“Conflict and war have always produced extremes of language from some people. In Australia over the last three years, we have seen how such language under­mines the fun­da­ment­al rights and freedoms of citizens who are its targets, and how corrosive this can be to society as a whole.

“It is bad enough that we have people in Australia who engage in such language, regard­less of their professed reasons. The last thing we need is visitors to Australia who would add to the problem.

“Last January the gov­ern­ment tightened the law to exclude granting visas to visitors who have a record of engaging in hate, vili­fic­a­tion or extremist conduct.

“This change in the law will mean nothing unless it is con­sist­ently applied.

“For that reason, we would welcome a decision to deny a visa to a comedian who has repeatedly referred to an entire nation, Israel, in coarsely dehu­man­ising terms and called for the death of its people. Australia loses nothing by keeping this brand of ‘comedy’ away from our shores.

Peter Wertheim
Co-CEO, ECAJ