When does a history lesson become propaganda? The ancient adage is that it’s the victors who provide the answers, but in modern Australia, it’s the Antisemitic Education Taskforce that will decide the curriculum that comes into the classroom, and the conclusions students will arrive at.

The federal minister for education Jason Clare has endorsed every recommendation from the Taskforce, which will include antisemitism, the Holocaust, Jewish history and the contributions of Jewish Australians – let’s see if there’s any room for the more notorious figures such as Rene Rivkin, Abe Saffron, Edward “Teddy the Jewboy” Davis, Isaac “Ikey” Bull, John “Snowy” Cutmore, or if it will be along the lines of the vainglorious and magnificent settler stories that filled the Australian school libraries up until the 1990s.

This is where school education in Australia is heading, where the implementation of this curriculum will commence in 2027 – we’re still not sure what this curriculum is and how it will be taught in schools – and will be fully implemented by 2029.

There’s already a substantial amount of material about the Holocaust in the Year 10 history curriculum, including antisemitism and Nazi ideology. There may be good reasons to improve how it is taught or to give students a fuller understanding of Jewish life in Australia but is it needed and, if so, where is the curriculum for the history of Italian life in Australia? Or Lebanese? Chinese? Croatian? There are a few excellent Palestinian documentary makers residing in Australia: will we hear about their achievements too?

Should students also learn about the Armenian genocide between 1915–23? The numbers should never be a competition, but 1.5 million were killed by Turkish revolutionaries. Or the 10 million Congolese who were killed during the brutal rule of Belgium’s King Leopold? Those stories are a part of history too.

We could go further: should students also learn that algebra has Arabic and Islamic origins? And perhaps students could apply algebraic formulas to determine the total weight of bombs Israel has dropped over Gaza since October 2023 (by the way, the number is 223,000 tons, the highest concentration of explosive tonnage ever, and would give students an excellent lesson in mathematics and history at the same time).

Education ministers – not just Clare, but all the state and territory leaders who have agreed to these reforms – should explain which gaps in the current curriculum they have identified, why other groups and historical incidents are not included, what teachers have told them and what this new material will add to the broader educational experience.

The separation between Jewish identity and Zionism also needs to be included in any proposed curriculum, as Jewish Australians hold a range of views about Israel and Zionism. Of course, students should be able to learn how to recognise antisemitism, along with other forms of discrimination. And they should be able scrutinise Zionism as a political movement, the founding of Israel, the mass displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba and the conduct of successive Israeli governments since that time.

An education that simply allows the grandstanding of one cultural group and their history, and excludes all the unsavoury parts of that history – as well as excluding everyone else’s version of that history – is nothing more than propaganda, and the application of different standards according to who has the ability to influence governments.

Clare’s own history needs to be inspected as well: he travelled to Israel in 2008 on one of the so-called “study tours”, with travel and accommodation provided by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Victoria’s Minister for Education, Gabrielle Williams, also ventured on one of these study tours to Israel. How much of this endorsement was influenced by their experiences and input during the meeting?

It’s never a good sign when government ministers themselves start to interfere in the classroom. Certainly, governments are responsible for managing the school education system throughout Australia, but it should be left up to the educational experts to decide the contents of curriculum and how that curriculum should be implemented.

A good example of why politicians should stay out of the classroom – literally and metaphorically – is the Howard government’s school chaplaincy program that was implemented in 2006. The question at the time was why a government would give outside organisations – churches – a privileged place in public schools, and who would answer to parents and teachers when their priorities and understandings about education start to diverge, a question that was never really answered.

It’s the same issue here. Teachers should have a formal and professional role in reviewing resources and the freedom to implement them, without risking disciplinary action from education departments or the courts.

And it’s not only the school education system that’s being targeted here; universities are in the spotlight as well. Under proposals that were released by Clare this week, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will be able to apply penalties of up to $2 million against universities that are deemed to be not doing enough to stamp out antisemitism on campus. And who knows what that could mean.

Many reports of antisemitic events were the implied offense caused by other students displaying a Palestinian flag, or holding cake stalls to raise funds for Palestinian action, or vexations claims by Jewish benefactors to universities – not students – that events such as student encampments during of 2024 were offensive, and bringing the university into disrepute.

What are the thresholds here? Who decides whether the presence of a Palestinian flag – either held in hand, or sewn into a student backpack or a small badge on a cap – is an antisemitic action? And, in any case, what can a university do to remove that personal paraphernalia, and why should it? Would the same rules apply to Zionist symbolism or the flag of Israel?

