Since October 7, the Jewish community has harboured a belief that the gov­ern­ment was never really up for the fight against antisemitism.

At times, it seemed to treat it as a nuisance rather than a moral imper­at­ive. The only real question was whether this anaemic approach was driven by ideology or hard political realities, or both.

Now the two most senior ministers in the federal gov­ern­ment, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs, have given a powerful, eloquent and sincere affirm­a­tion of their revulsion at what is being done to Jewish Aus­trali­ans and pledged to banish this con­temp­tu­ous hatred to the dark corners of paranoid delusion and low bigotry, where it belongs.

They have shown that they get it. They under­stand that the extreme anti-Israel activists are not freedom fighters or peaceniks. They are a threat to us all.

After 21 months of boycotts, death chants and blazing streets and syn­agogues, many in the community and wider society will regard the government’s embrace of the special envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism, a com­pre­hens­ive and thought­ful plan engaging gov­ern­ment and civil society, as hollow.

More still, will borrow the phrase spoken by the “Son of Sam” killer upon his belated arrest by the NYPD, “What took you so long?”

But the Jewish community and all Aus­trali­ans need to draw upon one of our defining char­ac­ter­ist­ics, fairness, and give the gov­ern­ment a fair go.

They have before them a roadmap to lead this country back to what it was and what it should always be, a peaceful, self-confident, rational and decent country, the envy of the world.

The imple­ment­a­tion of the special envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism is not a gift or a service to Jewish Aus­trali­ans. We are a hearty and stoic people and have learned to fend for ourselves.

It is needed for Australia.

A country where cars are routinely daubed with racist slogans or where schoolkids can be racially abused and ridiculed by parents on the sidelines of sporting fields or in shopping malls; where jackals hopped up on the death chants and poison of vicious street rallies can control the streets and send diners scram­bling into the night in terror; where an increas­ing number of people believe puerile, imbecilic con­spir­acies that the Jews did 9/11, faked October 7, control our banks, media and gov­ern­ments, and can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a grinding war Israel did not want or choose and a genocide, is not a healthy society.

It is not a rational society. And unhealthy and irra­tion­al societies cease to produce great minds, great dis­cov­er­ies and innov­a­tions, and they do not sustain great standards of living.

Like every plan, the special envoy’s plan will be judged by the success of its imple­ment­a­tion. It will require not only the federal gov­ern­ment to act, but state gov­ern­ments, uni­ver­sit­ies, schools, cultural insti­tu­tions, social media platforms, and families and indi­vidu­als.

But this does not get the federal gov­ern­ment off the hook or abrogate its central role in guiding our country back to somewhere better than we are now. It has to lead this fightback.

Nor can the media and community cease its work in advoc­at­ing and shining a light on what has been happening and what we have become.

It will be for us, all of us, to hold gov­ern­ments and insti­tu­tions account­able, and to give fair credit where it is due.

The Jewish community is deli­ri­ously patriotic. We adore this country. Partly this comes from firsthand or family exper­i­ence of far lesser places, the Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, Nazi-occupied Europe.

Partly, it comes from having con­trib­uted so much to the success, wealth and ingenuity of this country.

This is why amid an outbreak of hatred that few foresaw or imagined, the Jewish community has stayed, and indeed become more Jewish and more Aus­trali­an. But this exper­i­ence has also matured our souls and hardened our minds.

We know we are fighting for Australia, and the special envoy has presented a winning battle plan.