On May 2, Peter Wertheim appeared before the Joint Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on For­eign Affairs, Defence and Trade’s Par­lia­men­tary Inquiry into the sta­tus of the human right to free­dom of reli­gion or belief.
The ECAJ’s full writ­ten sub­mis­sion can be viewed here, and the tran­script of Mr Wertheim’s appear­ance is below.

Joint Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on For­eign Affairs, Defence and Trade – 02/05/2018
Inquiry into the sta­tus of the human right to free­dom of reli­gion or belief

Mem­bers in atten­dance: Kevin Andrews MP (Chair), Anne Aly (Deputy Chair), Sen­a­tor Claire Moore.
WERTHEIM, Mr Peter John, CO-CEO, Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry
[11:39]
CHAIR: Wel­come. I remind you of the rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties which have been made known to you. If you’d like to, you can make some open­ing com­ments.
Mr Wertheim: Thank you, Mr Chair. Is it in order for my asso­ciate to take a pho­to?
CHAIR: Yes, cer­tain­ly.
Mr Wertheim: Thank you. I thank the com­mit­tee for this oppor­tu­ni­ty to present to the inquiry. Jew­ish Aus­tralians are for­tu­nate to enjoy a high lev­el of free­dom of reli­gion and belief. In prac­tice, there are very few imped­i­ments to Jews in Aus­tralia iden­ti­fy­ing open­ly as Jews, express­ing their beliefs, mov­ing freely and con­gre­gat­ing peace­ably with fel­low Jews at reli­gious and com­mu­nal events, par­tak­ing in Jew­ish reli­gious ser­vices and observ­ing Jew­ish cus­toms and tra­di­tions. Jew­ish Aus­tralians are also free to impart Jew­ish learn­ing and val­ues through for­mal and infor­mal edu­ca­tion and, sub­ject to gen­er­al legal require­ments, estab­lish and oper­ate pri­vate Jew­ish day schools and places of wor­ship.
Our writ­ten sub­mis­sion has explored in some detail both the suc­cess­es and dif­fi­cul­ties expe­ri­enced by our com­mu­ni­ty in find­ing ways to accom­mo­date with­in the frame­work of Aus­trali­a’s laws and gen­er­al­ly accept­ed val­ues fun­da­men­tal Jew­ish beliefs and prac­tices such as obser­vance of holy days, pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion of kosher food and obser­vance of key life­cy­cle events around birth, death, mar­riage and bur­ial. In addi­tion to pos­i­tive free­doms, the free­dom to prac­tice one’s faith and live out one’s beliefs, Jews in Aus­tralia have also gen­er­al­ly enjoyed free­dom from per­se­cu­tion, vio­lence, harass­ment and exclu­sion on the basis of reli­gion affil­i­a­tion, beliefs or prac­tices. In sharp con­trast to the coun­tries of Europe and the Mid­dle East, there has nev­er been any kind of legal­ly or offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned per­se­cu­tion, vio­lence, harass­ment, exclu­sion or dis­crim­i­na­tion against Aus­tralian Jews as Jews.
Over­all, Jew­ish life and the Jew­ish way of life have been able to flour­ish in Aus­tralia and, con­se­quent­ly, Jews have been able to con­tribute to every facet of Aus­trali­a’s devel­op­ment and pros­per­i­ty in a man­ner and to an extent that would sim­ply not have been pos­si­ble in many oth­er coun­tries. This is not to deny that var­i­ous forms of anti-Jew­ish prej­u­dice have exist­ed and con­tin­ue to exist in Aus­tralia. The annu­al reports on anti­semitism in Aus­tralia, which my organ­i­sa­tion has pub­lished since 1989, demon­strate all too clear­ly that anti­semitism in Aus­tralia is a per­sis­tent and increas­ing­ly fre­quent prob­lem, some­times involv­ing threats or acts of vio­lence.
