.
4.11AFFIRMS its belief that bring­ing the Statement’s vision to fruition is impor­tant to all Aus­tralians; for Indige­nous Aus­tralians it would mean the vin­di­ca­tion of the truth of their sto­ry and the begin­ning of jus­tice; for all oth­er Aus­tralians it would mean at long last address­ing the most impor­tant item of unfin­ished busi­ness in our nation­al his­to­ry.
4.12ACKNOWLEDGES that the First Nations of Aus­tralia, who have inhab­it­ed the Aus­tralian con­ti­nent for more than 50,000 years, have endured much suf­fer­ing since the advent of Euro­pean set­tle­ment, yet they con­tin­ue to show great dig­ni­ty, patience, tenac­i­ty and gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it, appeal­ing to all that is noble and decent in our soci­ety and invit­ing us to walk with them on the road to truth-telling and heal­ing.
4.13ACCEPTS the invi­ta­tion of the Ulu­ru State­ment from the Heart, and pledges to work with First Nations, Fed­er­al and State politi­cians, local and city author­i­ties, reli­gious, eth­nic and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, busi­ness lead­ers and our fel­low cit­i­zens in mov­ing togeth­er towards a shared future, which in every way lives up to our own robust, dis­tinc­tive­ly Aus­tralian, stan­dards of fair­ness.
This Coun­cil:
4a.1 RECALLS with grat­i­tude and respect that on the 6th Decem­ber 1938, sev­er­al weeks after the cam­paign of anti-Jew­ish vio­lence dur­ing Kristall­nacht in Ger­many, William Coop­er, the Sec­re­tary of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines’ League and an elder of the Yor­ta Yor­ta peo­ple, head­ed a del­e­ga­tion of Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple to the Ger­man Con­sulate in Mel­bourne to deliv­er a peti­tion which con­demned the “cru­el per­se­cu­tion of the Jew­ish peo­ple by the Nazi gov­ern­ment of Ger­many.”
4a.2 RECALLS FURTHER that:
  1. the action tak­en by William Coop­er and his sup­port­ers occurred at a time when Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple them­selves were denied cit­i­zen­ship and oth­er basic human rights in Aus­tralia and were fre­quent­ly sub­ject­ed to appalling phys­i­cal, social and eco­nom­ic pri­va­tions; and
  2. William Coop­er was a fear­less advo­cate for Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple in seek­ing direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion in par­lia­ment, enfran­chise­ment and land rights on their behalf;
4a.3 NOTES with pride and sat­is­fac­tion that the mem­o­ry of William Coop­er has been hon­oured by the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Aus­tralia in cer­e­monies with his descen­dants in Mel­bourne and Syd­ney.;
4a.4 APPLAUDS:
  1. the action tak­en by the Yad Vashem Holo­caust Muse­um in Israel to com­mem­o­rate the courage of William Coop­er by dis­play­ing a plaque in a Memo­r­i­al Gar­den in his hon­or; and
  2. the estab­lish­ment by the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Holo­caust Research at Yad Vashem of an aca­d­e­m­ic chair (pro­fes­sor­ship) for the study of the Resis­tance dur­ing the Holo­caust in trib­ute to William Coop­er;
4a.5 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment as soon as pos­si­ble to intro­duce a suit­able form of nation­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the life and work of this great Aus­tralian.
This Coun­cil:
5.1 AFFIRMS its sup­port for Australia’s pol­i­cy of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, which has served Aus­tralia well as a basis for the social har­mo­ny which for all Aus­tralians to enjoy;
5.2 Wel­comes the Aus­tralian Government’s com­mit­ment to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as a pol­i­cy which respects the right of all Aus­tralians to express their indi­vid­ual cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and to main­tain and share their cul­tur­al her­itage, with­in an over­rid­ing com­mit­ment to Aus­tralia and the basic val­ues of Aus­tralian democ­ra­cy and the rule of law;
5.3 COMMENDS the Government’s pol­i­cy of ensur­ing access and equi­ty in the pro­vi­sion of gov­ern­ment ser­vices, includ­ing the pro­vi­sion of mech­a­nisms to address the bar­ri­ers faced by immi­grants who are not yet famil­iar with Aus­tralian cul­ture and lan­guage; and
5.4 WELCOMES the estab­lish­ment of the Aus­tralian Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Coun­cil as a body ded­i­cat­ed to artic­u­lat­ing and pro­mot­ing a dis­tinc­tive­ly Aus­tralian mod­el of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in accor­dance with clause 5.2.
5.5 CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to pass a nation­al Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Act which makes mul­ti­cul­tur­al prin­ci­ples the pol­i­cy of the nation, which binds the Crown and which requires all agen­cies and providers of Com­mon­wealth Gov­ern­ment ser­vices to report to Par­lia­ment annu­al­ly how they are plan­ning effec­tive­ly for peo­ple of cul­tur­al­ly and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly diverse back­grounds, and to report on progress on imple­men­ta­tion of those plans.
This Coun­cil:
6.1 NOTES the val­ue of the Inter­net in com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion, knowl­edge and ideas but notes also that the Inter­net is increas­ing­ly being abused by indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions for the pur­pose of prop­a­gat­ing racism includ­ing anti­semitism;
6.2 RECOGNISES the com­plex­i­ties involved in any sys­tem of reg­u­la­tion of on-line ser­vices;
6.3 AFFIRMS the view that any com­mu­ni­ca­tion by tra­di­tion­al means which is unlaw­ful is and should be equal­ly unlaw­ful if it is effect­ed through on-line ser­vices;
6.4 SUPPORTS moves to bring in a Code of Prac­tice for Aus­tralian Inter­net Ser­vice Providers and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures for the Inter­net based on the prin­ci­ples that:
  • Noth­ing that it is unlaw­ful to print or broad­cast should be able to escape legal pro­hi­bi­tion mere­ly because it is pub­lished or com­mu­ni­cat­ed through on-line ser­vices.
  • No per­son, enti­ty or organ­i­sa­tion should be pun­ished for an act they could not rea­son­ably know has been com­mit­ted.
  • The right to free­dom of speech must be respect­ed, bear­ing in mind that in demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties this right (as with all oth­er rights) is not unlim­it­ed and, for exam­ple, does not per­mit the com­mis­sion or pro­mo­tion of unlaw­ful acts, or oth­er behav­iour harm­ful to the com­mu­ni­ty or any sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.
  • Gov­ern­ments have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to counter the activ­i­ties of those who harass and/or pro­mote con­tempt and hatred for any sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.
  • In these respects, the Inter­net should not be regard­ed dif­fer­ent­ly to oth­er means by which speech and ideas are dis­sem­i­nat­ed.
This Coun­cil:
7.1 NOTES with grave con­cern the increase in the num­ber of peo­ple around the world who have been made refugees as a result of war and civ­il con­flict;
7.2 RECOGNISES the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by suc­ces­sive Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments in bal­anc­ing the Government’s oblig­a­tions to its cit­i­zens to car­ry out prop­er screen­ing (includ­ing health and secu­ri­ty checks) on all poten­tial new entrants to Aus­tralia, in par­tic­u­lar unau­tho­rised arrivals, and the Government’s human­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions under the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Sta­tus of Refugees (1951) (the Refugee Con­ven­tion) and the 1967 Pro­to­col to the Refugee Con­ven­tion, as well as under cus­tom­ary inter­na­tion­al law;
7.3 RECALLS WITH SHAME that espe­cial­ly pri­or to, but also dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after, World War II many thou­sands of Jew­ish refugees attempt­ing to flee per­se­cu­tion in Europe were denied entry into oth­er coun­tries or forced to engage “smug­glers” to try to escape to free­dom;
7.4 RECALLS that the Refugee Con­ven­tion came into exis­tence in belat­ed recog­ni­tion by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of the great wrong that had been done by osten­si­bly civilised nations in refus­ing to grant asy­lum to Jew­ish refugees flee­ing from Europe pri­or to and dur­ing World War II, and as a prin­ci­pled and com­pas­sion­ate response to the moral imper­a­tive of assist­ing Euro­pean Jews in seek­ing new homes after the Holo­caust;
7.5 NOTES the impor­tant and pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion that Jew­ish and oth­er refugees, from many coun­tries, have made to Aus­tralian soci­ety and the devel­op­ment of Aus­tralia;
7.6 NOTES that in the past, after prop­er pro­cess­ing of their claims by Aus­tralian offi­cials, the vast major­i­ty of those seek­ing asy­lum in Aus­tralia have been found to be gen­uine refugees who had fled their coun­try of usu­al res­i­dence because of a well-found­ed fear of per­se­cu­tion;
7.7 NOTES:
  • that asy­lum seek­ers, whether they are unau­tho­rised mar­itime arrivals, or peo­ple wait­ing in camps in Africa and Asia who have applied to come to Aus­tralia via the UNHCR, should be regard­ed as indi­vid­ual human beings who have hopes and aspi­ra­tions and dreams and feel the same pain and suf­fer the same grief as each of us;
  • that the admis­sion of asy­lum seek­ers is a human­i­tar­i­an act, and suc­ces­sive Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments (both Labor and Coali­tion) have accept­ed that this engages Australia’s inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions;
  • the impor­tance of deal­ing with pol­i­cy con­cern­ing the admis­sion of asy­lum seek­ers in a fair, humane and appro­pri­ate way prefer­ably with­out par­ti­san­ship; and
  • the regret­table absence, after many years of pub­lic debate and shifts in pub­lic opin­ion and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, of an over­all pol­i­cy that is wide­ly accept­ed as the moral­ly cor­rect one.
7.8 ACCORDINGLY CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment:
  • to process appli­ca­tions by per­sons seek­ing asy­lum in Aus­tralia as expe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble and in a spir­it of com­pas­sion, regard­less of whether those appli­ca­tions are made through the offices of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees;
  • to work con­struc­tive­ly with oth­er gov­ern­ments and appro­pri­ate non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions, to ame­lio­rate the plight of refugees around the world and in Aus­tralia;
  • to encour­age each of our region­al neigh­bours not yet par­ty to the Refugee Con­ven­tion and the 1967 Pro­to­col to become par­ties;
  • to imple­ment in good faith and with human­i­ty, Australia’s impor­tant legal and moral oblig­a­tions with respect to refugees;
  • not to hold women and chil­dren asy­lum seek­ers in manda­to­ry deten­tion while their appli­ca­tions for recog­ni­tion of their refugee sta­tus are processed; and
  • to desist from actions that are like­ly to result in per­sons who seek asy­lum in Aus­tralia being sent to coun­tries which are not par­ties to the Refugee Con­ven­tion;
  • to recog­nise that all asy­lum seek­ers are enti­tled to:
    • have their indi­vid­ual claims and cir­cum­stances assessed fair­ly and with­in a rea­son­able time;
    • not be sub­ject­ed to unsafe or harsh con­di­tions while that is occur­ring;
    • not be sub­ject to non-review­able deten­tion or unsafe or harsh con­di­tions while that is occur­ring; and
    • be effec­tive­ly pro­tect­ed against refoule­ment.
7.9 URGES all Aus­tralians to engage in dis­cus­sion of the issues in a con­sid­ered and respect­ful man­ner and with­out resort­ing to pejo­ra­tive gen­er­al­i­sa­tions, and prefer­ably with­out par­ti­san­ship.
This Coun­cil:
8.1 NOTES deci­sions by a num­ber of instru­men­tal­i­ties which recog­nise and sup­port the right of all staff to meet their reli­gious and cer­e­mo­ni­al oblig­a­tions, regard­less of reli­gious, eth­nic or cul­tur­al back­ground;
8.2 RECOGNISES the right of all Aus­tralians to observe reli­gious and cer­e­mo­ni­al oblig­a­tions;
8.3 SUPPORTS the work of the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion in enhanc­ing reli­gious free­dom in Aus­tralia;
8.4 CALLS UPON gov­ern­ment and employ­er organ­i­sa­tions to respect and accom­mo­date, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, the right of employ­ees to meet the oblig­a­tions of their faiths; and
8.5 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to make pro­vi­sion in Australia’s indus­tri­al rela­tions leg­is­la­tion to ensure that reli­gious and cer­e­mo­ni­al oblig­a­tions can be observed with­out attract­ing the threat of loss of employ­ment.
This Coun­cil:
9.1 NOTES the deci­sion of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to aban­don the pro­pos­al to intro­duce an Aus­tralian Char­ter of Human Rights;
9.2 NOTES that the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has pub­lished a ‘Nation­al Frame­work of Human Rights’ which, among oth­er things, pro­pos­es ‘har­mon­i­sa­tion’ of State and Fed­er­al laws pro­hibit­ing racial and reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion and vil­i­fi­ca­tion;
9.3 NOTES the sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences that exist between Fed­er­al and State law on these issues and between the laws of the var­i­ous States;
9.4 CAUTIONS the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment against embrac­ing any con­cept of ‘har­mon­i­sa­tion’ that might result in the adop­tion of a ‘low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor’ legsla­tive regime which would wind back hard-won legal pro­tec­tions that are now in place in some juris­dic­tions in Aus­tralia but not in oth­ers includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, West­ern Australia’s crim­i­nal sanc­tions against racial intim­i­da­tion and harass­ment.
This Coun­cil:
10.1 NOTES the affir­ma­tion by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment in 1987 that Aus­tralia must not serve as a haven for indi­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in crimes against human­i­ty dur­ing the course of the Nazi Geno­cide;
10.2 RECOGNISES the dif­fi­cul­ties encoun­tered in the tri­als of alleged Nazi war crim­i­nals thus far con­duct­ed in Aus­tralia;
10.3 RECOGNISES that major legal and polit­i­cal obsta­cles need­ed to be over­come to estab­lish extra­di­tion treaties with some of the coun­tries which were the scene of the crimes of the Holo­caust;
10.4 RECOGNISES that extra­di­tion of Nazi war crim­i­nals to the coun­tries of their ori­gin and where their crimes took place is not a sub­sti­tute for effec­tive Aus­tralian leg­is­la­tion but is a wel­come com­ple­ment to it;
10.5 SUPPORTS the process of devel­op­ing extra­di­tion treaties between Aus­tralia and all coun­tries in which indi­vid­u­als may have par­tic­i­pat­ed in geno­cide, crimes against human­i­ty and war crimes pri­or to arriv­ing in Aus­tralia; and
10.6 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to amend Australia’s cit­i­zen­ship laws so as to allow for indi­vid­u­als who were born out­side Aus­tralia and who, at the time of enter­ing Aus­tralia, con­cealed their involve­ment in geno­cide, war crimes or crimes against human­i­ty in any con­text, to have their Aus­tralian cit­i­zen­ship removed, regard­less of the length of time they have held cit­i­zen­ship.
This Coun­cil:
11.1 HONOURS the war ser­vice of Aus­tralians of all gen­er­a­tions, memo­ri­alised through pub­lic cer­e­monies and pop­u­lar cul­ture, which helped to shape Australia’s nation­al char­ac­ter, and to define the val­ues our nation cher­ish­es.
11.2 NOTES that the First World War cost Aus­tralia more than any oth­er war in terms of deaths and casu­al­ties. Of the 416,809 Aus­tralians who enlist­ed, approx­i­mate­ly 60,000 were killed and 156,000 were wound­ed, gassed, or tak­en pris­on­er, out of a total pop­u­la­tion at that time of less than five mil­lion.
11.3 RECOGNISES that offi­cial com­mem­o­ra­tions of World War I in Aus­tralia have tra­di­tion­al­ly focused on the Gal­lipoli cam­paign, marked by Anzac Day on April 25, and on the main the­atre of the War, which was the west­ern front in Europe, marked by Remem­brance Day on Novem­ber 11.
11.4 FURTHER NOTES that the third the­atre of oper­a­tions in which Aus­tralians fought in World War I was the Mid­dle East where: (a) in con­trast to the bat­tles at Gal­lipoli and on the west­ern front, the Aus­tralians fought a mobile war against the Ottoman Empire in con­di­tions com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the mud and stag­na­tion that fea­tured in the oth­er two the­atres; (b) the Aus­tralian light horse­men and their mounts had to sur­vive extreme heat, harsh ter­rain, and water short­ages; (c) casu­al­ties were nev­er­the­less com­par­a­tive­ly light, with 1,394 Aus­tralians killed or wound­ed in three years of war.
11.5 RECOGNISES the vital con­tri­bu­tion made by Aus­tralian forces to the Allied vic­to­ries in the Mid­dle East, espe­cial­ly at Beer­she­ba on 31 Octo­ber 1917, when some 800 bay­o­net-wield­ing Aus­tralian Light horse­men won immor­tal fame by charg­ing across a 6 kilo­me­tre plain and over-run­ning Turk­ish defences before enter­ing the town.
11.6 REMEMBERS WITH GRATITUDE that the Allied vic­to­ries in the Mid­dle East gave fur­ther impe­tus to the nation­al revival of the Jew­ish peo­ple, and that out of the defeat­ed Ottoman Empire emerged the inde­pen­dent Arab States that lie to the east of the Mediter­ranean Sea and also, in 1948, a new Jew­ish com­mon­wealth in the ances­tral home­land of the Jew­ish peo­ple, the first such poli­ty to exist in more than 1800 years.
11.7 CALLS UPON THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT to recog­nise that the achieve­ments of Aus­tralian troops in the Mid­dle East the­atre in World War I are as deserv­ing of annu­al, pub­lic recog­ni­tion as the achieve­ments at Gal­lipoli and on the west­ern front, and to des­ig­nate one day each year on which Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary dig­ni­taries will attend a for­mal cer­e­mo­ny in Israel to hon­our the mem­o­ry of Aus­tralian sol­diers who served in the Mid­dle East the­atre between 1916 and 1918, and to com­mem­o­rate their extra­or­di­nary achieve­ments, for their sake and for our own self-under­stand­ing, and that of future gen­er­a­tions of Aus­tralians.
