THE HON MARK DREYFUS KC MP
ATTORNEY-GENERAL
CABINET SECRETARY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PODCAST
THE CONVERSATION
THURSDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2024
SUBJECTS: Antisemitism; Australia-Israel relations; International Criminal Court; National Anti-Corruption Commission; Whistleblowers.
GRATTAN: We're joined today by Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus. Mark Dreyfus, you're Jewish and you're from Melbourne, so I want to start with something of your own back story. The family of your father George Dreyfus, who's a well-known Australian composer now, fled Nazi Germany when George was just a boy. Can you tell us something about their story and how much did this experience influence you when you were growing up? What did you hear about it?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I didn't hear a great deal, because my grandmother, like many Holocaust survivors, didn't like to talk about what had happened. She didn't like to talk about the loss of her parents, who were murdered in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, but I have talked to my father, who we are blessed, is still with us at the age of 96 and living alone and still in good form. He was sent by his parents, my grandparents, with his older brother alone, to Australia, while my grandparents remained in Germany until four months after the war, the Second World War, had started to try to persuade their parents, my great grandparents to leave. So, here's my father and his older brother being cared for in a Jewish run orphanage in Melbourne. They landed at Station Pier in Melbourne in July 1939 and waited anxiously for six months, not knowing if their parents would turn up. None of the other children who had accompanied them on the ship from Britain had their parents turn up. They remained orphans. And so that was the start, of my father, at the age of 11, arriving in Australia in July 1939. My grandmother had good reason not to talk about what had happened then, because she'd failed to persuade her parents to leave. They said, "We are Germans. We are not leaving." and in 1942 they were put on the train to the east and murdered in two different places, in Theresienstadt and in Auschwitz, and so too. my grandfather's surviving parent also died. So that's a bit of family history. My father was living in Berlin at the age of 10 when Kristallnacht occurred. And for your listeners who aren't familiar with Kristallnacht, that was the Night of Broken Glass, the night on which, organized by the Nazi regime, by the Third Reich with its Stormtroopers carrying out the violence, the windows of Jewish businesses, Jewish shops throughout Germany were smashed and synagogues were burned. And so that's where we come to with the event last Friday in Melbourne, which immediately for every Jewish Australian raised that echo, if you like, of Kristallnacht, the burning of synagogues across Germany. And I'm not even beginning to talk about centuries of pogroms in Poland and throughout Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, where synagogues were burned. The image that the idea of the burning of the synagogue is something that strikes fear and provokes incredible distress for Jewish Australians. Have you
GRATTAN: Have you talked at all with your father since that event?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Absolutely. I talk to him every day, actually, since last Friday.
GRATTAN: And what's his feeling?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Terrible. It reminded him Kristallnacht was the prompt for his parents to decide, it's what he said to me earlier this week, he said Kristallnacht was the prompt for his assimilated German parents, who hadn't been particularly observant Jews. They saw themselves more as Germans than Jewish, that was the more important part of their identity. They decided, he remembers it very sharply, they decided then, in mid-November of 1938 that they had to make preparations to leave and try to persuade their parents to leave and make preparations to send their children away. All of which then happened in that my father and his brother arrived in Australia. My grandparents tried to persuade their parents to leave and failed, and then they themselves made their way to Australia, arriving in Melbourne in January of 1940 after the war had started. So yes, I have talked to my dad every day this week. It's a terrible thing to have happened, and perhaps that little account might explain the level of distress and grief and anger that the event has caused for Jewish Australians. But I would suggest that it's also caused all of those emotions for the great bulk of the Australian community who are horrified at the burning of a place of worship.