The last 18 months have seen the rise of a small but tight­ly organ­ised group espous­ing Nazism as an ide­ol­o­gy. It has defaced pub­lic places with its posters and stick­ers, which graph­i­cal­ly urge the mass killing of Jews and gay peo­ple. The group engages in para­mil­i­tary train­ing in remote areas. It has links with groups over­seas that have com­mit­ted mur­der and oth­er acts of vio­lence. This is a new and alien phe­nom­e­non in Aus­tralia. Aus­trali­a’s crim­i­nal laws pro­hibit­ing the urg­ing of vio­lence against peo­ple on the basis of their race have thus far proved to be com­plete­ly inef­fec­tive in address­ing it. Threats of vio­lence against Jew­ish Aus­tralians do not only emanate from groups espous­ing Nazism as an ide­ol­o­gy. Groups wish­ing to end the State of Israel have on occa­sion advo­cat­ed and engaged in acts of vio­lence against Jews in Aus­tralia.
In Aus­tralia, as else­where, the virus of anti­semitism has mutat­ed over time in order to accom­mo­date chang­ing cir­cum­stances. Where­as Jews were once demonised as an alien peo­ple ensconced with­in nations to which they did not belong, the trope more com­mon­ly adopt­ed by Jew haters nowa­days is to deny the dis­tinc­tive peo­ple­hood of Jews in order to deny their right of nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion.
My organ­i­sa­tion wel­comes the fact that last year’s polit­i­cal debate about part IIA of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act was resolved very much along the lines sug­gest­ed in rec­om­men­da­tions 8 and 9 of our writ­ten sub­mis­sion to this inquiry in Feb­ru­ary 2017. We also wel­come the fact that on 30 Novem­ber 2017 Aus­tralia upgrad­ed its sta­tus on the Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance, the IHRA, from observ­er to liai­son sta­tus in prepa­ra­tion for full mem­ber­ship lat­er this year or next year at the lat­est. Cur­rent­ly 31 demo­c­ra­t­ic states around the world are mem­bers of the IHRA. Each of them has tak­en up the com­mit­ment in the Stock­holm Dec­la­ra­tion of 2000 to com­bat grow­ing Holo­caust denial and anti­semitism. Mem­ber states also sub­scribe to the IHRA work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of ‘anti­semitism’, an invalu­able tool in under­stand­ing the pro­tean nature of anti­semitism and com­bat­ing it.
The enact­ment of leg­is­la­tion late last year to recog­nise same-sex mar­riages has accen­tu­at­ed con­cerns amongst reli­gious­ly obser­vant peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties about a gath­er­ing trend in Aus­tralia and else­where in the West­ern world to seek to cur­tail exist­ing reli­gious free­doms. My organ­i­sa­tion addressed this mat­ter more ful­ly in Feb­ru­ary this year in our writ­ten sub­mis­sion to the Expert Pan­el on Reli­gious Free­dom, estab­lished by the Depart­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net.
Last, but cer­tain­ly not least, my com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to be trou­bled by the prob­lem of spous­es, most­ly women, who are par­ties to mar­riages that have irre­triev­ably bro­ken down but can­not obtain a reli­gious divorce, and are thus pre­vent­ed from find­ing hap­pi­ness and sta­bil­i­ty for them­selves and their chil­dren in a new mar­riage. We have dealt with this in some detail in our writ­ten sub­mis­sion, but I feel it would be remiss of me not to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light the issue. Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mr Wertheim. Can I begin the dis­cus­sion as I have with a num­ber of wit­ness­es. Whilst we are on any sort of objec­tive assess­ment a fair­ly tol­er­ant and open nation where one has a great deal of free­dom to express one­self, et cetera, nonethe­less, as we point­ed out in our inter­im report, there are lim­it­ed legal pro­tec­tions for free­dom of reli­gion and belief. The Con­sti­tu­tion is fair­ly nar­row in this regard. We may have rat­i­fied instru­ments like the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights, but we haven’t incor­po­rat­ed much of that into domes­tic law. The ques­tion then aris­es: should we be doing some­thing more, giv­en what a lot of wit­ness­es have said is a chang­ing cul­ture in which we live, and, if so, what should that be?