This Coun­cil:
11a.1 CALLS ON the local, State, Ter­ri­to­ry and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments and non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions to recog­nise that nation­al cer­e­monies, cel­e­bra­tions and memo­ri­als should be inclu­sive and not make use of reli­gious words and sym­bols that may effec­tive­ly exclude some Aus­tralian cit­i­zens.
This Coun­cil:
12.1 NOTES with great pride, that Aus­tralia has a strong record for pro­vi­sion of day school edu­ca­tion and that the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty main­tains a num­ber of inde­pen­dent day schools through­out the nation which are essen­tial to Jew­ish learn­ing and our community’s con­ti­nu­ity;
12.2 STRESSES the impor­tance of Jew­ish day schools and oth­er Jew­ish edu­ca­tion providers hav­ing high qual­i­ty Jew­ish Stud­ies and Hebrew cur­ric­u­la;
12.3 RECONFIRMS the respon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ers of Aus­tralian Jew­ry to seek to ensure that no Jew­ish child is denied full-time Jew­ish edu­ca­tion due to finan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions; and the con­tin­ued respon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ers of Aus­tralian Jew­ry to sup­port organ­i­sa­tions that pro­vide Jew­ish edu­ca­tion of chil­dren who are out­side of the Jew­ish day school sys­tem to ensure Jew­ish con­ti­nu­ity for all;
12.4 NOTES with great pride, that Aus­tralia has a strong record for pro­vi­sion of day school edu­ca­tion and that the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty main­tains a num­ber of inde­pen­dent day schools through­out the nation which are essen­tial to Jew­ish learn­ing and our community’s con­ti­nu­ity;
12.5 NOTES that the pro­vi­sion of Jew­ish edu­ca­tion to Jew­ish stu­dents who do not attend Jew­ish day schools, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the Acad­e­my BJE and NSW Board of Pro­gres­sive Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion in New South Wales and the Unit­ed Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion Board in Vic­to­ria, is essen­tial to ensur­ing Jew­ish learn­ing and our community’s con­ti­nu­ity for those out­side of the Jew­ish day school move­ment and organ­i­sa­tion;
12.6 CALLS ON all Jew­ish Day Schools and Boards of Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion and Boards of Pro­gres­sive Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion to sub­stan­tial­ly increase the teach­ing of mod­ern Israel and con­tem­po­rary issues fac­ing Israel and world and Aus­tralian Jew­ry in pro­grams offered from Year 6 to Year 11;
12.7 RECORDS its appre­ci­a­tion to the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment for its ini­tia­tives in grant­i­ng funds to inde­pen­dent schools (includ­ing Jew­ish day schools) to assist them to meet their secu­ri­ty costs and in grant­i­ng tax deductibil­i­ty for gifts to funds estab­lished by them to meet such costs.
12.8 EXPRESSES SUPPORT for the Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia Bien­ni­al Aus­tralian Jew­ish Edu­ca­tors’ Con­fer­ence which plays host to sev­er­al hun­dred teach­ers of Jew­ish Stud­ies from most of Australia’s 18 Jew­ish day schools, infor­mal Jew­ish edu­ca­tors from Zion­ist youth organ­i­sa­tions and teach­ers from the sup­ple­men­tal Jew­ish school sys­tem, togeth­er with pro­fes­sion­al Jew­ish edu­ca­tors from New Zealand, Israel and else­where
This Coun­cil:
13.1 CALLS ON Jew­ish com­mu­nal and fund-rais­ing organ­i­sa­tions to explore addi­tion­al meth­ods of alle­vi­at­ing finan­cial con­straints affect­ing Jew­ish day school edu­ca­tion and the abil­i­ty of Jew­ish day schools to pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty Jew­ish edu­ca­tion;
13.2 CALLS ON Jew­ish com­mu­nal and fund-rais­ing organ­i­sa­tions to explore addi­tion­al meth­ods to ensure that these bod­ies are prop­er­ly and ade­quate­ly resourced, and to estab­lish sim­i­lar bod­ies and/or Jew­ish edu­ca­tion providers in oth­er States and Ter­ri­to­ries of Aus­tralia and in com­mu­ni­ties out­side the major cen­tres of Jew­ish life; and
13.3 CALLS ON Jew­ish com­mu­nal and fund-rais­ing organ­i­sa­tions to invest in teach­ers and the teach­ing of Hebrew and Jew­ish stud­ies and to see that invest­ment as a crit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion towards Jew­ish con­ti­nu­ity in Aus­tralia.
This Coun­cil:
14.1 AFFIRMS the con­tin­u­ing vital impor­tance to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of school­child­ren in Jew­ish day schools in Aus­tralia of the Secure Schools pro­gram, and the need for a con­sis­tent and equi­table nation­al approach to the allo­ca­tion of funds to Jew­ish Schools under that pro­gram;
14.2 NOTES with appre­ci­a­tion the Aus­tralian government’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue that pro­gram;
14.3 NOTES FURTHER with appre­ci­a­tion that the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has also estab­lished the Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Fund, which is to pro­vide local coun­cils and com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions grants of up to $1 mil­lion to boost efforts to address crime and anti-social behav­iour and pro­tect organ­i­sa­tions that may be fac­ing secu­ri­ty risks asso­ci­at­ed with racial or reli­gious intol­er­ance.
14.4 CALLS ON all organ­i­sa­tions with­in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to work close­ly with the ECAJ and with their respec­tive State Jew­ish com­mu­nal roof bod­ies and CSGs to co-ordi­nate the Jew­ish community’s efforts to seek fund­ing from the Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Fund.
This Coun­cil:
15.1 NOTES the devel­op­ment of Jew­ish ter­tiary edu­ca­tion and encour­ages Jew­ish stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly day-school grad­u­ates, to take advan­tage of the learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at these insti­tu­tions and wel­comes all ini­tia­tives to fund aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tions and offer schol­ar­ships and finan­cial sup­port to enhance this devel­op­ment.
This Coun­cil:
16.1 NOTES that some Aus­tralian Uni­ver­si­ties treat exchange pro­grams with Israeli uni­ver­si­ties less favourably than exchange pro­grams with oth­er West­ern coun­tries’ uni­ver­si­ties;
16.2 CALLS upon all Aus­tralian Uni­ver­si­ties to treat exchange pro­grams with Israeli uni­ver­si­ties no less favourably than exchange pro­grams with oth­er West­ern coun­tries’ uni­ver­si­ties.
This Coun­cil:
17.1 NOTES the impor­tance of the rela­tion­ship between Israel and Aus­tralian Jew­ry;
17.2 APPLAUDS the suc­cess of many Israel expe­ri­ence pro­grams oper­at­ed by Aus­tralian Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions in part­ner­ship with Israel and in par­tic­u­lar Jew­ish day schools, AUJS, Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia and the Zion­ist youth groups;
17.3 RECOGNISES the cen­tral role of the Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia in pro­mot­ing and facil­i­tat­ing such pro­grams;
17.4 APPLAUDS the estab­lish­ment of the Israel Expe­ri­ence Fund/birthright Pro­gram in Aus­tralia by the Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia with the sup­port of the Unit­ed Israel Appeal.
This Coun­cil:
18.1 NOTES the impor­tance of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty bas­ing its deci­sions and plan­ning on the most reli­able infor­ma­tion avail­able;
18.2 NOTES that the data avail­able to the com­mu­ni­ty from each Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics Cen­sus is an impor­tant resource;
18.3 WELCOMES whole­heart­ed­ly the pub­li­ca­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2009 of the ini­tial results of the Aus­tralian and New Zealand Jew­ish Pop­u­la­tion Sur­vey under­tak­en by the Aus­tralian Cen­tre for Jew­ish Civil­i­sa­tion, with the sup­port of a range of organ­i­sa­tions in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty (the Gen08 sur­vey) and warm­ly com­mends all those who con­duct­ed, sup­port­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Sur­vey, and also the sec­ond such sur­vey con­duct­ed in 2017 (the Gen17 sur­vey); and
18.4 CALLS FOR Jew­ish com­mu­nal organ­i­sa­tions to make full use of the Sur­vey data in their future plan­ning.
This Coun­cil:
19.1 COMMMENDS the steps tak­en by Aus­tralian police forces to pro­vide vis­i­ble pro­tec­tion for Jew­ish com­mu­nal gath­er­ings;
19.2 NOTES the improve­ment in mea­sures tak­en by law enforce­ment agen­cies to iden­ti­fy and pros­e­cute indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for arson attacks on syn­a­gogues, assaults and harass­ment;
19.3 NOTES that still too often the per­pe­tra­tors of oth­er acts of anti­se­mit­ic vio­lence against peo­ple and prop­er­ty remain uniden­ti­fied and there­fore remain at large;
19.4 CALLS ON state and fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies to urgent­ly upgrade their capac­i­ty to pur­sue and appre­hend the per­pe­tra­tors of acts of racist vio­lence and van­dal­ism and to fund both pub­lic and Jew­ish com­mu­nal strate­gies to achieve those ends; and
19.5 RECORDS WITH APPRECIATION the Fed­er­al Government’s leg­is­la­tion in 2008 designed to alle­vi­ate the cost­ly secu­ri­ty bur­den borne by Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties Aus­tralia-wide by enabling dona­tions for the pur­pose of the pro­vi­sion of secu­ri­ty to Jew­ish insti­tu­tions to be tax deductible.
This Coun­cil:
20.1 NOTES the impor­tance to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of the avail­abil­i­ty to its nation­al lead­er­ship of accu­rate data con­cern­ing the nature and extent of anti­semet­ic vio­lence, van­dal­ism, intim­i­da­tion and harass­ment in Aus­tralia;
20.2 NOTES that the only com­mu­nal bod­ies which are in a posi­tion to act on behalf of the entire Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in each state and ter­ri­to­ry are the con­stituents of the ECAJ, which in Vic­to­ria is co-ordi­nat­ed with the ADC;
20.3 STRESSES the impor­tance of state con­stituents mak­ing known to the Jew­ish and wider com­mu­ni­ties their role in col­lat­ing infor­ma­tion relat­ing to anti­semitism;
20.4 REAFFIRMS that all com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions should prompt­ly for­ward reports of inci­dents of anti­semitism to the Con­stituent bod­ies of the ECAJ.
This Coun­cil:
21.1 NOTES that some indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions in Aus­tralia con­tin­ue to prop­a­gate Holo­caust Denial includ­ing as a means of attack­ing the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty;
21.2 NOTES the decep­tion employed by Holo­caust deniers in the way they present their hatred in qua­si-aca­d­e­m­ic guise;
21.3 NOTES THAT Holo­caust Denial has been found by the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia to con­sti­tute unlaw­ful behav­iour;
21.4 CALLS ON Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions to con­tin­ue their pol­i­cy of not engag­ing Holo­caust deniers in any pub­lic debate which could give cre­dence to Holo­caust Denial but to clear­ly and pub­licly iden­ti­fy Holo­caust deniers as peo­ple engaged in anti­semitism and pro­mo­tion of extrem­ist ide­olo­gies.
This Coun­cil:
22.1 RECOGNISES the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty as part of the Jew­ish peo­ple, with a shared his­to­ry, tra­di­tion and lin­guis­tic and reli­gious her­itage, and as a vital and vibrant com­po­nent of mul­ti­cul­tur­al Aus­tralia;
22.2 RECOGNISES the plu­ral­is­tic nature of Aus­tralian Jew­ry and the com­plex nature of the var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties of Aus­tralian Jew­ry due to diverse lan­guage, cul­tur­al ori­gin and nation­al back­ground;
22.3 ACKNOWLEDGES the right of any Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tion to iden­ti­fy as an eth­nic, reli­gious, eth­no-reli­gious or cul­tur­al organ­i­sa­tion through the choice of the mem­ber­ship of that organ­i­sa­tion or through its spe­cif­ic aims, objec­tives and pro­grams con­sis­tent with poli­cies and pro­grams of the gov­ern­ment relat­ing to eth­nic affairs;
22.4 VALUES the friend­ly coop­er­a­tion and cor­dial rela­tion­ship between Aus­tralian Jew­ry and oth­er eth­nic, reli­gious, eth­no-reli­gious and cul­tur­al groups and roof bod­ies with­in Aus­tralia;
22.5 ENCOURAGES close liai­son between Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions, eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties coun­cils and oth­er Aus­tralian groups in the pur­suit of com­mon poli­cies in the best inter­ests of the whole Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty.
This Coun­cil:
23.1 CONGRATULATES mem­bers of the Aus­tralian Nation­al Dia­logue of Chris­tians, Mus­lims and Jews, the Angli­can Jew­ish Aus­tralian Dia­logue, The Nation­al Dia­logue of the Unit­ing Church in Australia/ECAJ and Aus­tralian Catholic Bish­ops Committee/ECAJ Annu­al Con­ver­sa­tion on the con­duct and out­come of their meet­ings;
23.2 APPLAUDS the devel­op­ment in Syd­ney of the Women’s Inter­faith Net­work which now has four branch­es;
23.3 WELCOMES the devel­op­ment of mul­ti-faith events and con­tacts between bod­ies rep­re­sent­ing many diverse faith groups;
23.4 APPLAUDS activ­i­ties which improve the basis for dia­logue between Jews and Chris­tians;
23.5 AFFIRMS past efforts at improv­ing Jew­ish-Mus­lim rela­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those which have recog­nised com­mon con­cerns in areas such as reli­gious lib­er­ty, racial tol­er­ance and recog­ni­tion of reli­gious rights;
23.6 SUPPORTS dia­logue and coop­er­a­tion between Fed­er­al, State and Ter­ri­to­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and all oth­er Faith com­mu­ni­ties with a view to com­mon action for com­mu­nal tol­er­ance and inter-com­mu­ni­ty coop­er­a­tion;
23.7 CALLS on all reli­gious groups to respect the dig­ni­ty and right of all peo­ple to main­tain their own reli­gious tra­di­tions;
23.8 APPLAUDS the work of APRO, The Aus­tralian Part­ner­ship of Reli­gious Organ­i­sa­tions;
23.3 SUPPORTS the expan­sion of the dia­logue process to include oth­er part­ner organ­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ing reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties.
This Coun­cil:
24.1 NOTES that, in the past, SBS Tele­vi­sion and Radio have been a cause of con­cern to the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty with regard to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of anti-Israel bias in some of its news and cur­rent affairs pro­gram­ming and con­tent and that com­mon fair­ness stan­dards have not been applied to mate­r­i­al broad­cast in lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish;
24.2 WELCOMES recent improve­ments in the qual­i­ty and fair­ness of the news and cur­rent affairs pro­gram­ming and con­tent of SBS Tele­vi­sion and Radio with regard to Israel;
24.3 NOTES nev­er­the­less the con­tin­u­ing absence of any inde­pen­dent com­plaints mech­a­nism for SBS and the deci­sion of SBS not to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Stan­dard on Com­plaints Han­dling in issu­ing its 2006 revised Codes of Prac­tice; and
24.4 CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to imple­ment an imme­di­ate and effec­tive review mech­a­nism which at the very least will require SBS to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Stan­dard on Com­plaints Han­dling and imple­ment an inde­pen­dent com­plaint res­o­lu­tion tri­bunal.
This Coun­cil:
25.1 RECALLS the impor­tance for the ABC to main­tain the resourc­ing of reli­gious pro­gram­ming, so as to pro­vide insights into reli­gion and the place of reli­gious move­ments in pub­lic life and to pro­vide Aus­tralia with an infor­ma­tive and stim­u­lat­ing reli­gious pro­gram­ming mix includ­ing in its move to suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal growth, and to com­mit pub­licly to those objec­tives;
25.2 RECALLS that togeth­er with oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ties, in Feb­ru­ary 2009, it expressed its con­cern at the reduc­tion in reli­gious pro­gram­ming on ABC Radio Nation­al;
25.3 NOTES that at that time, the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the ABC said that the ABC had no plans to scrap the reli­gion unit or to scrap spe­cial­i­sa­tion in report­ing, but that it pro­posed to con­tin­ue to mod­i­fy pro­grammes, and that in addi­tion to oth­er pro­gram­ming slots, reli­gion will fea­ture in “Back­ground Brief­ing” which will reach a broad­er audi­ence and allow for in-depth report­ing;
25.4 FURTHER NOTES the assur­ance that the effects of the reli­gious pro­gram­ming deci­sions made in 2008 are being con­sid­ered with­in the review of ABC radio cur­rent­ly under­way. The appoint­ment of a new head of radio in mid-2009 will be of sig­nif­i­cance to the review. The review will pro­vide scope to bet­ter artic­u­late ques­tions on spe­cial­i­ties, dig­i­tal media and rur­al broad­cast­ing;
25.5 CALLS UPON the Com­mit­tee of Man­age­ment to mon­i­tor progress in rela­tion to these mat­ters and report to the Coun­cil.
25.6 EXPRESSES its long-stand­ing con­cern about anti-Israel bias exhib­it­ed by the ABC in some of its cov­er­age of Israel and the Mid­dle East;
25.7 NOTES that from time to time anti­se­mit­ic post­ed com­ments and images appear on ABC’s Face­book pages and are not mod­er­at­ed at all or remain unmod­er­at­ed for extend­ed peri­ods; and
25.8 CALLS UPON the ABC Board and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor to take all nec­es­sary mea­sures to ensure fair and accu­rate cov­er­age of Israel and the Mid­dle East, and to keep anti­se­mit­ic con­tent off the ABC’s Face­book pages.
25.9 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to replace the ABC’s inter­nal com­plaints unit, known as ‘ABC Audi­ence and Con­sumer Affairs’, with an inde­pen­dent, exter­nal com­plaints unit.
This Coun­cil:
26A.1