We can see a situation developing where deans will be on the lookout for any form of activities that relate to Palestine – an on-campus police state – and shut it down, rather than the risk a $2 million fine for the not-yet-determined failure to effectively combat antisemitism or meet updated governance standards. One would assume deans have better things to do than keep tabs on lecture room discussions about Palestine, or inspecting the offices of academics, or see if they are displaying bunting material that might be offensive to Zionist eyes (which is what occurred at the University of Sydney in 2025, when Dr. David Brophy was ordered to remove a Palestinian flag from his office).

There are direct examples in the United States that show how quickly an issue supposedly about safety on campus can become an avenue for direct intervention in university affairs. The Trump administration used the issue of antisemitism and allegations of ideological influence to implement major changes to the way Harvard University received federal funding, including a government-based assessment of the views represented across the university.

Of course, Australian universities operate through different systems, but the lesson from Harvard shows how the leverage a government has can be used once the funding depends on official views about what universities can teach, who it hires and which views it considers are acceptable.

Universities are now facing a range of contradictory demands: if they crackdown on allegedly pro-Palestinian material to protect Jewish students, they will inevitably face legal challenges, student strikes and, possibly, discrimination lawsuits – even though we’ve seen that this is a secondary consideration, as long as the original discussions about Palestine are shut down, irrespective of the reputational damage caused to the institution. By trying to solve a social issue with financial penalties, the government has created a system that will please nobody and deepens the divide that the Prime Minister keeps saying needs to be bridged through “social cohesion”.

A serious policy against antisemitism should be able to accommodate competing needs and demands. It can protect Jewish students from harassment, allow Palestinian students – and their supporters – speak about their own history, and trust teachers and academics to make the judgements that can occasionally make governments and vested interests feel uncomfortable. It’s also known as academic freedom, and it’s quickly being eroded away.

Albanese embraced Trump, and now he’s paying the price

The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is now scrambling to talk up the virtues of ending a war that he was one of the first leaders to support. Nine months after welcoming and eagerly endorsing Donald Trump’s military strikes against Iran – almost pushing himself to the head of the queue – Albanese is calling for de-escalation, after surveying the economic wreckage Trump has created and, no doubt, the electoral punishment that was handed out in spades to the Republican Party in the US midterm elections last week. But even of that, we can’t be too sure of what exactly Albanese is seeing.

Trump’s strategically unsound war and mindless tariffs have helped drive up energy costs, fuel inflation and deepen economic uncertainty, not just in the US, but all around the world. Australian households are also paying the price, while Albanese has announced that his diplomatic approach to Washington is not for changing, an obvious recipe for disaster that everyone can see – except for Albanese.

Albanese has surprisingly cultivated Trump when many leaders understood the wisdom of keeping their distance from such an unpredictable and incompetent president. Now, with the Democrats controlling Congress, former Labor minister Ed Husic has called for a diplomatic reset, and with the $368 billion AUKUS arrangement facing renewed scrutiny, Albanese’s all-the-way-with-DJT approach looks increasingly reckless.

The bigger problem is Australia’s willingness to outsource its strategic interests to the US, regardless of who sits in the White House or what damage their decisions inflict upon Australia. And it’s not just Albanese: it’s the defence minister Richard Marles and foreign minister Penny Wong, among others. It’s clear that they are selling out Australia’s interests, even if we aren’t quite sure what their Faustian deal is at the moment.

We’re not suggesting anything here, and apropos of nothing at all, we’d like to point out that the former Labor minister, Graham Richardson, held three secret Swiss bank accounts.

Good political leadership will avoid the disasters before they arrive, and this is a problem Albanese invited upon himself earlier this year. He had many opportunities to create some distance from Trump in February. Instead, he chose to keep himself close, even posting a selfie with Trump, which we are still trying to work out why he decided this would be a good thing to do.

Politics always has a habit of repaying leaders when they misjudge so badly, and the Australian electorate will be wondering why they should pay for his misjudgement.

Are we really teaching history, or just manufacturing Zionist consent?

The education minister Jason Clare has fully endorsed new teaching resources proposed by the Social Cohesion Education Advisory Council, which will include antisemitism, Jewish history and the Holocaust, but overlooking one inconvenient issue: the Holocaust is already taught in Australian schools, and is more than adequate. So, what will be added that is not already there, and whose political interests does it serve?