Mr Wertheim: There’s no sim­ple answer to that ques­tion—

CHAIR: If there was, we would­n’t be sit­ting here!
Mr Wertheim: Indeed! We addressed this in some detail in our oth­er sub­mis­sion to the expert pan­el. We did not see the enact­ment of changes to the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘mar­riage’ as in and of itself nec­es­sar­i­ly impos­ing some con­straint on reli­gious free­doms. We don’t see that there’s an imme­di­ate urgency in that direc­tion. How­ev­er, we do agree with the gen­er­al propo­si­tion that there does seem to be a ten­den­cy in Aus­tralia and in oth­er West­ern soci­eties to wind back some of the exemp­tions for pro­tec­tion of reli­gious free­dom that exist in antidis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion. Whilst those exemp­tions still exist, the gen­er­al posi­tion of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties in Aus­tralia in terms of observ­ing and liv­ing out their beliefs is safe. There’s no com­pelling rea­son to start incor­po­rat­ing some of these inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions into domes­tic law. But if the trend con­tin­ues, and if there is a suf­fi­cient groundswell of opin­ion in some sec­tors of soci­ety for wind­ing back the exemp­tions in antidis­crim­i­na­tion law to the point where reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties might be com­pelled to do things against their con­science, then I think that whole ques­tion would need to be looked at much more seri­ous­ly.
There’s always the con­cern, also, that by incor­po­rat­ing the pro­vi­sions of inter­na­tion­al treaties into domes­tic law, the words of those treaties are read down as words of lim­i­ta­tion instead of inter­pret­ed in the way I believe they were intend­ed as words con­fer­ring ben­e­fi­cial rights. That would also need to be guard­ed against. We’ve tak­en a fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive approach to that whole area of law reform. But we do acknowl­edge that this is an area in which social norms and con­ven­tions are chang­ing. It needs to be mon­i­tored, and it might need to be reviewed in the future.
CHAIR: Quite a few wit­ness­es in sub­mis­sions to us have in effect sug­gest­ed that sim­ply rely­ing upon the exemp­tions to antidis­crim­i­na­tion law, a so-called neg­a­tive right, is inad­e­quate com­pared to the procla­ma­tion of a pos­i­tive right—for exam­ple, that arti­cle 26 of the inter­na­tion­al covenant has been incor­po­rat­ed in domes­tic law in Aus­tralia where­as arti­cle 18, which goes to free­dom of reli­gion and belief, has­n’t been incor­po­rat­ed except to the extent that, for exam­ple, the char­ter of human rights in Vic­to­ria and the Human Rights Act in the ACT do broad­ly incor­po­rate those pro­vi­sions.
Mr Wertheim: There’s also arti­cle 27, which is the pro­tec­tion of the reli­gious free­doms of minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. I accept the gen­uine­ness of the con­cern. I would say that in some areas, and per­haps in the most crit­i­cal area, name­ly employ­ment law, in the Fair Work Act there actu­al­ly is a pos­i­tive acknowl­edge­ment of free­dom of reli­gion. It’s not just a begrudg­ing, neg­a­tive accep­tance of an exemp­tion. It is word­ed in a pos­i­tive way. I would say that would be the most press­ing and com­pelling area where that issue aris­es. It could arise also in oth­er con­texts, but, if I have under­stood the thrust of sub­mis­sions from oth­er reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties in that direc­tion prop­er­ly, they are main­ly con­cerned about the impli­ca­tions in the employ­ment area, and I would say that the leg­is­la­tion, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly express­ly invok­ing these pos­i­tive rights, has done so in its own way.