RECOGNISES that Jews from Arab-major­i­ty coun­tries and Iran (Mizrahi Jews) are an inte­gral part of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and that some of their fam­i­lies have had a con­tin­u­ous phys­i­cal pres­ence in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel since ancient times, there­by exem­pli­fy­ing the ancient and con­tin­u­ous con­nec­tion of the Jew­ish peo­ple to Jerusalem, the Land of Israel and the mod­ern State of Israel.
26A.2 RECORDS with great sad­ness that, in response to the cre­ation of the State of Israel in 1948, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Jews then liv­ing in Arab-major­i­ty coun­tries and Iran, num­ber­ing approx­i­mate­ly 800,000 peo­ple, were expelled or oth­er­wise uproot­ed from their homes, effec­tive­ly ter­mi­nat­ing more than two mil­len­nia of con­tin­u­ous Jew­ish his­to­ry in those coun­tries.
26A.3 ENCOURAGES its affil­i­ate and con­stituent organ­i­sa­tions, togeth­er with the ECAJ, to hold com­mem­o­ra­tive events, includ­ing annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tions of the uproot­ing of Mizrahi Jews and to advo­cate for the recog­ni­tion of their plight.
26A.4 STRONGLY ADVOCATES that addi­tion­al efforts be under­tak­en so that the myr­i­ad Jew­ish his­to­ries, cul­tures and tra­di­tions of both Sephar­di and Mizrahi Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties can be researched, taught and bet­ter under­stood in Jew­ish day schools, oth­er Jew­ish edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and with­in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.
This Coun­cil:
27.1 RECOGNISES that the involve­ment of younger com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers is of vital impor­tance to the suc­cess of Jew­ish con­ti­nu­ity;
27.2 NOTES with con­cern the lack of youth and young adult rep­re­sen­ta­tion on some key com­mu­nal bod­ies;
27.3 RESOLVES to pre­pare an action plan to devel­op strate­gies to encour­age youth par­tic­i­pa­tion on com­mu­nal bod­ies.
This Coun­cil:
28.1 NOTES that it has received reports that ceme­tery author­i­ties in a num­ber of juris­dic­tions are review­ing poli­cies on per­ma­nent tenure of graves;
28.2 NOTES Jew­ish law and tra­di­tion require bur­ial in per­pe­tu­ity;
28.3 NOTES that, accord­ing to halacha, a grave con­tain­ing human remains is demar­cat­ed as the final rest­ing place of the per­son con­cerned and the integri­ty of the grave must not be altered with­out explic­it Rab­binic author­i­ty;
28.4 REAFFIRMS the need to main­tain arrange­ments for Jew­ish buri­als in per­pe­tu­ity and calls on ceme­tery author­i­ties to respect this require­ment; and
28.5 CALLS UPON State Gov­ern­ments to plan for the future bur­ial needs of their Jew­ish cit­i­zens and ensure that suf­fi­cient land is allo­cat­ed for Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties to bury their dead in accor­dance with Jew­ish reli­gious require­ments.
This Coun­cil:
29.1 RECALLS the con­cern expressed by the ECAJ at the con­tin­ued fail­ure to alle­vi­ate the plight of vic­tims of wil­ful Gett refusal;
29.2 APPLAUDS the efforts over some years by the Joint Task Force of the ECAJ and the Organ­i­sa­tion of Rab­bis of Aus­trala­sia to devel­op use­ful pro­pos­als;
29.3 NOTES that the British Par­lia­ment has now joined the leg­is­la­tures of Cana­da, South Africa and New York in pass­ing laws to pro­vide reme­dies aimed at releas­ing those spous­es who are “chained” by wil­ful Gett refusal;
29.4 URGES the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to leg­is­late in the terms of the Report of The Fam­i­ly Law Coun­cil of Aus­tralia which rec­om­mends to the Attor­ney-Gen­er­al that the joint leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al of the ECAJ and ORA should be enact­ed as Aus­tralian law;
29.5 WELCOMES ini­tia­tives by the rab­binate to draft a form of pre-nup­tial agree­ment for Jew­ish cou­ples that is enforce­able under Aus­tralian law and encour­ages Jew­ish cou­ples to sign such an agree­ment requir­ing com­pli­ance with Beth Din instruc­tions relat­ing to the grant­i­ng of a Gett in the event of a civ­il dis­so­lu­tion of the mar­riage.

