Albanese’s Weakness Is a National Crisis

It should not be difficult to legislate against hatred, Prime Minister Albanese. A prime minister has one overriding duty: to keep his citizens safe. Nothing is more fundamental. Nothing is more non-negotiable.

Yet if Albanese is genuinely unsure how to confront the crisis his government has helped foster, I am happy to assist. I would even volunteer to move into The Lodge myself, if only to restore some semblance of Australia’s once-instinctive culture of mateship and “love thy neighbour,” values that now appear disturbingly absent from our national life.

The starting point is obvious. The Prime Minister need only pick up the long-ignored report of Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, which sets out clear, practical recommendations. Segal could not have been clearer:

“Antisemitism is not just a threat to Jews; it attacks the foundations of our nation – fairness, equality and respect for one another. When hatred goes unchallenged, our democracy is at risk. The response must be clear and unequivocal. There is no place for antisemitism in modern Australia.”

At a memorial service in Sydney organised by the Australian Jewish Association, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison observed that 30 Australian prime ministers upheld a bipartisan commitment to Israel. Australia’s 31st prime minister has chosen to break with that tradition.

Immediately after taking office in 2022, Mr Albanese withdrew Australia’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This decision was entirely consistent with a record of hostility toward Israel stretching back decades. In 2000, he even led anti-Israel protests in Sydney at the time Yasser Arafat walked away from a generous peace offer from Israeli Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Since the October 7 attacks more than two years ago, the Albanese government has condemned a democratic ally with wearying regularity.

At the same time, the government repatriated ISIS brides who openly swore to destroy Australia and the West, and admitted around 3,000 unvetted Gazans raised on indoctrination that glorifies hatred of Jews, Israel, and Western civilisation.

Hatred preached by certain imams has been allowed to flourish unchecked. Vile and repugnant rhetoric goes unchallenged and unpunished. The Prime Minister knows that radical Islamist ideology is being taught in schools and mosques, yet looks the other way because a million votes appear to matter more than a mere 100,000.

History teaches us that Jews are never the final target, merely the first. Once they are marked, others follow. The Second World War proved this with unspeakable clarity: six million Jews were murdered, yet the conflict consumed seventy million lives. Islamist extremists today make no secret of their ambitions. They openly proclaim their desire to impose their ideology everywhere. Silence is not ignorance; it is acquiescence.

As Senator James Paterson has rightly said, we must stop tolerating the intolerable. Hate-preaching clerics have no place in Australia. Non-citizens who incite hatred should be deported. Citizens who do so should face the full force of the law. At the very least, we should be asking whether citizenship means anything if its foundational values are openly repudiated.

The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. Anyone who has visited Yad Vashem knows it began with propaganda, professional exclusion, confiscated property, boycotts and ghettos. Only later came the camps. Having visited Yad Vashem and marched at Auschwitz during the March of the Living, I am struck by how eerily familiar much of today’s rhetoric has become.

Under Albanese, attacks on Jews have spread across Australian life, from universities, city streets to synagogues. Our national icons have not been spared: the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023; the Sydney Harbour Bridge protests on August 3, 2025 awash with extremist symbols; and now the horror at Bondi Beach.

This is not leadership. It is weakness, unmistakable and consequential. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Mr Albanese months ago of exactly where this path would lead. That warning was dismissed with arrogance. Apologies are now owed: to Australia, to the Jewish community, to Netanyahu for dismissing his warnings and to former leaders who understood that moral clarity matters.

Labor icon Bob Hawke once warned after visiting Israel: “If the bell tolls for Israel, it will not just toll for Israel; it will toll for all mankind.” Today, the bells are tolling for Australia. Our freedoms are under strain.

At the funeral of the first Bondi victim, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the Prime Minister was conspicuously absent. So too was anyone from his Cabinet. No visits to the families. No visible solidarity. Laying flowers and box ticking. Once again, the message was unmistakable: Jewish Australians do not count. As ‘leaders’ they should have the backbone to face the people. If they are booed, so be it. At least show you care.

Words without action are worthless. The only consistent action this government has taken is appeasement, particularly of its Western Sydney voter base. Albanese has failed in his most basic duty: keeping Australians safe.

Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it plainly, describing the Prime Minister’s response to the Bondi terror attack as “the greatest stain on this nation,” accusing the government of allowing Australia to be radicalised on its watch. He called for bans on hate preachers, an end to extremist protests that have become incubators of hate, the implementation of Segal’s report, and a royal commission into the Bondi attack. If a prime minister cannot name Islamist ideology as a problem, he cannot possibly solve it.

It is time for Governor-General Sam Mostyn to recognise that this government is unfit to serve and act to dissolve it immediately. Australia faces a national crisis that demands urgent intervention. If the last two years is any indication, we cannot afford to imagine what the next 2 years will deliver.

Jewish Australians are Australians. Ten-year-old Matilda, named proudly by her Ukrainian parents as the first of their family born here, symbolises everything this country once stood for. The Jewish community has contributed to Australia since the First Fleet. That legacy is now being casually discarded. This isn’t a game of roulette.

Since Sunday, I have been flooded with messages. The sentiment is unanimous: we all came here, whatever our origins, for a better future. For ourselves. For our children. For the generations that follow.

Those who import hatred have no place here.

Enough is enough. It is time for Anthony Albanese to step aside and for Australia to be led by someone willing to defend it. Albanese, you are the weakest link, goodbye!