Dr ALY: I have a ques­tion about Gett recal­ci­trance, because this is not just an issue for the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty; it’s a very big issue for Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties as well. I’m sure you know that. In your sub­mis­sion you say:
Gett refusal or recal­ci­trance was con­sid­ered in depth by the Aus­tralian Law Reform Com­mis­sion…
The rec­om­men­da­tion made was to have some­thing in the civ­il divorce courts—intervention by the civ­il courts—that would do sev­er­al things:
An Order enforc­ing a prenup­tial agree­ment that encour­ages the removal of bar­ri­ers to remar­riage…
I want to ask a ques­tion specif­i­cal­ly about that. Under our Con­sti­tu­tion the gov­ern­ment shall not make any laws about reli­gion. When I have dis­cussed this issue, and the cir­cum­stances are very close with Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties, the pref­er­ence has been for no inter­fer­ence from civ­il Aus­tralian law. The reli­gious process of mar­riage and divorce and the civ­il process of mar­riage and divorce sit par­al­lel but very sep­a­rate from each oth­er. Can you explain a lit­tle fur­ther about what would be the ben­e­fits but also the dis­ad­van­tages of hav­ing civ­il law inter­fer­ence in reli­gious mar­riage process­es?
Mr Wertheim: Let me start with sec­tion 116 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which you allud­ed to. That pro­hibits the par­lia­ment from enact­ing laws which impose a reli­gious obser­vance. I might not have the word­ing exact­ly right.
Dr ALY: I think what you said is pret­ty accu­rate.
Mr Wertheim: It’s some­thing along those lines. The pro­pos­al that my organ­i­sa­tion and the Organ­i­sa­tion of Rab­bis of Aus­trala­sia, as it then was, put to the gov­ern­ment in 2000 was drawn in a way that specif­i­cal­ly avoid­ed impos­ing a result. I think that’s an impor­tant point to start with, because this is not only a require­ment of our Con­sti­tu­tion; it is also, as it hap­pens, a require­ment of Jew­ish reli­gious law. Under Jew­ish reli­gious law, a reli­gious divorce has to be grant­ed by the male and accept­ed by the female. If there is any duress or com­pul­sion involved in the process on the part of either par­ty it is null and void. So it would not be fit for pur­pose, and it would also, quite pos­si­bly, con­tra­vene sec­tion 116 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The mod­el that was put for­ward by my com­mu­ni­ty in 2000, and which has been put for­ward since, has been drawn in a way that there is no com­pul­sion; there’s no duress. The sorts of reme­dies that are offered or that are made avail­able at the dis­cre­tion of the Fam­i­ly Court are set out at the top of page 11 of our sub­mis­sion. There are four dif­fer­ent types of orders that we sug­gest should be made avail­able to the Fam­i­ly Court, and they have been specif­i­cal­ly drawn in a way to avoid that whole area of com­pul­sion.
As to the ben­e­fits, the ben­e­fits are, essen­tial­ly, to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. This is one of the pri­ma­ry func­tions of the law. In 98 per cent of cas­es, as far as we can tell, it’s the female spouse and the chil­dren who are to be pro­tect­ed against the use of the reli­gious tra­di­tion and con­ven­tion to acquire an advan­tage in civ­il pro­ceed­ings, because that’s hap­pen­ing now any­way. That inter­mix­ing, if you like, is hap­pen­ing now—when one par­ty with­holds con­sent to the grant­i­ng or the accept­ing of a reli­gious divorce as a con­di­tion of get­ting their way in a prop­er­ty set­tle­ment or in a cus­tody dis­pute. Giv­en that real­i­ty, the alter­na­tives that we put for­ward are there to pro­tect peo­ple from being exploit­ed in that way.
The oth­er point I would make is that there are com­pa­ra­ble juris­dic­tions, Cana­da, the UK, the state of New York, South Africa, which already make these sorts of pro­vi­sions avail­able in their civ­il law and have done so now for some years. And the sky has­n’t fall­en.
Dr ALY: In those cas­es, has there been any kind of argu­ment that these pro­vi­sions impinge on the free­dom of reli­gion or the free­dom of belief by indi­vid­u­als who per­haps want to retain that pow­er?
Mr Wertheim: I don’t know enough about any indi­vid­ual case in those oth­er juris­dic­tions. I would have assumed, and I have read some things that sug­gest, that those points were made when the reforms were orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced, but have since ceased to be rel­e­vant and have not real­ly been raised since. But, as to what may tran­spire in any indi­vid­ual case, I could­n’t say.