GRATTAN: Well, you said this week when you were at the Prime Minister's press conference that you couldn't remember a time of such intense antisemitism in Australia before this incident of the other day. And apart from that, what has been your experience of antisemitism over the past year, and what's been the experience of your friends in Melbourne? What are they telling you? How are they being received? What issues have they run into as Jewish Melburnians?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It's abuse on the street. We haven't got long enough, actually, Michelle, for me to recount to you all of the instances and incidents that have been recounted to me shockingly since October the 7th 2023. I had thought in the immediate aftermath of the murder of more than 1200 people in Israel by Hamas terrorists, murder and rape and violence and kidnapping and hostage taking in shocking scenes reminiscent of pogrom like activity, I had thought that after that event and series of events, there would be a great deal of sympathy for the victims in Israel. Horror at Hamas and at a gathering of about 6000 of the Melbourne Jewish community I spoke, representing the Government of Australia, to a crowd of Melbourne, the Melbourne Jewish community on the 13th of October. I've got a very sharp recollection of it, and we all thought that there would be an outpouring of sympathy, and for a short time, there was. But as the months wore on, we saw more and more deeply personalised protest activity being directed at Jewish Australians. That bringing of tensions from the conflict in the Middle East to Australia and directing hatred and prejudice against Jewish Australians. Now, the kind of incidents that I've had reported to me have been abuse on the street, swastikas and other or Hamas symbols being put on Jewish businesses, abuse in the form of other communications, the doxxing event of the personal details of more than 600 Jewish creatives being posted online in a malicious way, the frequent demonstrations chanting antisemitic slogans, not just anti-Israel, but antisemitic slogans, abuse being directed at Jewish students on campuses around Australia, abuse being directed at Jewish children in primary and secondary schools around Australia. And I'll stop there, because I think that's just a sample. Directed at me I've seen directly antisemitic abuse in a form and with a frequency that I have certainly not experienced since I was elected to the Federal Parliament in 2007. Of course, from time to time there, there's been an antisemitic jibe directed at me, because all Jews have to have experienced that from time to time. What's occurred, however, in the last year, is an extraordinary increase in the level of abuse directed at Jewish Australians. This has been measured by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and by the Anti-Defamation Commission and others. And so this is not just my personal experience and not just the personal experience that I'm anecdotally relaying here. It's a fact that there's been an unprecedented level of antisemitic activity in all forms that's arisen in the last year.
GRATTAN: Do you think that this has been latent in our community in quite a strong form before the events of October, 7 last year? Because it just seems to have bubbled up so dramatically.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, as has been observed, antisemitism is thousands of years old, and it's not that there has not been antisemitism in Australia to some extent institutionalised in earlier times in Australian history. But equally, we are a country that's had the first Australian born Governor-General, after whom my seat is named. Many other prominent Jewish Australians have made an immense contribution to our country for many decades. So, in recent decades, overt antisemitism has become less and less common. You should take me as saying it's not that it ever went away entirely, and it's not that there hasn't been, from time to time, incidents of antisemitism, it's the frequency and intensity of the antisemitic behaviour that's been occurring over the last year that everyone is commenting on. Every Australian Jew has noticed and that's really what I was attempting to say in the interview that you heard last Monday,
GRATTAN: Given all that you have described do you accept that the Government should have done more earlier, like setting up this taskforce that we now have? Did this problem to some extent, just get away from the government?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: We've done a great deal, and indeed, we've done more than previous governments have done. I'll just list some of the things we outlawed. Last year, we outlawed the Nazi salute. We outlawed the public display of hate symbols, of terrorist symbols. Just now, we've criminalised doxxing in a Privacy Bill that was passed in the last sitting week. Doxxing is the malicious release of personal information. I described it as occurring to a group of some 600 Jewish creatives. Sadly, Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party voted against that legislation in the last sitting week. We've appointed Australia's first Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, that's Jillian Segal, following some 30 odd other countries which have special envoys to combat antisemitism. We've appointed our first National Student Ombudsman, who will be able to deal with issues of student safety on campuses. I've got legislation right now before the Parliament, it's passed the House, it's in the Senate, to strengthen criminal offences for hate crimes. And I'd make the point that immediately following the 7 October terrorist attack in Israel, we committed $25 million for improved safety and security at Jewish sites across the country, including schools. And on Sunday, that is, two days after the burning of the synagogue in Melbourne, we committed a further $32.5 million to improve security at Jewish community sites, including synagogues and schools. So, there's a whole range of measures that we've taken at every opportunity. The Prime Minister, I, the Foreign Minister and other senior ministers, as well as every member of our Government has condemned antisemitism. I've been very saddened, I've got to say Michelle, at the way in which a number of senior Liberals have sought to politicise antisemitism, to politicise, shockingly, the burning of a synagogue in Melbourne last Friday. The first thing that Peter Dutton thought to say was to attack the Prime Minister and the Government, and they've continued with it since now. That is not at all the right response by a senior Australian politician. The right response is to create community unity so that we all stand against antisemitism. The right response is actually to support the government.
