I read­i­ly acknowl­edge that the Prime Min­is­ter has been a sin­cere and con­sis­tent oppo­nent of all forms of racism, includ­ing anti­semitism in par­tic­u­lar, across the decades I have known him.

Yet I also have to say that the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and many Aus­tralians of oth­er back­grounds who have inun­dat­ed my organ­i­sa­tion with heart­felt mes­sages of sup­port dur­ing the epi­dem­ic of anti­semitism across the past 15 months, are dis­ap­point­ed at what they see as the hes­i­tan­cy and inad­e­qua­cy of the government’s response, and that of our law enforce­ment agen­cies.

The mea­sures tak­en by the gov­ern­ment to date include grants totalling $57.5m for com­mu­ni­ty secu­ri­ty, an $8m grant to the Syd­ney Jew­ish Muse­um, the appoint­ment of a spe­cial envoy to com­bat anti­semitism and the pass­ing of new leg­is­la­tion to make our anti-incite­ment laws more work­able, to ban the pub­lic dis­play of Nazi and ter­ror­ist sym­bols, the Nazi salute and the trade in Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia.

Most of these are mea­sures that have long been called for by the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, and we com­mend the Prime Min­is­ter and the gov­ern­ment for imple­ment­ing them.

On the oth­er side of the ledger, we would much pre­fer to live in a safe and secure Aus­tralia in which secu­ri­ty fund­ing was not need­ed.

Fur­ther, as we have told the gov­ern­ment and var­i­ous par­lia­men­tary inquiries, some of their key leg­isla­tive reforms are for­mu­lat­ed in a prob­lem­at­ic way and will not work in prac­tice.

In addi­tion, the gov­ern­ment has nev­er repu­di­at­ed head-on the fever of anti-Israel and often overt­ly anti­se­mit­ic rhetoric at our uni­ver­si­ties, in var­i­ous parts of civ­il soci­ety and on online plat­forms.

This is the breed­ing ground for the hatred that has helped spawn arson and graf­fi­ti attacks and count­less oth­er forms of anti­semitism. In fact, some of the government’s recent com­men­tary in the area of for­eign pol­i­cy has had the unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of mak­ing things worse.

Our For­eign Min­is­ter, Pen­ny Wong, in recent times has float­ed the idea of Aus­tralia recog­nis­ing Pales­tin­ian state­hood “as a way of build­ing momen­tum towards a two-state solu­tion”, rather than as the out­come of a nego­ti­at­ed peace agree­ment.

After the past 15 months, it is hard to under­stand how recog­nis­ing a Pales­tin­ian state with­out a com­pre­hen­sive peace deal, while large seg­ments of the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship remain deter­mined to wipe Israel off the map, will do any­thing oth­er than play to the geno­ci­dal aims of these extrem­ists.

There can­not be a Pales­tin­ian state with­out a sin­gle cen­tral gov­ern­ment that is capa­ble of assert­ing its author­i­ty and con­trol over its peo­ple and ter­ri­to­ry.

Instead, we con­tin­ue to have an agglom­er­a­tion of ter­ror­ist war­lords and their sup­port­ers, all armed to the teeth and pur­su­ing their dis­parate agen­das, which include repeat­ing the Octo­ber 7 atroc­i­ties against Israel, again and again.

We wait in hope for the gov­ern­ment to make strong demands of the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship, includ­ing a Pales­tin­ian blue­print for a two-state peace, with detailed pro­pos­als on bor­ders, set­tle­ments, refugees and Jerusalem – not mere­ly the same old max­i­mal­ist rhetoric.

The Israelis have made three detailed offers for a com­pre­hen­sive peace, includ­ing the estab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, which have been answered by rejec­tion or silence.

As the government’s dis­course on the con­flict has become more one-sided against Israel, it has been seized on by anti-Israel groups to awak­en and exploit anti­se­mit­ic prej­u­dices as a kind of tac­tic to silence the Jew­ish community’s voice, which is over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ive of Israel.

What has fol­lowed has been the impor­ta­tion into Aus­tralia of an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of hatred and vio­lence asso­ci­at­ed with a for­eign con­flict.

After the recent abhor­rent arson and graf­fi­ti attacks against syn­a­gogues, pri­vate homes, motor vehi­cles and, most dis­grace­ful­ly, a child­care cen­tre, there now seems to be a new sense of urgency on the government’s part that is belat­ed but nonethe­less wel­come.

The con­ven­ing of the nation­al cab­i­net on Tues­day to deal with the cri­sis of anti­semitism in Aus­tralia was a step my organ­i­sa­tion called for in ear­ly Decem­ber.

Nation­al cab­i­net can pro­vide fed­er­al, state and ter­ri­to­ry gov­ern­ments with the lead­er­ship and direc­tion to attack the prob­lem of anti­semitism in co-ordi­na­tion.

The deci­sion to estab­lish a nation­al data­base to track anti­se­mit­ic crime and oth­er anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents and behav­iours is also some­thing we have long called for but needs to go fur­ther so that the data­base tracks all hate-moti­vat­ed crime, as gov­ern­ments have been doing in Britain, Cana­da and the US for more than 30 years.

This mod­est but impor­tant mea­sure can be only a first step.

To get seri­ous, nation­al cab­i­net needs to send out rid­ing instruc­tion to the Stand­ing Coun­cil of Attor­neys-Gen­er­al, the Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ters Meet­ing and oth­er arms of gov­ern­ment to achieve a co-ordi­nat­ed whole-of gov­ern­ment response to anti­semitism in law enforce­ment, leg­isla­tive reform, school edu­ca­tion, uni­ver­si­ties and civ­il soci­ety. There can be no let-up until this cur­rent scourge of anti-Jew­ish hatred is expunged from our pub­lic life.