CHAIR: Just to tease that out a bit fur­ther, I note that your sub­mis­sion says:
In Jan­u­ary 2004, the then Fed­er­al Attor­ney Gen­er­al declared that the pro­pos­als would not be imple­ment­ed, claim­ing that they would not be con­sti­tu­tion­al and would also vio­late the prin­ci­ple of sep­a­rat­ing reli­gion and the state and threat­en the sys­tem of no-fault divorce.
I’m just inter­est­ed in the com­ment that it would­n’t be con­sti­tu­tion­al. Pre­sum­ably, in devel­op­ing these pro­pos­als, you had some con­sti­tu­tion­al advice in rela­tion to that. If so, can you say any­thing about that? And did you or the coun­cil of rab­bis or who­ev­er seek advice from the then Attor­ney as to why this would­n’t be con­sti­tu­tion­al?
Mr Wertheim: We did. There were many con­ver­sa­tions with the then Attor­ney. As it hap­pened, it was Mr Rud­dock, who is chair­ing the expert pan­el. I don’t think it got beyond the asser­tion by the Attor­ney that the reme­dies we were propos­ing would involve impos­ing a reli­gious obser­vance. No doubt that is a view that, if such a reform were to be made, could be argued before the High Court, but the expert advice that I can refer you to is an arti­cle by Aman­da Williamson. I’ve referred to her arti­cle in the sub­mis­sion. She wrote about this in the James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty Law Review in 2004. I would com­mend that arti­cle to you. Ms Williamson is not Jew­ish, as far as I know, but she’s cer­tain­ly very much on top of this issue, includ­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al aspects.
CHAIR: In sum­ma­ry, with­out me read­ing her arti­cle, her opin­ion was that this would not be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al?
Mr Wertheim: That was part of her arti­cle, and, yes, she was of that view. She expressed scep­ti­cism about the con­sti­tu­tion­al inva­lid­i­ty argu­ment. I should also say that the Fam­i­ly Law Coun­cil endorsed the pro­pos­al that we put for­ward to the Attor­ney as well.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: Thank you for the infor­ma­tion about the inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion as well. We have not got time to go into all of that but it was very use­ful to have that sum­ma­ry of what is occur­ring around the world. I think your sub­mis­sion has placed in con­text that this is an inter­na­tion­al process, and we have to be care­ful in Aus­tralia because these things are aris­ing every­where. Is that right? I would have thought that would be—
Mr Wertheim: Are you talk­ing specif­i­cal­ly about Gett refusal?
Sen­a­tor MOORE: I have moved on from the Gett. It absolute­ly total­ly fas­ci­nat­ed me because I had been read­ing about it some­time in the past and picked up all the ques­tions. That is fine. It was just a mat­ter of see­ing where we stand now. But inevitably it looks like a High Court sit­u­a­tion some­where down the track.
Mr Wertheim: It would be if that reform was intro­duced.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: It is just a press­ing need for the women involved.
Mr Wertheim: It is. And fam­i­ly law prac­ti­tion­ers who have clients in that sit­u­a­tion have writ­ten about it over a peri­od of years.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: I’m sure your com­mu­ni­ty has put sub­mis­sions into the cur­rent review of the Fam­i­ly Law Act that is going on. There is a House of Reps com­mit­tee look­ing at the whole issue of fam­i­ly law in Aus­tralia.
Mr Wertheim: My organ­i­sa­tion has not but I believe one of the fam­i­ly law prac­ti­tion­ers who has spe­cial­ist knowl­edge in this area has done so.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: It’s anoth­er way to go. It was about the sum­ma­tion of the sit­u­a­tion around the world. Mr Wertheim, it is always con­fus­ing when talk­ing with your com­mu­ni­ty because it seems to me you are cov­ered by the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act and also the reli­gious area. Peo­ple don’t sep­a­rate that. It still con­tin­ues to con­fuse me—the Sikh group, the Islam­ic group and the Mus­lims as well. Peo­ple have this view that it is one group when it is a great wide vari­ety of peo­ple.