This Coun­cil:

30.1NOTES that the slaugh­ter­ing of bovine and ovine ani­mals accord­ing to meth­ods autho­rised by halacha (she­chi­ta) has been an inte­gral part of Jew­ish life for 3,000 years and that she­chi­ta has for cen­turies been accept­ed in civilised soci­eties as a humane way of slaugh­ter­ing such ani­mals for con­sump­tion;
30.2

AFFIRMS the unit­ed view of Rab­binic author­i­ties in Aus­tralia that accord­ing to halacha:

  1. the pre-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ani­mals ren­ders such ani­mals unfit for Kosher con­sump­tion; and
  2. the post-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ovine ani­mals ren­ders such ani­mals unfit for Kosher con­sump­tion;
30.3FURTHER NOTES that Aus­tralian law has always per­mit­ted the slaugh­ter of ani­mals and poul­try accord­ing to she­chi­ta and, in par­tic­u­lar, has nev­er required the pre-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ani­mals or the post-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ovine ani­mals;
30.4WELCOME the deci­sion of the Pri­ma­ry Indus­tries Min­is­te­r­i­al Coun­cil on 28 Octo­ber 2011 to “con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the reli­gious groups in order to set­tle an applic­a­ble risk man­age­ment frame­work” with­out requir­ing exist­ing laws and reg­u­la­tions per­mit­ting she­chi­ta to be changed and with­out accept­ing pro­pos­als to require the pre-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ani­mals or the post-slaugh­ter stun­ning of ovine ani­mals;
30.5

AFFIRMS the unit­ed view of Rab­binic author­i­ties in Aus­tralia that accord­ing to halacha:

  1. the ban­ning of she­chi­ta is his­tor­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with attempts to dele­git­imise Jew­ish reli­gious prac­tices and has long been a man­i­fes­ta­tion of anti­semitism; and
  2. allow­ing recre­ation­al hunt­ing in New Zealand, with ani­mal death and injury in num­bers far greater than are affect­ed by she­chi­ta, is indica­tive of a dou­ble stan­dard being applied to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty vis a vis ani­mal wel­fare.
30.6

NOTES that Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties around the world, includ­ing Aus­tralia and New Zealand, have com­mit­ted them­selves to coop­er­at­ing with ani­mal wel­fare offi­cers to ensure that Kosher slaugh­ter meets the high­est indus­try stan­dards and con­forms to Jew­ish Law and that:

