ANTISEMITISM:

CANBERRA: A senior federal public servant says he needs “a lot more time” to complete his work seeking to identify the source of community anxiety about a perceived lack of action on incidents of antisemitism across Australia.

In the aftermath of an episode on Friday night in which a Melbourne synagogue had its doors set alight while people were inside, the Albanese Government tasked a senior officer in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPC) to examine community perceptions about such attacks.

Noted long-serving and visually impaired trouble-shooter within the DPC, Dobell Standard, delivered his interim report to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this morning.

The report consisted almost entirely of clippings from Murdoch media outlets, notably the national broadshit The Australian, featuring screaming headlines labelling as antisemitic anyone who disagrees with the genocidal anti-Palestinian policies of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At a news conference explaining his need for more time to finalise his research (main picture) Mr Standard said he had been handicapped by “a lot of extraneous material” held in the DPC archives.

“I have really only just started to go through the files but I’ve so far found a lot of useless information,” he explained.

“I’ve been delayed by having to sift through a lot of files on extraneous incidents like the firebombing of the Kuraby mosque south of Brisbane two weeks after the 1 September 2001 attacks in the USA.

“Then I was side-tracked by files on the April 2015 arson attack on the Toowoomba mosque, the destruction by fire of a mosque in Geelong in May 2016, and the June 2016 firebombing and anti-Islam graffiti attack outside a mosque and school in Perth’s south-east while people were at prayer inside.

“I also found useless details of the torching of the Imam Ali Islamic Centre at Fawkner in Melbourne in December 2016 and another fire attack on a Perth mosque at Mirrabooka in August 2018.

“There were also cumbersome reports on two fires at mosques in Adelaide in October 2023 – one in which a gas bottle was deliberately set alight outside the Al-Khalil Mosque at Woodville North and two grass fires which police believe were deliberately lit near a mosque at Park Holme.

“I fear – no, I know – there’s a lot more files on such irrelevant incidents in the archives.

“Quite a few hours of my work was also soaked up by looking at analysis by Charles Sturt University in 2020 that showed 60% of 75 Australian mosques surveyed had experience acts of violence – arson, physical assault, graffiti, vandalism, verbal abuse and online abuse and hate mail including death threats – between 2014 and 2019.

“There was also the latest research published in March by the Islamophobia Register Australia showing a 250% increase in online Islamophobic incidents in Australia and a 150% increase in in-person Islamophobic incidents between January 2023 and November 2024.

“Yet the same research shows only 9% of Australians think there’s been an increase in the problem.

“All of this sort of junk has just delayed me from getting to the heart of the matter which I intend to do as soon as possible,” Mr Standard said.

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