Mr Wertheim: The legal posi­tion in the com­mon law coun­tries, as I under­stand it—unless there has been some recent case law that I am not across—is that only the Jew­ish and Sikh com­mu­ni­ties are recog­nised as both nation­al and faith com­mu­ni­ties because of their his­tor­i­cal antecedents. I don’t believe Mus­lims per se are recog­nised as eth­no-reli­gious. I think that is still the case. It cer­tain­ly has been for many years. So that has giv­en rise to cer­tain issues about their pro­tec­tions under the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act. There is anoth­er point that I real­ly would like to raise with this com­mit­tee because I do think it is an area of urgent need for reform and that is the cur­rent laws that cov­er incite­ment of violence—not incite­ment of hatred but incite­ment of violence—on the basis of race and reli­gion.
I am refer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to sec­tions 80.2A and 80.2B of the Crim­i­nal Code. I raised it specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of the remarks I made ear­li­er about the rise of this new Nazi group in Aus­tralia. It is a small group at present but they are very open about their advo­ca­cy of mass killing of Jews and gays, among oth­ers. There seems to be no pos­si­bil­i­ty of pros­e­cut­ing mem­bers of this group for their activ­i­ties, for incit­ing vio­lence on the basis of race and reli­gion, because the ele­ments of the offences as they are cur­rent­ly defined in sec­tions 80.2A a and 80.2B impose an impos­si­bly high evi­den­tiary bar on a pros­e­cu­tor. Specif­i­cal­ly, these sec­tions require proof of two ele­ments of mens rea, which is almost unheard of in the crim­i­nal law. One is the inten­tion to do the incit­ing but the oth­er is an inten­tion that vio­lence will occur, which is a very dif­fi­cult thing to prove because the threats and the incite­ment are often implic­it, not prov­able beyond rea­son­able doubt. Added to that is the fur­ther com­pli­ca­tion that the cur­rent law—which, by the way, was intro­duced in 2010—has avail­able to it a defence in sec­tion 80.3 which is based on, essen­tial­ly, a good faith type defence, a free speech type defence. I’m just ask­ing mem­bers of the com­mit­tee to pause and reflect for a minute on a sit­u­a­tion where some­body has been proven, beyond rea­son­able doubt, to have intend­ed to incite vio­lence on the basis of race or religion—has been proven to have intend­ed that vio­lence will occur—and yet did so rea­son­ably and in good faith.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: What­ev­er that means.
Mr Wertheim: Well, what­ev­er it means, I don’t believe there is any cir­cum­stance, no mat­ter how broad a view you take of the words ‘good faith’, that would cov­er a sit­u­a­tion where some­body has been shown to intend to incite vio­lence and intend that vio­lence will occur. That, in and of itself, seems to be com­plete­ly incom­pat­i­ble with any sug­ges­tion of good faith, free­dom of speech or express­ing a view. My organ­i­sa­tion has made repeat­ed sub­mis­sions about this, includ­ing when the law was ini­tial­ly intro­duced. We would say that, if there is any sit­u­a­tion where some­body intends to sim­ply express a point of view or give voice to a phi­los­o­phy, in those cir­cum­stances, then the orig­i­nal ele­ments of the offence—the inten­tion to incite and the inten­tion that vio­lence will occur—will not be present, so the defence is mis­con­ceived. The whole scheme of the leg­is­la­tion, in that respect, is mis­con­ceived. It seems to me also that—given that you’ve got groups that do get away with incit­ing vio­lence on the basis of race or reli­gion, and there has nev­er been a pros­e­cu­tion, to my knowl­edge, under either of those sec­tions, or cer­tain­ly not a conviction—this is an area in urgent need of reform, and it does actu­al­ly go to reli­gious free­dom because it is one of the few laws that does pro­vide spe­cif­ic pro­tec­tions to peo­ple on the basis of reli­gion.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: What’s the response when you raise it with attor­neys of all flavours?
Mr Wertheim: The eyes glaze over!