GRATTAN: Do you think, despite the list of things that you've given us, that more legislation is needed? In particular, should there be some move for a uniform national approach, for example, to protect people from harassment at places of worship?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: This is a Federation question. In a way, it's often simpler for the Commonwealth to legislate in the areas that are available to it, where we have got Constitutional authority. Street conduct, street behaviour is very much a state matter. I've seen that some state governments have, particularly in New South Wales and in Victoria, have started to talk about the possibility of creating some regulation of demonstration type behaviour as similar to what's been done to protect reproductive health clinics, where there's a distance that's been created by law within which people wishing to demonstrate against abortion are not permitted to do so, and all of that's worth considering. But I've been around in the Federal Parliament long enough, and I've been a lawyer in Australia for long enough, to know that attempts at uniformity are often not successful, and I wouldn't want to be waiting to act. And we haven't waited to act simply because people say we should have uniform legislation. I'd be encouraging state governments, if they think that it's appropriate, to put that sort of control on demonstrations. I'd be encouraging them to do so. What I am clear about is that police, state police and Australian Federal Police officers, assisted by Commonwealth agencies, have been working around the clock to bring to justice all of the people that have committed these kinds of hate crimes. We've had, you know, and again, I've got to be cautious about talking about this, but we've had some arrests in respect of earlier incidents. We've had people that have been charged and indeed been convicted of making the Nazi salute. We've had people who've been charged and been convicted for the display of Nazi symbols, and I know that that police work, that tireless police work, is continuing.
GRATTAN: The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the other day that it was impossible to separate last week's attack from what he described, and I quote him, as "the extreme anti-Israeli position of the Labor Government in Australia." What's your response to that?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, with the greatest of respect to Mr. Netanyahu, he is wrong on two counts there. He's wrong to say that our government is anything other than a close friend of Israel, and he's wrong to connect votes on resolutions at the United Nations with the occurrence of violent antisemitic attacks here in Australia. I'm looking for community unity here Michelle. I'm looking for, not finger pointing, as we've seen, and I'd rather actually talk about Australian politicians than Israeli politicians. I'm looking for community unity and political unity. I was driven to, because we were on the point of the 10th anniversary of the terrible events of the Lindt Cafe siege, which occurred on the 15th and 16th of December 2014 so just on 10 years ago, I was then the Shadow Attorney General. We'd been in Opposition for over a year, and I went back to look at what I remembered as a very striking press conference given by the then Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten on the 16th of December 2014, Mr Shorten called for unity. He was invited by journalists to criticise the government. Questions directed at why a known criminal with extremist ideas that was the perpetrator wasn't in custody. And Bill Shorten didn't accept that invitation to criticise the government. Instead, he said this, and I've got it in front of me. He said, this is at a press conference about the Martin Place siege, he said, "I support the actions of the Prime Minister in dealing with our safety and security." He's talking about Tony Abbott. "Within an hour of hearing about the hostage taking, I was in contact with the Prime Minister. I believe Australians can rightly expect that Liberal and Labor at times like this, are united. The very best thing we can offer is our unity by sticking together. That is what I think Australians want to see now." Those wise words from Bill Shorten are just as true today as they were in December of 2014 and I am very sad to have seen the way in which Peter Dutton and senior Liberals have chosen to politicise and seek party political advantage from the atrocious event of the burning of a synagogue, but sadly, that is what they have done. And I called earlier this week for them to stop doing that. They have not heeded those calls. They've gone on to double down, if anything, and we heard Senator Jane Hume offering up just this morning on radio that somehow our government had enabled terrorist acts. Now that's not acceptable. It's not acceptable that Peter Dutton should seek to politicise the appalling event of the burning of a synagogue, and it's not acceptable that any of his colleagues should seek to do the same thing. But so keen is Peter Dutton to get political advantage that he stopped one of his frontbenchers, Senator Paterson, from reading out a statement at a joint press conference that was being held by Josh Burns, the Labor Member for Macnamara with Senator Paterson. Mr. Burns was unable to speak at the time because of some throat condition, and had asked Senator Paterson, and Senator Paterson had agreed to read out this statement, and Mr Dutton stopped him. Now that tells you all you need to know, sadly, about the approach that Mr Dutton is taking to this, and we he should be doing a lot better. We need to be standing together against antisemitism, not looking for party political advantage, not seeking to divide.
