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.