The ECAJ responds to adverse com­ments by a fringe group to the Sen­ate inquiry into right-wing extrem­ist move­ments in Aus­tralia.

The Sen­ate Legal and Con­sti­tu­tion­al Affairs Ref­er­ences Com­mit­tee invit­ed the ECAJ to respond to adverse com­ments made by the fringe “Jew­ish Coun­cil of Aus­tralia” at a hear­ing of the inquiry into right-wing extrem­ist move­ments in Aus­tralia on 17 June 2024.

The ECAJ respond­ed strong­ly to the “Aus­tralian Jew­ish Coun­cil’s” mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of it as “right-wing” say­ing (excerpts from the ECA­J’s response):

The fact that the ECAJ is wide­ly recog­nised as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty nation­al­ly, and is not cap­tive to either the left or right of pol­i­tics, is evi­denced by the high lev­el of trust and active coop­er­a­tion that the organ­i­sa­tion enjoys with fed­er­al gov­ern­ment across a range of depart­ments.

The ECAJ also has deep, long-stand­ing rela­tion­ships with the recog­nised rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a range of oth­er faith and eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties and indeed as the nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of Australia’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, inter-faith and inter-eth­nic dia­logue is an impor­tant aspect

The Jew­ish Coun­cil of Aus­tralia thus appears to be a micro-group which rep­re­sents only a thin sliv­er of opin­ion on the far-left mar­gins of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

Despite the use of the words “Jew­ish” and “Coun­cil” in its name, this group has no claim what­so­ev­er to rep­re­sent the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. No Jew­ish schools, places of wor­ship, hos­pi­tals, aged care facil­i­ties, youth groups, stu­dent organ­i­sa­tions, sport­ing clubs, cul­tur­al groups, organ­i­sa­tions for women, or for ex- ser­vice­men and women, or Holo­caust sur­vivors, or oth­er com­mu­nal organ­i­sa­tions come under its aegis, for­mal­ly or infor­mal­ly.

Download full response

• Down­load ECA­J’s response to adverse com­ment (PDF: 1.9MB).

See also

• Home­page for the Sen­ate inquiry into right wing extrem­ist move­ments in Aus­tralia
• Addi­tion­al respons­es from oth­er Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions to adverse com­ment from the “Jew­ish Coun­cil of Aus­tralia” are also avail­able as addi­tion­al doc­u­ments on the inquiry’s page