GRATTAN: Of course, one of the complications with this issue, which is different from the Lindt Cafe one is that foreign and domestic policy has both fronts are involved. So the question that is important, I think, is, how does the government now see its relationship with Israel?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: We remain a close friend of Israel.
GRATTAN: Despite differences?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Yes and friends can differ. Friends are able to have disagreements. Just like Australians should be able to have disagreements in a courteous way, so too can countries have disagreements in courteous ways. We are a steadfast friend of Israel, right from the very moment of the creation of Israel by the United Nations when the Chifley Government, in the person of Doc Evatt, cast the Australian vote, the first positive vote for the creation of Israel in the United Nations, and that has remained the position of the Australian Labor Party ever since. It wasn't, as it happens, an immediate reaction of the then Liberal Party in opposition, and it certainly wasn't the reaction of the British Government, but Australia was proud to support the creation of the State of Israel, and we remain a close friend. The Labor Party remains a close friend of Israel. Australia remains a close friend of Israel, and I don't think there can be any doubt of that. We are also remaining committed to the creation of two states, because that solution, the two state solution, is the only way in which we will get to lasting peace where a state of Palestine is brought into existence. We can argue about how and when that's to happen, but that should remain the long term objective. It certainly remains the objective of our government, and I think it remains the objective of most of the world that a state of Palestine ought to be brought into existence.
GRATTAN: Just one other point on this front before we finish up with other questions. If, in the unlikely event the Israeli Prime Minister came to Australia, would we comply with the International Criminal Courts arrest warrant against him?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I'm not going to comment on hypotheticals. And it's a condition of the Rome Statute which was signed by the Howard Government and by Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister, in which Australia agreed to the creation of the International Criminal Court. There are a number of rules and conditions around Australia's support for the International Criminal Court and one of them is that, just as with extradition matters and other mutual assistance matters, we don't comment on arrest warrants.
GRATTAN: Just on other issues, the Government set up the National Anti-Corruption Commission, but it's had a bit of a difficult start with some teething problems, including over the Commissioner's handling of a conflict of interest situation relating to the Robodebt affair. What's your assessment of the beginning of the NACC?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, first of all, on the matter you've just mentioned, which is the conflict of interest issue, we've seen, first of all, an investigation by the Inspector, and then a public report by the Inspector, which is the system that our Government legislated, in the bill that I brought to the Parliament in 2022, working. In other words, we've got an independent National Anti-Corruption Commission. In order to ensure that it is correctly operating we've also legislated for an Inspector. And the Inspector, Gail Furness, responded to complaints about the conduct of Commissioners by investigating and producing a report which is now being acted on by the National Anti-Corruption Commission in that the decision about the referral from the Robodebt Royal Commission will be reconsidered by an eminent person. As to the National Anti-Corruption Commission itself, as at today, because the Commission publishes weekly statistics, I've got them in front of me. The Commission is conducting 38 preliminary investigations. It's conducting 26 corruption investigations, including six joint investigations. It's overseeing or monitoring 19 investigations by other agencies. It's had five matters before the court, and it's got still some 550 referral referrals pending assessment. So you can see that there's a very considerable scope of activity. Like you I read commentary from time to time, and I can see that a number of commentators are saying, they would like to see outcomes from one or more of the 26 corruption investigations that the National Anti-Corruption Commission is carrying out.