  1. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act pro­tects the rights of indi­vid­u­als to man­i­fest their reli­gion includ­ing the right to uphold tra­di­tion­al prac­tices and adhere to reli­gious dietary require­ments.
  2. The New Zealand Nation­al Ani­mal Wel­fare Advi­so­ry Coun­cil itself rec­om­mend­ed that an exist­ing exemp­tion to allow for she­chi­ta be con­tin­ued by the Min­is­ter for Agri­cul­ture.
  3. Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties have lived and flour­ished in New Zealand for over 160 years.
  4. The ban on she­chi­ta caus­es real hard­ship to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in New Zealand and threat­ens its long-term via­bil­i­ty as a com­mu­ni­ty.
30.7CALLS UPON the New Zealand gov­ern­ment to reverse its ban on she­chi­ta with imme­di­ate effect and to com­mit itself to work­ing with the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to ensure that Jews are able to prac­tise their reli­gion includ­ing local slaugh­ter of live­stock accord­ing to Kosher dietary require­ments.
This Coun­cil:
31.1 NOTES with con­cern chal­lenges to the prac­tice of Brit Milah;
31.2 RECOGNISES that Brit Milah, accord­ing to halachic process, is an essen­tial and defin­i­tive rite of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty;
31.3 AFFIRMS its com­mit­ment to pro­tect the right of Jew­ish fam­i­lies to con­tin­ue the obser­vance of Brit Milah by com­pe­tent Mohe­lim.
This Coun­cil:
32.1 APPLAUDS the efforts by suc­ces­sive Israeli gov­ern­ments to bring about a just and last­ing peace and a res­o­lu­tion of the Arab-Israeli con­flict.
32.2 SUPPORTS the prin­ci­ple of two-States for two peo­ples, as the only prin­ci­ple upon which a just and sus­tain­able peace between Israel and its Pales­tin­ian neigh­bours can be built and notes with appre­ci­a­tion that the Aus­tralian Government’s pol­i­cy state­ments have con­sis­tent­ly affirmed that the con­flict between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans can only be resolved through direct nego­ti­a­tions;
32.2A URGES Aus­tralia to join the US, Cana­da, Ger­many, Italy and the Czech Repub­lic, among oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic nations which have announced their oppo­si­tion to the Pales­tin­ian bid for recog­ni­tion by the Unit­ed Nations of a uni­lat­er­al­ly declared Pales­tin­ian State, in vot­ing against any such pro­pos­al in the Gen­er­al Assem­bly, rather than mere­ly abstain­ing;
32.3 NOTES with appre­ci­a­tion that all major polit­i­cal par­ties in Aus­tralia:
  • (a) are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing an endur­ing and just two-state solu­tion to the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, based on the right of Israel to live in peace with­in secure bor­ders, inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised and agreed by the par­ties, and reflect­ing the legit­i­mate aspi­ra­tions of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple to also live in peace and secu­ri­ty with­in their own state; and
  • (b) have repeat­ed­ly con­demned and called for an end to Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist attacks delib­er­ate­ly aimed at killing and maim­ing Israeli civil­ians and the con­tin­ued smug­gling of arms and muni­tions into Gaza;
32.4 APPLAUDS the sup­port of suc­ces­sive Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments for inter­na­tion­al calls for the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty to renounce and pre­vent vio­lence and incite­ment against Israel and for Hamas to recog­nise Israel, to renounce and pre­vent vio­lence and incite­ment against Israel and to affirm and imple­ment all agree­ments with Israel that have been entered into by the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Organ­i­sa­tion and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty;
32.5 REAFFIRMS Aus­tralian Jewry’s strong and unshake­able sol­i­dar­i­ty with Israel and her peo­ple;
32.6 DEPLORES and CONDEMNS unre­served­ly as anti­se­mit­ic all attempts to demonise or dele­git­imise Israel as the State of the Jew­ish peo­ple by:
  • Deny­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple their right to self-deter­mi­na­tion, e.g., by claim­ing that the exis­tence of a State of Israel is a racist endeav­or.
  • Apply­ing dou­ble stan­dards by requir­ing of Israel or its mil­i­tary forces stan­dards of behav­iour high­er than those expect­ed or demand­ed of any oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic nation or its mil­i­tary forces.
  • Using the sym­bols and images asso­ci­at­ed with clas­sic anti­semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to char­ac­ter­ize Israel or Israelis.
  • Draw­ing com­par­isons of con­tem­po­rary Israeli pol­i­cy to that of the Nazis.
  • Hold­ing Jews col­lec­tive­ly respon­si­ble for actions of the State of Israel.
  • Call­ing for dis­crim­i­na­to­ry boy­cotts, divest­ments and sanc­tions against Israel.
32.7 STRONGLY URGES all Jews, indi­vid­u­al­ly as well as com­mu­nal­ly and insti­tu­tion­al­ly, to vis­it Israel and sched­ule events in Israel.
This Coun­cil:
32A.1 NOTES that:
  • the State of Israel was estab­lished, with inter­na­tion­al endorse­ment, to give effect to the right of nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion of the Jew­ish peo­ple in its his­toric home­land;
  • the re-attain­ment of their sov­er­eign­ty, state­hood and polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence has unlocked the cre­ative ener­gies of the Jew­ish peo­ple, and giv­en birth to a new flow­er­ing in Israel of Jew­ish civil­i­sa­tion in all its dimen­sions, spir­i­tu­al, cul­tur­al and mate­r­i­al;
  • mind­ful of the dis­crim­i­na­tion, oppres­sion, per­se­cu­tion and geno­cide to which the Jew­ish peo­ple were sub­ject­ed dur­ing the long cen­turies when they had no State of their own, the State of Israel has also served as a refuge for Jews who have been expelled or forced to flee from per­se­cu­tion in coun­tries in many parts of the world includ­ing Europe, the Mid­dle East, North Africa, the for­mer Sovi­et Union and Ukraine;
  • under Israel’s Law of Return, any per­son with at least one Jew­ish grand­par­ent is eli­gi­ble to make Aliyah, regard­less of the stream of Judaism, if any, with which that per­son iden­ti­fies or is affil­i­at­ed, or through which that per­son, if a con­vert, may have con­vert­ed to Judaism; and
  • the Law of Return is of vital inter­est to all Jews, no mat­ter where in the world they may live;
32A.2 DEPLORES demands recent­ly made by cer­tain polit­i­cal and reli­gious fig­ures in Israel to dis­qual­i­fy per­sons who have con­vert­ed to Judaism through the Pro­gres­sive or Reform streams from being eli­gi­ble to make Aliyah under the Law of Return.
32A.3 CONDEMNS those demands as:
  • a moral­ly abhor­rent aban­don­ment of those liv­ing out­side of Israel who have con­vert­ed to Judaism through the Pro­gres­sive or Reform streams, and who may find them­selves per­se­cut­ed as Jews; and
  • a betray­al of the prin­ci­ples and promise of Zion­ism.
32A.4 CALLS UPON the gov­ern­ment of Israel to affirm, clear­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly, that the oper­a­tion of the Law of Return shall not be altered in any such man­ner.
This Coun­cil:
33.1 NOTES with con­cern calls from some for­mer polit­i­cal lead­ers for Aus­tralia to recog­nise a Pales­tin­ian State, oth­er than as an out­come of a com­pre­hen­sive peace agree­ment between the Pales­tini­ans and Israel.
33.2 REJECTS these calls as pos­si­bly well-intend­ed but fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­con­ceived.
33.3 REJECTS any attempts to pres­sure only one side of the Israel-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, name­ly Israel, to make uni­lat­er­al con­ces­sions, with­out demand­ing rec­i­p­ro­cal ini­tia­tives from the Pales­tini­ans, and notes that this approach only serves to dis­cour­age both peo­ples from mak­ing the hard com­pro­mis­es that will be essen­tial for a just and durable peace.
33.4 NOTES that, giv­en the irrec­on­cil­able philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal divi­sions between the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty and Hamas, which each con­trols dif­fer­ent parts of the ter­ri­to­ry claimed by the Pales­tini­ans, there is cur­rent­ly no Pales­tin­ian enti­ty which meets the essen­tial legal and oth­er cri­te­ria of a State.
33.5 NOTES the con­trast between the legal­is­tic approach pur­port­ed­ly adopt­ed by advo­cates of recog­ni­tion on one ques­tion, name­ly set­tle­ments, and their cav­a­lier dis­re­gard for well-estab­lished legal prin­ci­ples on anoth­er, name­ly the cre­ation of states and their recog­ni­tion. The inter­na­tion­al rule of law must be sup­port­ed as a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple, not selec­tive­ly.
33.6 NOTES accord­ing­ly that recog­ni­tion of a State of Pales­tine, oth­er than as an out­come of a com­pre­hen­sive peace agree­ment with Israel would:
  • do noth­ing to resolve the core issues of the Israel-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, in par­tic­u­lar Jerusalem, refugees, bor­ders, set­tle­ments, secu­ri­ty and water. The com­plex arrange­ments required to address these core issues will require co-oper­a­tion between the par­ties via detailed agree­ments, not grandil­o­quent, sym­bol­ic state­ments of recog­ni­tion by out­side par­ties;
  • under­mine the inter­na­tion­al rule of law and lay the foun­da­tions for open­ing a new phase of the Pales­tini­ans’ con­flict with Israel, rather than for resolv­ing the con­flict. This would be con­trary to the inter­ests of both Israelis and Pales­tini­ans.
33.7 CALLS UPON all Aus­tralian polit­i­cal par­ties to reaf­firm their com­mit­ment to the achieve­ment of a peace­ful, nego­ti­at­ed res­o­lu­tion of the con­flict based on the prin­ci­ple of two states for two peo­ples.
This Coun­cil:
34.1 REAFFIRMS the cen­tral­i­ty of Jerusalem his­tor­i­cal­ly, reli­gious­ly and cul­tur­al­ly to Jews and Judaism;
34.2 STRESSES the need for free access and wor­ship for Jews at all reli­gious sites, includ­ing The Tem­ple Mount;
34.3 CALLS ON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to recog­nise Israel’s sov­er­eign­ty over Jerusalem and to trans­fer the Aus­tralian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This Coun­cil:
35.1 SHARES the heart­felt con­cerns of all Israelis about the fate of Israeli air­man Ron Arad, who went miss­ing in action in Lebanon in 1986;
35.2 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the Unit­ed Nations and to all rel­e­vant Mid­dle East states, and in par­tic­u­lar Iran, Syr­ia and Lebanon, urg­ing them to seek and pro­vide infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the fate of Ron Arad.
This Coun­cil:
36.1 JOINS in mourn­ing the vic­tims of ter­ror­ism in Israel and through­out the world, and extends con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives and friends of those who have been mur­dered, and sym­pa­thy and best wish­es for a full recov­ery to the injured;
36.2 SUPPORTS efforts to pre­vent ter­ror­ist attacks, includ­ing the enact­ment of effec­tive anti-ter­ror­ism laws, the allo­ca­tion of resources for the effi­cient inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror­ist crimes and the arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of ter­ror­ist sus­pects, and Australia’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the inter­na­tion­al war against ter­ror­ism;
36.3 URGES the Unit­ed Nations and all gov­ern­ments to take effec­tive action against coun­tries which serve as a haven and pro­vide bases and sup­port for ter­ror­ists;
36.4 NOTES the impor­tance of leg­is­la­tion designed to counter ter­ror­ism and to pro­vide secu­ri­ty in a man­ner that prop­er­ly recog­nis­es the required bal­ance between civ­il lib­er­ties and law enforce­ment, and recog­nis­ing that the great major­i­ty of Aus­tralian Mus­lims abhor ter­ror­ism;
36.5 CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to take effec­tive mea­sures and make appro­pri­ate arrange­ments where nec­es­sary with oth­er gov­ern­ments, to pre­vent the trans­mis­sion into or with­in Aus­tralia, by tele­vi­sion or radio or through the inter­net, of mate­r­i­al that pro­motes any form of ter­ror­ism, and applauds all efforts that help to ensure that the cohe­sion of Australia’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al soci­ety is not prej­u­diced;
36.6 URGES the Aus­tralian and oth­er gov­ern­ments to act against Pales­tin­ian and oth­er anti-Israeli ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions such as Hamas, the Al Aqsa Mar­tyrs Brigade, Hezbol­lah and Islam­ic Jihad;
36.7 CALLS ON the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to make appro­pri­ate arrange­ments with oth­er gov­ern­ments to devel­op more refined and effec­tive norms of inter­na­tion­al law to deal with the prob­lems posed by armed attacks car­ried out by non-State actors.
36.8 COMMENDS the deci­sion of the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to list Hezbol­lah in its entire­ty as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion, in line with the prac­tice of Australia’s clos­est allies.
This Coun­cil:
37.1 NOTES wide­spread reports of sys­tem­at­ic human rights abus­es by the Iran­ian regime in vir­tu­al­ly every facet of Iran’s polit­i­cal, social and eco­nom­ic life, aimed par­tic­u­lar­ly at minor­i­ty reli­gious and eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties, but also at women, stu­dents and trade union­ists, includ­ing gov­ern­ment-spon­sored extra-judi­cial killings, the tri­al and exe­cu­tion of minors and the use of hor­rif­ic forms of tor­ture against detainees;
37.2 REQUESTS the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to inves­ti­gate reports of this nature and con­tin­ue to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions in sup­port of the vic­tims at all appro­pri­ate forums;
37.3 SUPPORTS the inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Ahmadinejad’s repeat­ed state­ments call­ing for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and his anti­se­mit­ic Holo­caust-denial state­ments;
37.4 SUPPORTS the efforts of the Argen­tine gov­ern­ment and Inter­pol to arrest and bring to tri­al the alleged per­pe­tra­tors of the bomb­ing of the Argen­tine Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Buenos Aires in 1994;
37.5 NOTES that:
  1. Iran became a non-nuclear weapon state par­ty to the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty (NPT) in 1970, and con­clud­ed a Safe­guards Agree­ment with the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA) in 1974, under which Iran accept­ed safe­guards (IAEA inspec­tions) for the pur­pose of ver­i­fy­ing that nuclear mate­r­i­al is not divert­ed to nuclear weapons or to oth­er nuclear explo­sive devices.
  2. In Feb­ru­ary 2006, the IAEA Board of Gov­er­nors sub­mit­ted a report to the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on its dif­fi­cul­ties with Iran and not­ed “Iran’s many fail­ures and breach­es of its oblig­a­tions to com­ply with its NPT Safe­guards Agree­ment ….”( IAEA Board of Gov­er­nors Res. GOV/2006/14 (4 Feb. 2006));
  3. the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, act­ing under Chap­ter VII of the UN Char­ter in Res­o­lu­tion 1835, has expressed its seri­ous con­cern that, “as con­firmed by the reports of 23 May 2007 (GOV/2007/22), 30 August 2007 (GOV/2007/48), 15 Novem­ber 2007 (GOV/2007/58) and 22 Feb­ru­ary 2008 (GOV/2008/4) of the Direc­tor Gen­er­al of the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA), Iran has not estab­lished full and sus­tained sus­pen­sion of all enrich­ment relat­ed and repro­cess­ing activ­i­ties and heavy water-relat­ed projects as set out in res­o­lu­tions 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), and 1747(2007), nor resumed its coop­er­a­tion with the IAEA under the Addi­tion­al Pro­to­col to the NPT, nor tak­en the oth­er steps required by the IAEA Board of Gov­er­nors, nor com­plied with the pro­vi­sions of Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) and which are essen­tial to build con­fi­dence” and has imposed cer­tain sanc­tions upon Iran which have failed to result in Iran com­ply­ing with the afore­men­tioned require­ments;
  4. the Iran­ian regime has admit­ted to the exis­tence of a for­mer­ly undis­closed nuclear enrich­ment facil­i­ty in Qom, in clear vio­la­tion of the cur­rent IAEA guide­lines;
37.6 WELCOMES the Aus­tralian Government’s active sup­port for the strongest pos­si­ble addi­tion­al mea­sures being tak­en by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the impo­si­tion on Iran by Aus­tralia and oth­er coun­tries of severe autonomous sanc­tions direct­ed at the Iran­ian regime, over and above the sanc­tions imposed by the UN, so as to ensure that Iran does not devel­op or gain access to nuclear weapons;.
37.7 URGES the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to give a high strate­gic pri­or­i­ty, in con­cert with oth­er gov­ern­ments, to counter-act­ing the four-fold threat that the cur­rent Iran­ian regime pos­es to inter­na­tion­al peace and secu­ri­ty, name­ly the nuclear threat, the threat of geno­ci­dal incite­ment, inter­na­tion­al state spon­sored ter­ror­ism and the sys­tem­at­ic and wide­spread vio­la­tions of the human and civ­il rights of the Iran­ian peo­ple.
This Coun­cil:
38.1 CONDEMNS the way in which UN insti­tu­tions and instru­ments have been manip­u­lat­ed to try to cast Israel as a pari­ah state;
38.2 CALLS upon the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the reforms of the UN advo­cat­ed in res­o­lu­tions 38.3 and 38.4 and to insist upon the UN fol­low­ing a Human Rights agen­da that is gen­uine­ly focused upon the pur­suit of Human Rights in accor­dance with the UN Char­ter;
38.3 CALLS for the abo­li­tion of the UN “Spe­cial Com­mit­tees” on Pales­tin­ian issues, and “Pales­tin­ian Units” of the UN, the pre­dom­i­nant pur­pose of which is to spread anti-Israel pro­pa­gan­da and whose activ­i­ties degrade the abil­i­ty of the Unit­ed Nations to pur­sue its noble human rights objec­tives;
38.4 CALLS for the abo­li­tion by the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly of the UN Human Rights Coun­cil and its replace­ment by a new human rights body, mem­ber­ship of which is restrict­ed to those coun­tries which at the time of their admis­sion to mem­ber­ship have a demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal sys­tem in which there is proven respect for the indi­vid­ual and human rights of its cit­i­zens and the rule of law;
38.5 CALLS upon the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to sup­port the reforms of the UN advo­cat­ed in this res­o­lu­tion and to insist upon the UN fol­low­ing a human rights agen­da that is gen­uine­ly focused upon the real­iza­tion of human rights in accor­dance with the UN Char­ter, the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights and oth­er inter­na­tion­al human rights instru­ments.
38.6 COMMENDS the deci­sion of the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to list Hezbol­lah in its entire­ty as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion, in line with the prac­tice of Australia’s clos­est allies.
This Coun­cil:
39.1 NOTES that the UN World Con­fer­ence Against Racism held in Dur­ban in 2001 (Dur­ban 1 Con­fer­ence) was pre­ced­ed by the NGO Forum which was marred by vir­u­lent anti­se­mit­ic behav­iour from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a num­ber of Non-Gov­ern­ment Organ­i­sa­tions and which was marked by abuse of process and out­comes prej­u­di­cial to gen­uine work to com­bat racism;