Dr ALY: Do you think that the law ade­quate­ly cap­tures these kinds of incite­ments made on social media? I’ll give you an exam­ple, because I share your con­cerns about ris­ing anti­semitism cou­pled with white suprema­cist and neo-Nazi move­ments in Aus­tralia. One exam­ple is a tweet by one of these groups which refers to a report in The New York Times and says, ‘This report men­tions an increase in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in Aus­tralia by almost 10 per cent in the last year. Let’s get those num­bers up.’ To me, say­ing to fol­low­ers, ‘Let’s get those num­bers up,’ is very much a call to action. This was done on social media. Do you believe that the law, the Crim­i­nal Code, as it cur­rent­ly stands, effec­tive­ly pro­tects your com­mu­ni­ty from this kind of—
Mr Wertheim: No, it does­n’t, and the exam­ple you’ve cit­ed is a very mild exam­ple, if I may say so. I’m hap­py, if the com­mit­tee wish­es, to email you some of the posters that have been issued by that same group, Antipodean Resis­tance, one of which calls for the legal­i­sa­tion of the exe­cu­tion of Jews and does so with a graph­ic por­tray­al tak­en from one of the mass killings from World War II, show­ing an SS offi­cer about to shoot some­body in the back of the head. There was anoth­er one that was issued, actu­al­ly, dur­ing the recent debate about same-sex mar­riage and referred to the fact that there were reports of gay peo­ple com­mit­ting sui­cide dur­ing that debate because they felt that they had been vil­i­fied, and again say­ing, ‘Let’s get those num­bers up’—the same sort of idea—and again accom­pa­nied by a graph­ic pic­ture of, pre­sum­ably, a gay per­son being shot in the head. So it seems to me that these sorts of pub­lic dis­plays of incite­ment to vio­lence, or even advo­ca­cy or pro­mo­tion of vio­lence, ought to be some­thing that the law can reach in extreme and suf­fi­cient­ly seri­ous cas­es like that. Just last week, that same group plas­tered those very posters on a syn­a­gogue in Ade­laide. Again, this was done in the dead of night. It’s unlike­ly that any­one is going to be appre­hend­ed for it. It goes to show you that, unless you nip this in the bud, it gets worse. Soon­er or lat­er, the price that Aus­tralia has to pay—or that any soci­ety that does­n’t deal with this ear­ly on will have to pay—is going to be much greater. I’m using this oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise the issue and urge the com­mit­tee to look at and rec­om­mend a review of the law in this area.
Sen­a­tor MOORE: I have one last ques­tion about the secu­ri­ty costs. That was some­thing I did not know about before. It said that you had to request increased fund­ing. Have you had a deci­sion on that request?
Mr Wertheim: No. The gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Fund. The first round was main­ly for local coun­cils. In fact, I think it was exclu­sive­ly for local coun­cils. The sec­ond round was open to all groups, and 93 Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions in Aus­tralia made an appli­ca­tion for assis­tance. I’m talk­ing about syn­a­gogues, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, museums—there are many organ­i­sa­tions around the coun­try. The schools are in a some­what dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion because they are cov­ered by a sep­a­rate grant, the Secure Schools Pro­gram. That has been the case since, I think, 2007. That sit­u­a­tion appears to have been dealt with ade­quate­ly.
Of course, schools are not the only insti­tu­tions that are vul­ner­a­ble to attack. The expens­es are enor­mous and get­ting high­er every year. For one thing, it’s cap­i­tal expens­es, but it is also more par­tic­u­lar­ly the ongo­ing expens­es of sta­t­ic guards and so on. It’s a sad real­i­ty that, even in Aus­tralia, if you’re Jew­ish and you want to attend ser­vices at a syn­a­gogue, you have to go through met­al detec­tors, past secu­ri­ty guards and all the rest of it. That is not some­thing that has been expe­ri­enced by any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty, to my knowl­edge.
CHAIR: Thank you very much for your sub­mis­sion. Thank you very much for com­ing along and dis­cussing it with us today. If there’s any fur­ther mate­r­i­al you wish to put before the com­mit­tee, please for­ward it to the sec­re­tary.