GRATTAN: Would you?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, this is the point. It's an independent National Anti-Corruption Commission. I am the Minister. Not only was I the Minister responsible for bringing the legislation to the Parliament, I'm also the Minister responsible for making sure that the National Anti-Corruption Commission has got an adequate budget, I'm responsible for appointing Commissioners to the Commission, and I am also, and I take this very seriously, responsible for ensuring the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Commission. It is an independent Commission, and I am confident that we it will bring these investigations that it is now carrying out, and it's telling the Australian public that it is carrying out, to a conclusion at an appropriate time. And I think we've all seen over the last 35 years, as each state progressively adopted an anti-corruption commission, starting with the New South Wales ICAC, that you can have difficulties if you rush investigations. You can certainly have difficulties if you have too much of the hearings in public, which is why we've we put a restriction - we didn't prohibit public hearings, as some states chose to do - but we've said that you needed exceptional circumstances. As yet, the Commission hasn't chosen to hold any public hearings, but I'm confident that when these investigations are concluded, as they are successively concluded, we will begin to see results from the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and I am very pleased that one of the great achievements of our government was to bring into existence, in really double quick time, so that it commenced its operations on the first of July 2023 a very powerful a completely Independent National Anti-Corruption Commission. It's going to serve Australia very well in the decades to come, because that's the time frame in which you need to consider something like the National Anti-Corruption Commission. I appreciate people always want quick results and there's impatience, but I am confident that this is an institution of lasting value to Australia. Even the knowledge that you can be referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission has, obviously, the quality of improving the way in which decision making takes place. It has an immense deterrent effect on corrupt activity right across the Commonwealth Government. Just that knowledge that you might be referred, the knowledge that there have been thousands of referrals that the Commission has had to investigate, in itself, sends a message right across the Commonwealth, and it's a good message.
GRATTAN: There have been growing calls for the creation of another institution that's a Whistleblower Protection Authority. Now you've taken some steps on whistleblower protection, I'm aware, but will you move for such an authority if the Government's re-elected and you're Attorney-General?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I think I'll give a bit of context to this. I'm the only Australian Attorney-General that's ever brought whistleblower protection legislation to the Australian Parliament. I brought the Public Interest Disclosure Act to the Parliament in 2013.We were the last Australian jurisdiction to bring in whistleblower protection. Every state and territory already had it by 2013. I legislated a statutory review which was done by Philip Moss, and he reported to the former government in 2016. They simply allowed his report to gather dust. I didn't. When we came to office in May of 2022 I immediately set about looking at that report by Philip Moss to determine which of the recommendations that he had made, remain relevant and current, and I brought I brought legislation to the Parliament to implement some of those moss recommendations. And I'm now in the process of consulting about what further reforms should take place.
GRATTAN: So there may be an authority?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, that's the question that's going to be considered in this consultation. But exactly what further is needed to make sure that our whistleblower protection scheme works well, is the matter of our further consultation. I would say this that we had, every year since the act commenced in late 2013, we've had some hundreds of disclosures under the Public Interest Disclosure Act by Australian public servants in conditions where they are protected. And since the reforms that I made to the Public interest Disclosure Act in 2023 took effect, the number of disclosures by Australian public servants has risen substantially. It's in the hundreds each year. So contrary to some suggestions that have been made by some commentators and some crossbench members of the Australian Parliament that the system is not working, indeed, it is working. It's working well, but it's a system that we can always improve on, and that's why I'm continuing consultations about what further reforms are needed. But I've been a little concerned about some of the commentary which has suggested that Australian public servants who wish to report wrongdoing are not protected. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australian public servants who wish to report wrongdoing are protected, and the Ombudsman reports annually on the numbers of protected disclosures. And it's quite apparent from those annual reports of the Ombudsman that the system is in fact working.
GRATTAN: It's still a work in progress. Mark Dreyfus, thank you very much for talking with us today and also sharing a family story which makes the whole antisemitic issue so personal for you. That's all from today's politics podcast. Thank you to my producer, Ben Roeper. We'll be back with another interview soon, but goodbye for now.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Thank you, Michelle.
This interview is available on the Politics With Michelle Grattan Podcast