39.2 NOTES that the Dur­ban I Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence pro­duced out­come doc­u­ments includ­ing the Dec­la­ra­tion which sin­gled out Israel for crit­i­cism (while nam­ing no oth­er coun­tries) and intro­duced extra­ne­ous anti-Israel con­tent under the pre­text that Israel’s actions are racist, which anti-Israel con­tent over­shad­owed and dis­tort­ed the crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant pro­fessed agen­da of the con­fer­ence;
39.3 NOTES that the Dur­ban Review Con­fer­ence in Gene­va in April 2009 and the UN’s 10th anniver­sary com­mem­o­ra­tion in New York in Sep­tem­ber 2011:
  1. reaf­firmed with­out reser­va­tion the 2001 Dur­ban Dec­la­ra­tion and Pro­gram of Action, includ­ing the sec­tion titled “Vic­tims of racism, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, xeno­pho­bia and relat­ed intol­er­ance,” which specif­i­cal­ly states: “We are con­cerned about the plight of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple under for­eign occu­pa­tion” and false­ly implies that Pales­tini­ans are vic­tims of Israeli racism, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, xeno­pho­bia, or relat­ed intol­er­ance;
  2. failed to address seri­ous human rights abus­es and geno­cide in var­i­ous regions of the world; and
  3. omit­ted any crit­i­cism or men­tion of the Hamas Char­ter and, in par­tic­u­lar, those of its pro­vi­sions which incite hatred and geno­cide against Jews and affirm racist stereo­types about Jews as a peo­ple.
and fur­ther notes with appre­ci­a­tion that the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment joined the gov­ern­ments of a num­ber of oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries in decid­ing not to attend the lat­ter two events.
39.4 CONDEMNS the Dur­ban process as irre­deemably taint­ed with bias and racism against the Jew­ish peo­ple; and
39.5 URGES the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to join with the gov­ern­ments of oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries in call­ing for the 2001 Dur­ban Dec­la­ra­tion and Pro­gram of Action to be fun­da­men­tal­ly re-draft­ed so as to rem­e­dy the flaws enu­mer­at­ed in para­graph 39.3.
This Coun­cil:
40.1 NOTES with con­cern that on 24 Novem­ber 2008 the then Pres­i­dent of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly, Miguel d’Escoto Brock­mann of Nicaragua, stat­ed in the Gen­er­al Assem­bly: “I spoke this morn­ing about apartheid and how Israeli poli­cies in the Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ries appear so sim­i­lar to the apartheid of an ear­li­er era, a con­ti­nent away. I believe it is very impor­tant that we in the Unit­ed Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call some­thing what it is. It is the Unit­ed Nations after all, that pass the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion against the Crime of Apartheid, mak­ing clear to all the world that such prac­tices of offi­cial dis­crim­i­na­tion must be out­lawed wher­ev­er they occur. Today, per­haps we in the Unit­ed Nations should con­sid­er fol­low­ing the lead of a new gen­er­a­tion of civ­il soci­ety, who are call­ing for a sim­i­lar non-vio­lent cam­paign of boy­cott, divest­ment and sanc­tions to pres­sure Israel.”;
40.2 RECORDS that the accu­sa­tions against Israel are scur­rilous, false and with­out basis;
40.3 NOTES that on 29 Novem­ber 2006, the then UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Kofi Annan crit­i­cised the UN Human Rights Coun­cil for its “dis­pro­por­tion­ate focus on vio­la­tions by Israel” while neglect­ing oth­er parts of the world such as Dar­fur, which had what he termed “graver” crises and that Annan reit­er­at­ed this crit­i­cism in his for­mal address on 8 Decem­ber 2006 (Inter­na­tion­al Human Rights Day);
40.4 FURTHER NOTES the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al state­ments made by past and present UN Sec­re­taries-Gen­er­al con­demn­ing UN bias against Israel:
  • (a) On 20 June 2007, the then UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon crit­i­cised the Coun­cil in a state­ment that read: “The Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al is dis­ap­point­ed at the Council’s deci­sion to sin­gle out only one spe­cif­ic region­al item giv­en the range and scope of alle­ga­tions of human rights vio­la­tions through­out the world.”
  • (b) On 23 April 2017, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Anto­nio Guter­res not­ed that “a mod­ern form of anti­semitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist … [and that] Israel needs to be treat­ed as any oth­er state, with exact­ly the same rules.”
40.5 CONDEMNS the Unit­ed Nations to the extent that it: applies dif­fer­ent stan­dards for Israel and the Jew­ish peo­ple than for oth­er coun­tries; utter­ly fails to men­tion let alone crit­i­cise, the cam­paign of ter­ror waged against inno­cent civil­ians in Israel from the ter­ri­to­ries and from Gaza from which Israel has uni­lat­er­al­ly with­drawn; con­tin­ues with its one-sided obses­sion with Israel espe­cial­ly on the part of the UN Human Rights Coun­cil;
40.6 NOTES that these devel­op­ments con­tin­ue to give rise to grave con­cerns about the cred­i­bil­i­ty and effec­tive­ness of the Unit­ed Nations among fair-mind­ed peo­ple every­where;
40.7 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to work towards fair and equi­table treat­ment of Israel in all UN forums.
This Coun­cil:
40A.1 JOINS with the World Jew­ish Con­gress in con­demn­ing the issuance of arrest war­rants by the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and for­mer Defence Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant.
40A.2 NOTES that: (a) the ICC’s pur­port­ed juris­dic­tion in this mat­ter is based upon its high­ly con­tro­ver­sial split deci­sion on 5 Feb­ru­ary 2021 that the ICC has juris­dic­tion to deal with “the Sit­u­a­tion in the State of Pales­tine” despite the “State of Pales­tine” not being a sov­er­eign state; (b) com­pre­hen­sive sub­mis­sions were made to the ICC when it announced its con­sid­er­a­tion of the issue of war­rants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and (then) Defence Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant, to the effect that the court has no author­i­ty to judge the Pales­tin­ian com­plaint against Israel; (c) the objec­tion to these arrest war­rants was sup­port­ed by many sub­mis­sions includ­ing by the Unit­ed States and Ger­many; (d) Israel has an exten­sive sys­tem and process for field­ing the exam­i­na­tion of inci­dents and alle­ga­tions, as high­light­ed in the Spe­cial Advis­er Report by Air Chief Mar­shal Mark Bin­skin into the World Cen­tral Kitchen inci­dent, and this includes the inde­pen­dent Fact-Find­ing and Assess­ment Mech­a­nism, co-oper­a­tion with which is manda­to­ry for all Israel Defence Forces per­son­nel; (e) the evi­den­tiary foun­da­tion for issu­ing the arrest war­rants which has not been pub­lished by the ICC, has been called into ques­tion by legal and mil­i­tary experts who have point­ed to: (i) the dam­age that is an unavoid­able con­se­quence of all large-scale urban war­fare, a form of war­fare cho­sen by Hamas and its sup­port­ers; (ii) the tar­get­ing sys­tems and pre­cau­tions in attack that Israel has in place which Air Chief Mar­shal Mark Bin­skin said were essen­tial­ly the same as those used by the Aus­tralian Defence Forces; (iii) the exten­sive human­i­tar­i­an aid and med­ical relief Israel has facil­i­tat­ed, which includes the report­ed deliv­ery of 1,138,847 tons of aid by land, sea and air; (iv) the repeat­ed fail­ures of UNRWA in dis­trib­ut­ing aid with­in Gaza. (f) the ICC Chief Pros­e­cu­tor can­celled a fact-find­ing trip to Israel by his staff before issu­ing the request for the arrest war­rants, there­by deny­ing Israel the oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond or pro­vide any expla­na­tion, an oppor­tu­ni­ty which the pros­e­cu­tor has afford­ed to oth­er States in respect of which alle­ga­tions have been made in con­nec­tion with oth­er con­flicts, there­by demon­strat­ing bias; (g) Israel is a democ­ra­cy exer­cis­ing its inher­ent right of self-defence under inter­na­tion­al law against state-spon­sored ter­ror­ist attacks, the per­pe­tra­tors of which have open­ly threat­ened to repeat such attacks again and again; (h) the armed attack against Israel that was planned and ini­ti­at­ed by Hamas and its sup­port­ers on 7 Octo­ber 2023 was a vio­la­tion of the Laws of Armed Con­flict, and these laws con­tin­ue to be vio­lat­ed by Hamas and its sup­port­ers who have: delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed Israeli civil­ians who were mur­dered, tor­tured, raped, muti­lat­ed and abduct­ed; have delib­er­ate­ly used civil­ians in Gaza as human shields and civil­ians struc­tures as bases of mil­i­tary and ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions; and have pre­vent­ed all out­side con­tact and human­i­tar­i­an access to the hostages; and (i) the ICC has tak­en no action against any par­ties with­in aggres­sor states con­duct­ing armed attacks against Israel, nor against many oth­ers respon­si­ble for much larg­er-scale con­flicts, deaths and suf­fer­ing, includ­ing those in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syr­ia, despite the fact that cer­tain States involved in those con­flicts are with­in the ICC’s juris­dic­tion.
40A.3 CONDEMNS the ICC’s deci­sion for its man­i­fest bias in sin­gling out the only Jew­ish nation’s lead­ers in a way that no oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic nation’s lead­ers are pur­sued, even while that nation is fight­ing a war of self-defence on mul­ti­ple fronts, against ene­mies who have open­ly declared their geno­ci­dal aims against it.
40A.4  REAFFIRMS the Aus­tralian Jew­ish community’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port for: Israel’s right to defend itself and pro­tect its cit­i­zens; the rejec­tion of the politi­ci­sa­tion of the ICC; and advo­cat­ing for a fair and unbi­ased approach to inter­na­tion­al jus­tice.
40A.5  EXPRESSES its deep con­cern that in the above cir­cum­stances, the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has failed to ques­tion let alone crit­i­cise or con­demn the ICC deci­sion.
40A.6 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to do so with­out fur­ther delay and to not extend any coop­er­a­tion in exe­cut­ing these unfound­ed and irre­spon­si­ble arrest war­rants.
This Coun­cil:
41.1 EXPRESSES ALARM at the esca­la­tion in acts of anti­semitism through­out the world such as racial­ly moti­vat­ed phys­i­cal and ver­bal assaults against Jew­ish peo­ple, attacks upon Syn­a­gogues and oth­er Jew­ish Insti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es owned by Jews, and:
  • (a) CALLS UPON gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in the Euro­pean Union and the media to show lead­er­ship by pub­licly denounc­ing as and when they occur, all man­i­fes­ta­tions of anti­semitism falling with­in the work­ing def­i­n­i­tion pro­duced by the Euro­pean Union Mon­i­tor­ing Cen­tre on Racism and Xeno­pho­bia and adopt­ed by the UK All Part Par­lia­men­tary Inquiry into Anti­semitism;
  • (b) DENOUNCES the Pres­i­dent of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez, for descend­ing repeat­ed­ly into racist and bul­ly­ing rhetoric against Venezuala’s Jew­ish cit­i­zens, which has result­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant upsurge in racial­ly moti­vat­ed phys­i­cal and ver­bal assaults against them and their com­mu­nal insti­tu­tions; and
  • (c) DEPLORES the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gross­ly anti­se­mit­ic mate­r­i­al with­in many of the States of the Organ­i­sa­tion of the Islam­ic Con­fer­ence in the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions, tele­vi­sion and radio pro­grams and inter­net mate­r­i­al, and the pro­mo­tion of such mate­r­i­al by their gov­ern­ments through its inclu­sion in school cur­ric­u­la and its dis­sem­i­na­tion through gov­ern­ment-con­trolled media.
41.2 NOTES that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of inci­dents have been car­ried out by Islamist groups who sup­port and engage in anti­se­mit­ic vio­lence;
41.3 NOTES that extrem­ist left and right-wing organ­i­sa­tions have encour­aged their sup­port­ers to work togeth­er with extrem­ist ele­ments with­in Mus­lim and Arab com­mu­ni­ties;
41.4 CALLS ON the UN and all coun­tries to take all nec­es­sary steps to ensure that those vio­lent anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents are not repeat­ed and to pro­tect Jew­ish cit­i­zens and com­mu­nal prop­er­ty and to pre­vent oth­er acts of anti-Jew­ish incite­ment;
41.5 CONDEMNS the preva­lence of anti-Jew­ish rhetoric in sec­tions of the mass-media which mas­quer­ades as polit­i­cal crit­i­cism of Israel.
This Coun­cil:
42.1 APPLAUDS the efforts of the Claims Con­fer­ence and the World Jew­ish Resti­tu­tion Organ­i­sa­tion and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions work­ing for the rights of sur­vivors, their heirs and the Jew­ish world in the areas of resti­tu­tion and restora­tion of prop­er­ty and true record­ing of the his­to­ry of the Holo­caust;
42.2 REAFFIRMS the prin­ci­ple that nego­ti­a­tions for resti­tu­tion should wher­ev­er pos­si­ble include rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both res­i­dent com­mu­ni­ties and sur­vivors who live out­side those coun­tries;
42.3 CALLS for the expe­di­tion of all out­stand­ing claims with a min­i­mum of admin­is­tra­tive cost or delay, and for pri­or­i­ty in the appli­ca­tion of funds for the ben­e­fit of sur­vivors and the heirs of vic­tims;
42.4 CALLS for the abo­li­tion of all forms of means test­ing as a con­di­tion of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the pay­ment to sur­vivors of com­pen­sa­tion for per­son­al pain and suf­fer­ing.
This Coun­cil:
43.1 RECOGNISES the impor­tance of the work of the Inter­na­tion­al Catholic-Jew­ish Liai­son Com­mit­tee and its joint dec­la­ra­tions of Novem­ber 4–7 2006 and Novem­ber 2008.
This Coun­cil:
44.1 NOTES the con­tri­bu­tion to inter­na­tion­al under­stand­ing and dia­logue between peo­ples of the Asia Pacif­ic Region­al Inter­faith Dia­logues in Indone­sia in 2004, Philip­pines in 2006, New Zealand in 2007, Cam­bo­dia in 2008 and Aus­tralia in 2009;
44.2 NOTES the unique and vital role played by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ECAJ’s inter­faith dia­logues to this process and also to the inau­gur­al Youth Inter­faith Forum in Perth in 2007;
44.3 RECOGNISES the impor­tance of mem­bers of Australia’s del­e­ga­tions being engaged with rep­re­sen­ta­tive bod­ies and being able to keep the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty informed of the out­comes of the APRID process­es and to prop­er­ly rep­re­sent com­mu­ni­ties’ views;
44.4 URGES the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to include a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the ECAJ in all future Asia Pacif­ic Inter­faith Dia­logues, as was the case until 2008.
This Coun­cil:
44b.1 NOTES that:
  1. Salah Uddin Shoaib Choud­hury is an award-win­ning Bangladeshi jour­nal­ist and edi­tor of the Week­ly Blitz news­pa­per in Bangladesh. Because of his beliefs in inter­faith dia­logue between Jews and Mus­lims and crit­i­cism of Islamist extrem­ism, he is on tri­al in Bangladesh for sedi­tion, an offense pun­ish­able by death;
  2. Mr Choud­hury was arrest­ed on 29 Novem­ber 2003 at Zia Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Dha­ka, Bangladesh, on his way to board a flight bound for Tel Aviv, and was orig­i­nal­ly charged with a pass­port vio­la­tion, a charge that was only sub­se­quent­ly ele­vat­ed to sedi­tion;
  3. While pre­vi­ous­ly in deten­tion Mr Choud­hury was sub­ject­ed to harsh inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques and received no treat­ment for a debil­i­tat­ing case of glau­co­ma;
  4. Mr Choudhury’s incar­cer­a­tion last­ed for17 months with­out legal recourse and was only released on bail on 30 April 2005;
  5. Senior mem­bers of the Ban­gledeshi Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly made con­tin­u­ous pub­lic promis­es that there was no sub­stance to Mr Choudhury’s pend­ing charges and that all charges would be dropped;
  6. On 6 July 2006, Mr Choudhury’s news­pa­per offices were bombed by an Islam­ic extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion after Mr Choud­hury and his staff pub­lished arti­cles in sup­port of the Ahmadiyya Mus­lim minor­i­ty;
  7. Mr Choud­hury received a tip about the bomb­ing days before and report­ed it to police, who refused to take action;
  8. On 18 Sep­tem­ber 2006, a judge with alleged ties to an Islam­ic extrem­ist par­ty, Mohammed Momin Ullah, ruled that Mr Choud­hury will stand tri­al for sedi­tion. The judge made this rul­ing despite the Pub­lic Prosecutor’s tes­ti­mo­ny in court days before that the gov­ern­ment did not have evi­dence and would not object to the charges being dropped;
  9. On Octo­ber 5, 2006, Mr Choud­hury was attacked at his news­pa­per offices by a large group of indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing promi­nent mem­bers of the rul­ing Bangladesh Nation­al Par­ty. Police pro­tec­tion for Mr Choud­hury was with­drawn just days before the attack. Mr Choud­hury was called an ”agent of the Jews” and beat­en bad­ly. When Mr Choud­hury report­ed the attack to the police, no action was tak­en
  10. On 15 Feb­ru­ary 2007, the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a res­o­lu­tion with­out oppo­si­tion, call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment of Bangladesh imme­di­ate­ly to drop all pend­ing charges against Mr Choud­hury; return all of Mr Choudhury’s con­fis­cat­ed pos­ses­sions; cease harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion of Mr Choud­hury; and take steps to pro­tect Mr Choud­hury and hold account­able those respon­si­ble for attacks against Mr Choud­hury;
  11. On 18 March 2008, mem­bers of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Bat­tal­ion (RAB) abduct­ed Mr Choud­hury from his office at gun point. He was blind-fold­ed and tak­en to an RAB office and released late at night. Writ­ten com­plaints were sent to the mil­i­tary-con­trolled inter­im gov­ern­ment but no action has been tak­en by the Bangladesh author­i­ties against the RAB mem­bers respon­si­ble;
  12. On 22 Feb­ru­ary 2009, armed thugs belong­ing to the rul­ing Bangladesh Awa­mi League entered the office of Mr Choud­hury, ran­sacked the entire office and phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed him and oth­er staff of the Week­ly Blitz news­pa­per. Although a spe­cif­ic com­plaint was lodged with the police sta­tion on the day of the occur­rence, no action has been tak­en by Bangladesh’s law enforce­ment agen­cies against the cul­prits;
  13. The cap­i­tal charge against Mr Choud­hury has not been with­drawn and he remains on tri­al for sedi­tion.
44b.2 CALLS UPON the gov­ern­ment of Bangladesh imme­di­ate­ly and with­out fur­ther pre­var­i­ca­tion or delay to:
  1. drop all pend­ing charges against Mr Choud­hury;
  2. return all of Mr Choudhury’s con­fis­cat­ed pos­ses­sions;
  3. cease all harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion of Mr Choud­hury; and
  4. take steps to pro­tect Mr Choud­hury from phys­i­cal attacks and to hold account­able those respon­si­ble for pre­vi­ous attacks against Mr Choud­hury
44b.3 CALLS UPON the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to pre­vail upon the gov­ern­ment of Bangladesh to take the mea­sures enu­mer­at­ed in para­graph 2 imme­di­ate­ly and with­out fur­ther pre­var­i­ca­tion or delay.
 
