From Classrooms to Campuses: Australia Must Choose Consequences
Over the last two years, Australia has argued about antisemitism as though it were mainly a contest of language, politics, and competing narratives. The events of Sunday 14 December 2025 in Bondi tore through that illusion.
The terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, targeting a Hanukkah gathering, was not an online pile-on and it was not a culture-war argument. It was mass casualty violence in a place that represents Australian normality: sand, surf, families, a summer evening. Whatever Australians told themselves before, the lesson now is unavoidable: antisemitism here is not fringe, and it is not safely contained to screens.
For those of us working in education and community advocacy, the “before” and “after” is unmistakable. Since 7 October 2023, antisemitism has become louder, more normalised, and more public. The annual incident data reflects it: 1,654 anti-Jewish incidents were reported nationally in 2025, down from 2,062 the year before, but still at levels the community’s leadership described as deeply troubling.
The question Australia is now grappling with is not whether antisemitism exists. It is whether our institutions are willing to enforce their own standards when it does, especially where young people learn and where culture is formed: in schools and universities.
What has been most dispiriting is not only the behaviour itself, but the institutional drift around it. In too many education settings, the reflex is delay. Complaints are “managed.” Clear breaches are treated as “complex.” Jewish students are made to feel like the complication, rather than the victims of it. And intimidation is relabelled as “debate” the moment it is wrapped in politics. When a principal, teacher, lecturer, or senior staff member gives hateful rhetoric oxygen, it does not stay personal. It becomes permission. Students notice. Parents notice. Those already emboldened read hesitation as a green light.
That is why the development reported this week in New South Wales matters well beyond that state. The Daily Telegraph reports the NSW Government is moving to explicitly prohibit hate speech in codes of conduct across government, independent, and Catholic schools and to make dismissal possible even where conduct may fall short of a criminal prosecution threshold. The article also makes plain why this is happening now: anger about delayed action in a case involving a principal’s inflammatory online remarks has forced the system to confront a basic truth Jewish families have been repeating for months, that “zero tolerance” is meaningless when it is paired with “slow response.”
This is not a mere HR adjustment. It is a recognition of what schools actually are: duty-of-care environments where adults hold authority over children. If the adults in charge treat hate as something to be managed rather than stopped, students absorb that lesson quickly. Jewish students learn to keep their heads down. Other students learn there are no consequences. And the wider community learns that standards are negotiable when the subject is Jews.
Running alongside the school conduct changes is a second development that goes to the heart of why universities and public institutions so often freeze: the fight over definition. According to the same reporting, the NSW Opposition is moving to standardise the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism across public service codes, extending beyond education to government agencies, state-owned corporations, and local councils, and potentially affecting universities, with the article noting universities may opt for an alternative definition via Universities Australia. The proposal also canvasses real consequences: restricting public funding for individuals or organisations found to have engaged in antisemitism, and requiring courts to consider the IHRA definition in race-based offences against Jewish people.
This is not semantic. It is about whether public institutions can be pinned to a consistent standard. One of the most damaging trends in education over the last two years has been the deliberate blurring of boundaries: treating everything as “just politics,” making Jewish identity negotiable whenever Israel is mentioned, and using ambiguity as a shield against responsibility. A working definition will not solve everything, but it removes a familiar escape hatch: we didn’t know what we were looking at. It forces decision-makers to recognise contemporary antisemitism as it presents in practice, including conspiracy tropes, collective blame, and double standards that slide from criticism of policy into the delegitimisation of Jewish identity.
Australia is not starting from zero. In December 2021, the NSW Government adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, becoming the first Australian state to do so. The question now is whether these standards will be operationalised where Jewish Australians actually experience the problem: in school leadership decisions, university conduct processes, staff training, student safety settings, and funding governance.
The broader national context is also shifting from cultural argument to enforcement. But Jewish Australians are entitled to a blunt assessment: we are surrounded by announcements about antisemitism, taskforces, strategies, and statements, yet too many Jewish students and families still do not feel safer. That is not because the public is indifferent. Often the public is appalled. It is because too many institutions have trained themselves to avoid conflict rather than confront it and nowhere is that more visible than in schools and universities where delays and euphemisms become the default response.
If Australia wants credibility after Bondi, it needs operational seriousness in education. Codes of conduct must be matched with clear guidance and real-world examples that principals, departmental executives, and university administrators can apply without fear or favour. Training must be practical, not generic: it must equip decision-makers to identify antisemitism as it presents now and to distinguish lawful political expression from discriminatory conduct. Reporting pathways must be trusted, fast, and predictable, so students and parents do not feel they are “creating a problem” by asking adults to do their jobs. Consistency must replace the current postcode lottery, where outcomes depend on which school, which faculty, or which executive happens to be involved. And transparency matters: publish de-identified data on complaints, timeframes, and outcomes, because trust is built when institutions show their work.
After Bondi on 14 December 2025, Australia can no longer treat antisemitism as a rhetorical dispute about the Middle East or as something that exists only on the extremes. It is a test of whether a multicultural democracy will defend its principles when the cost is discomfort and confrontation.
Now comes the only part that matters: enforcement. Because the real audience is not the political class or the commentariat. It is the Jewish student deciding whether it is safe to be visible at school or on campus. It is the teacher or academic weighing whether to speak up or stay silent. It is the parent asking whether the system will protect their child without being begged.
Australia has begun to draw firmer lines, particularly through what is now being proposed and implemented in NSW schools and across public service codes. The country will be judged on whether it has the will to enforce those lines, consistently, early, and in the open.