This Coun­cil:
45.1 NOTES the devel­op­ment, by the Aus­tralian Cur­ricu­lum Assess­ment and Report­ing Author­i­ty (ACARA), of a Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Cur­ricu­lum and the impor­tance of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty work­ing with Nation­al and State edu­ca­tion­al author­i­ties to ensure the accu­rate, dis­pas­sion­ate, aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous and ade­quate­ly-resourced teach­ing of top­ics relat­ing to Jews and Judaism, ancient and mod­ern Israel, the Holo­caust, the Arab-Israel con­flict and the con­tri­bu­tion of Aus­tralian Jews to Aus­tralian soci­ety and cul­ture.
45.2 CALLS on all State Depart­ments of School Edu­ca­tion to ensure that all stu­dents have a basic knowl­edge of the events of the Holo­caust, in order to gain an under­stand­ing of the fragili­ty of human civ­i­liza­tion and the dan­gers of irra­tional hatred;
45.3 CALLS upon ACARA to include a unit of manda­to­ry study address­ing racism, racial hatred and geno­cide, and focus­ing on the facts and cause of the Holo­caust, in the study of his­to­ry for all high school stu­dents in Aus­tralia.
This Coun­cil:
46.1 NOTES the impor­tance of Holo­caust memo­ri­al­i­sa­tion, pub­lic edu­ca­tion about the Holo­caust and on-going research into the Holo­caust;
46.2 WELCOMES the estab­lish­ment of annu­al Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Day events by Con­stituents of the ECAJ, in con­junc­tion with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions, and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment in these events;
46.3 ENCOURAGES all major cities and State cap­i­tals to hold pub­lic remem­brances of Kristall­nacht and all Con­stituents of the ECAJ to pri­ori­tise the work of max­imis­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in Holo­caust Remem­brance and edu­ca­tion; and
46.4 WELCOMES the range of research activ­i­ties relat­ed to the Holo­caust, Holo­caust memo­ri­al­i­sa­tion, Holo­caust Edu­ca­tion and into Holo­caust denial cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Aus­tralia and ENCOURAGES fur­ther sup­port for research relat­ed to the Holo­caust.
This Coun­cil:
47.1 RECOGNISES that the Holo­caust, the Nazi pro­gram of geno­cide, was a unique his­tor­i­cal event;
47.2 NOTES that the Holo­caust is gen­er­al­ly recog­nised as the bench­mark of the most extreme case of human evil;
47.3 DEPLORES the inap­pro­pri­ate use of analo­gies to the Nazi geno­cide and Nazi tyran­ny in Aus­tralian pub­lic debate.
This Coun­cil:
48.1 NOTES the glob­al impor­tance of Holo­caust edu­ca­tion and remem­brance;
48.2 NOTES the impor­tance of gov­ern­ments and civ­il soci­ety tak­ing a stand against human rights abus­es;
48.3 APPLAUDS the deci­sion of the Swedish Gov­ern­ment to host the inter­na­tion­al forum on Holo­caust Edu­ca­tion and Remem­brance in Jan­u­ary 2000; the Forum on Com­bat­ing Intol­er­ance in Jan­u­ary 2001, the Forum on Truth, Jus­tice and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in April 2002 in Stock­holm; and the Inter­na­tion­al Forum on Geno­cide Pre­ven­tion in 2004;
48.4 URGES the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to imple­ment rel­e­vant rec­om­men­da­tions of the Stock­holm Forums.
48.5 NOTES with appre­ci­a­tion the impor­tant work of the Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance (IHRA), an inter­gov­ern­men­tal body whose pur­pose is to place polit­i­cal and social lead­ers’ sup­port behind the need for Holo­caust edu­ca­tion, remem­brance and research both nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly.
48.6 ENDORSES and ADOPTS the Work­ing Def­i­n­i­tion of Anti­semitism which was unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed by IHRA mem­ber States at the Ple­nary ses­sion in May 2016 and which close­ly fol­lows the 2005 EUMC work­ing def­i­n­i­tion;
48.7 WELCOMES Australia’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in IHRA as a full mem­ber coun­try, includ­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Aus­tralian del­e­ga­tion of experts from with­in and beyond the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.
48.8 COMMENDS the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment for the state­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son to the Malmö Inter­na­tion­al Forum on Holo­caust Remem­brance and Com­bat­ing Anti­semitism on 13 Octo­ber 2021 that (i) the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment “pledges to embrace the def­i­n­i­tion of anti­semitism adopt­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance”; (ii) Aus­tralia has made this pledge “as a peo­ple and as a nation”; and (iii) “Anti­semitism has no place in Aus­tralia. It has no place any­where in the world”.
48.9 COMMENDS Labor’s endorse­ment of the IHRA Work­ing Def­i­n­i­tion of Anti­semitism as con­firmed by Fed­er­al Oppo­si­tion leader Antho­ny Albanese dur­ing an online meet­ing with Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers organ­ised and host­ed by the ECAJ on 13 July 2021.
48.10 CALLS for the IHRA Work­ing Def­i­n­i­tion of Anti­semitism to be adopt­ed and applied in Aus­tralia by the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty sec­tor, civ­il soci­ety, school edu­ca­tion sys­tems and sport­ing organ­i­sa­tions.
This Coun­cil:
49.1 NOTES that there is sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus that cli­mate change pos­es a major chal­lenge fac­ing Aus­tralia and the world.  The threat to all human life, through the increas­ing fre­quen­cy and mag­ni­tude of such extreme weath­er events as bush­fires, drought, water short­ages and record tem­per­a­tures, is increas­ing;
49.2 NOTES that the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and con­ser­va­tion of its resources for the ben­e­fit of future gen­er­a­tions are well-estab­lished prin­ci­ples of Jew­ish teach­ing and halacha;
49.3 APPLAUDS the action of gov­ern­ments, lead­ing busi­ness, reli­gious and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, in address­ing the issue of cli­mate change as a pri­or­i­ty issue for our time;
49.4 DECLARES its sup­port for laws and poli­cies with appro­pri­ate mile­stones designed to achieve net zero emis­sions by 2050, or ear­li­er where nec­es­sary: See e.g., www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/what-does-net-zero-emissions-mean
49.5 CALLS ON its con­stituents, its affil­i­ates and Aus­tralian Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions to:
  • stay informed on cli­mate change issues: – see e.g., climatecouncil.org.au and www.jcn.org.au;
  • edu­cate mem­bers using clear and com­pelling edu­ca­tion­al resources, informed by Jew­ish teach­ings, about tak­ing action on cli­mate change and to demon­strate envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty;
  • take all appro­pri­ate steps to reduce green­house gas emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with their own activ­i­ties; and
  • con­tin­ue to work with oth­er faith and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties towards tak­ing action on cli­mate change and to demon­strate envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty.
This Coun­cil:
50.1 NOTES that lead­ing Rab­binic author­i­ties have giv­en their sup­port to the use of exist­ing embryos for stem cell research, mind­ful that Jew­ish law con­cerns itself that such embryos are only appro­pri­ate­ly obtained;
50.2 NOTES that stem cell research offers great hope to many suf­fer­ers and con­tains the poten­tial to rec­ti­fy painful, debil­i­tat­ing and life short­en­ing genet­ic con­di­tions;
50.3 SUPPORTS prop­er­ly con­duct­ed research into the sav­ing of life as a part of our human man­date to act in the image of God, to heal and to be mer­ci­ful;
50.4 CALLS ON all ECAJ Con­stituents, Affil­i­ates and Observ­er Organ­i­sa­tions to encour­age Aus­tralian Jews to pub­licly sup­port the oppor­tu­ni­ties which stem cell research pro­vides as rein­forc­ing and not dimin­ish­ing the sanc­ti­ty of life.
This Coun­cil:
51.1 NOTES that lives can be saved by encour­ag­ing organ dona­tion from Jews to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion by edu­cat­ing our com­mu­ni­ty about the dif­fer­ent halachic and med­ical issues con­cern­ing organ dona­tion;
51.2 SUPPORTS Medicare Aus­tralia chang­ing donor reg­istry forms so that mem­bers of the cler­gy can be involved in the deci­sion-mak­ing process if mem­bers of the donor fam­i­ly so wish;
51.3 ENCOURAGES Aus­tralian Jews to learn about organ dona­tion from both a med­ical and a halachic per­spec­tive, and to com­mit to organ dona­tion process­es sub­ject to appro­pri­ate safe­guards.
This Coun­cil:
52.1 NOTES the grav­i­ty of the Final Report of the Roy­al Com­mis­sion into Insti­tu­tion­al Respons­es to Child Sex­u­al Abuse pre­sent­ed to the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al on 15 Decem­ber 2017;
51.2 EXPRESSES deep­est sym­pa­thy with all sur­vivors of child sex­u­al abuse and pro­found sor­row at the pain and ongo­ing hard­ship they have suf­fered, and extends the same sen­ti­ments to the fam­i­ly and friends of sur­vivors who have suf­fered in any way for sup­port­ing them;
52.3 RECOGNISES that child sex­u­al abuse has occurred with­in some Jew­ish insti­tu­tions;
52.4 RECOGNISES FURTHER that in some instances indi­vid­u­als in posi­tions of lead­er­ship and trust with­in those insti­tu­tions failed to report the abuse to the appro­pri­ate author­i­ties and in doing so, act­ed unlaw­ful­ly and uneth­i­cal­ly, and failed the chil­dren who had suf­fered the abuse and exac­er­bat­ed their suf­fer­ing, and brought shame to our com­mu­ni­ty;
52.5 NOTES the halachic rule that the civ­il law of the land is bind­ing (dina d’malkhuta dina) and sup­ports ful­ly the state­ments by Jew­ish reli­gious and rep­re­sen­ta­tive rab­bini­cal bod­ies that “there is a reli­gious oblig­a­tion to inform the rel­e­vant author­i­ties of all infor­ma­tion known con­cern­ing pos­si­ble harm­ful crim­i­nal con­duct, espe­cial­ly con­duct as seri­ous as child sex­u­al abuse, and to co-oper­ate with the author­i­ties in every way to bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice”;
52.6 AFFIRMS that the prin­ci­ple of mesir­ah, which pre­cludes the report­ing of fel­low Jews to the sec­u­lar author­i­ties, was his­tor­i­cal­ly applied in places where Jews were sub­ject­ed to insti­tu­tion­al per­se­cu­tion and racism and could not receive just treat­ment by the civ­il author­i­ties, and has no rel­e­vance or admis­si­bil­i­ty what­so­ev­er in Aus­tralia, as has been stat­ed by mul­ti­ple Aus­tralian rab­bini­cal sources;
52.7 CONDEMNS any con­ceal­ment of, or fail­ure to report, alle­ga­tions of child sex­u­al abuse and any instances of intim­i­da­tion or ret­ri­bu­tion against chil­dren who have suf­fered sex­u­al abuse or their fam­i­lies or oth­er sup­port­ers, not­ing that all such con­duct is unlaw­ful, dis­grace­ful and con­trary to Jew­ish ethics and law, and serves to deep­en the suf­fer­ing of sur­vivors and their fam­i­lies;
52.8 AFFIRMS the imper­a­tive of pro­tect­ing chil­dren from harm, which is a core Jew­ish val­ue, and calls on all organ­i­sa­tions in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to adopt and active­ly imple­ment a pol­i­cy of zero tol­er­ance towards child sex­u­al abuse, and to pro­mote clear lead­er­ship and trans­par­ent gov­er­nance to com­bat the secre­cy on which abuse thrives;
52.9 CALLS ON Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions which have the care of chil­dren to adopt and imple­ment appro­pri­ate stan­dards of child pro­tec­tion if they have not already done so, and to work togeth­er with oth­er Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions under the aus­pices of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty State roof bod­ies and the ECAJ to devel­op a best prac­tice mod­el of Jew­ish Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards on Child Pro­tec­tion;
52.10 AFFIRMS that lead­ers of Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions must take a pre­ven­ta­tive, proac­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach to child safe­ty issues, so that the safe­ty and well­be­ing of chil­dren in each of their organ­i­sa­tions is a para­mount con­sid­er­a­tion when devel­op­ing activ­i­ties, poli­cies and man­age­ment prac­tices;
52.11 URGES the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and Jew­ish com­mu­nal bod­ies to con­tin­ue to extend what­ev­er sup­port may be nec­es­sary to sur­vivors of child sex­u­al abuse in their pur­suit of jus­tice and redress.
This Coun­cil:
54.1 RECOGNISES that the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is part of the Jew­ish peo­ple world­wide, with a shared his­to­ry, cul­ture and reli­gious tra­di­tion and is at the same time diverse and plu­ral­is­tic, with its mem­bers hold­ing dif­fer­ent views on a range of issues;
54.2 CALLS FOR mutu­al respect for the human dig­ni­ty of all mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, despite any strong­ly held dif­fer­ences; recog­ni­tion that dis­agree­ment is pos­si­ble in ways that do not vil­i­fy oth­er per­sons or their views; and avoid­ance of any pub­lic or pri­vate con­duct that incites hatred, ridicule or con­tempt of anoth­er per­son or class of per­sons on the ground of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der identity/expression, or sex char­ac­ter­is­tics; and, in accor­dance with the fore­go­ing prin­ci­ples;
54.3 OPPOSES any form of hatred of any per­son on the grounds of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der identity/expression, or sex char­ac­ter­is­tics;
54.4 ACKNOWLEDGES that there is still much work to be done to remove intol­er­ance of and unlaw­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion against gay, les­bian, bisex­u­al, trans­gen­der and inter­sex per­sons in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and the wider Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty, and to pro­vide ade­quate ser­vices and sup­port for them and their fam­i­lies; and
54.5 CALLS ON per­sons and organ­i­sa­tions in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port that work both in our com­mu­ni­ty and in the wider Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty.

This Coun­cil:

55.1NOTES the high response rate to the sur­vey on same sex mar­riage con­duct­ed by the Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics in 2017, par­tic­i­pa­tion in which was entire­ly vol­un­tary;
55.2NOTES FURTHER that there was a strong major­i­ty in favour of same sex mar­riage being recog­nised in Australia’s civ­il law;
55.3RECOGNISES that the sur­vey did not relate in any way to reli­gious mar­riages;
55.4COMMENDS the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the Fed­er­al Oppo­si­tion and oth­er par­ties and inde­pen­dents for act­ing prompt­ly to enact an amend­ment to the civ­il law def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage in the Mar­riage Act in order to give effect to the clear result of the sur­vey.
55.5

CALLS ON the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to:

  • (a) ensure that mem­bers of the cler­gy will con­tin­ue to have the right to refuse to per­form or par­tic­i­pate in any mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny at their dis­cre­tion, as is pro­vid­ed for at present under sec­tion 47 of the Mar­riage Act;
  • (b) ensure that reli­gious insti­tu­tions and reli­gious schools will con­tin­ue to have the same rights they cur­rent­ly enjoy under the law to prac­tice, teach and preach their reli­gious beliefs, includ­ing their beliefs about the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage being between a man and a woman; and
  • (c) ensure that par­ents and legal guardians will con­tin­ue to have the same free­doms they cur­rent­ly enjoy to ensure the reli­gious and moral edu­ca­tion of their chil­dren in con­for­mi­ty with their own con­vic­tions.
55.6REJECTS any pro­pos­al that would per­mit busi­ness­es to refuse to pro­vide goods, ser­vices and facil­i­ties on the basis that these are to be used in con­nec­tion with a same-sex mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny.
55.7AFFIRMS that in mat­ters of ordi­nary trade and com­merce, as dis­tinct from mat­ters of reli­gious prac­tice and belief, all peo­ple are enti­tled to be pro­tect­ed from adverse dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment on the basis of their race, colour, sex, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der identity/expression, sex char­ac­ter­is­tics, age, phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­i­ty, mar­i­tal sta­tus, fam­i­ly or carer’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, preg­nan­cy, reli­gion, polit­i­cal opin­ion, nation­al extrac­tion or social ori­gin.
55.8ENCOURAGES each of its con­stituent organ­i­sa­tions to align the for­mu­la­tion of its poli­cies con­cern­ing the fore­go­ing mat­ters with those of the ECAJ, and that affil­i­ate organ­i­sa­tions which have adopt­ed poli­cies con­cern­ing such mat­ters be encour­aged to do like­wise.
This Coun­cil:
56.1 NOTES the active role under­tak­en by the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion in advo­cat­ing for the rights of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and their car­ers;
56.2 WELCOMES the efforts of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to devel­op a nation­al dis­abil­i­ty insur­ance scheme;
56.3 NOTES that through Jew­ish Care and oth­er Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions, sup­port for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and their car­ers is a major Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty pri­or­i­ty;
56.4 RESOLVES to sup­port all efforts to achieve a sus­tain­able and effec­tive nation­al dis­abil­i­ty insur­ance scheme;
56.5 COMMENDS the work of the AUs­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion in advo­cat­ing for the rights of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and their car­ers; and
56.6 CALLS ON the entire Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty to extend the fullest respect and dig­ni­ty for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and their car­ers.
This Coun­cil:
57.1 RECOGNISES that all mem­bers of our Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty are enti­tled to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty, respect and fair­ness and to have equal oppor­tu­ni­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and rights to par­tic­i­pate in com­mu­nal life;
57.2 AFFIRMS that there is absolute­ly no place in com­mu­nal life for sex­u­al harass­ment or any form of bul­ly­ing, includ­ing gen­der-based bul­ly­ing;
57.3 ACKNOWLEDGES that the ECAJ requires an appro­pri­ate mix of exper­tise, expe­ri­ence and gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion to pro­vide the knowl­edge and skills nec­es­sary to meet its respon­si­bil­i­ties and objec­tives;
57.4 AFFIRMS that women must be giv­en the same rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties enjoyed by men to be elect­ed to posi­tions of com­mu­nal lead­er­ship and, once elect­ed, to par­tic­i­pate in com­mu­nal deci­sion mak­ing;
57.5 COMMITS to embrac­ing a cul­ture of respect for women, and poli­cies to pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty in mat­ters such as board com­po­si­tion and recruit­ment, and rep­re­sen­ta­tion on pan­els, events, con­fer­ences and work­shops; and
57.6 CALLS ON its con­stituent bod­ies to adopt gen­der equal­i­ty prin­ci­ples and poli­cies and pur­sue the goal of ele­vat­ing women’s par­tic­i­pa­tion and voice with­in our com­mu­ni­ty as an impor­tant step towards achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty.

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