The teaching of history in schools should encourage critical inquiry, not politically determined outcomes as defined by a group of Zionists, who are already interfering far too much in Australian politics, education and culture.

Students should also understand colonial genocide, the destruction of Indigenous societies in Australia, Armenia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Will they learn about the other German genocide in Namibia in the early 20th century, or the 10 million Congolese people killed by King Leopold in the late 19th century? That’s a genocide worth talking about.

And will students be encouraged to separate Jewish identity from Zionism, antisemitism from criticism of Israel, and Israel’s persecution of Palestinians since at least 1948, through the Nakba?

We’re not arguing the Holocaust shouldn’t be studied in Australian schools: it already is, and it’s more than adequate for general knowledge, and especially for those students who wish to specialise in history studies, or comparative religions – it’s a core part of the curriculum. But why should a Palestinian refugee child at a school in Lakemba be forced to learn a history from a Zionist perspective, supporting a state of Israel that has terrorised his country of origin and family for over 80 years?

This announcement has been made at the same time we find out that 72 per cent of Year 10 students are failing to meet basic civics benchmarks. This additional curriculum is Albanese’s equivalent of the failed Howard government’s chaplaincy program that was rorted, involved a great deal of proselytising, was unaccountable and failed to achieve many benefits for the schooling system.

The real test is now going to be what these new resources contain, who develops them and whether teachers will retain the freedom to challenge their contents in the classroom. There’s nothing worse for a teacher to stand in front of a classroom and offer instruction to able and willing students that they know is likely to be state-sanctioned propaganda. Governments are trying to protect school students from screens and devices; why allow something that has the potential to cause greater harm and detract from Albanese’s so-called “social cohesion”?

If Jason Clare’s reforms are not going to include the uncomfortable questions about Israel, Palestine – and Australia’s own colonial past – they risk becoming an exercise in political messaging, rather than a genuine education.

And just so we get a good idea of what’s going on here, Clare did go to Israel in 2008, through AIJAC’s 2008 Rambam Israel Fellowship, with full travel and accommodation paid for by the AIJAC. But we’re sure there’s no correlation between that trip and this recent decision.

The $2 million price of academic freedom

If interfering with the school system is not enough, the Albanese government is increasingly intent on turning Australian universities into institutions of political compliance, rather than their sole purpose of educating adult students, with the new threat of $2 million penalties for failing to adequately combat antisemitism, according to an undetermined formula.

Universities already have obligations to protect students from discrimination and harassment, and the question here is why additional punitive powers are necessary, who decides when a university has failed, and whether criticism of Israel will become a taboo target.

This is where Special Envoy Jillian Segal’s broader antisemitism agenda is very problematic, as we’ve outlined many times at New Politics. When definitions of discrimination try to cover legitimate political expression, university staff will have every incentive to suppress controversy, rather than defend academic freedoms.

Why tolerate a difficult debate about Gaza on campus, when cancelling an event is a lot easier and will protect an institution’s funding and reputation? It’s already happening now under a highly compromised and incompetence university sector; what’s to stop it happening more often under this legislation, or debate about Israel and Palestine removed entirely?

As it should be in schools, universities are places where powerful governments, ideologies and historical narratives should be challenged, not protected from scrutiny. If academic freedom tries to exist so that no-one is offended, it no longer exists.

AUKUS: We pay $368 Billion to surrender our sovereignty

Australia’s most expensive defence commitment ever has received a damning review from an independent public inquiry headed by former Labor minister Peter Garrett and former defence chief Admiral Chris Barrie. And the Albanese government’s response has been to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

This inquiry recommends abandoning AUKUS – don’t we all – and establishing a royal commission into how Australia became committed to spending $368 billion on nuclear-powered submarines that will never arrive. And they’re not alone in this recommendation: more than 1,000 submissions have been sent to the inquiry, mainly raising questions about sovereignty, strategic independence and the danger of being dragged into an US war with China, if it ever comes to that.

Yet Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles are stubbornly defending Scott Morrison’s ridiculous deal created in 2021, unwilling to question the wisdom of outsourcing Australia’s security to an increasingly unpredictable United States. With Donald Trump’s authority severely weakened by the US midterm elections, we could say that the Democrats will just continue with AUKUS, but there’s a new type of Democrat who will be occupying the US Congress, and they may well end up scuppering the deal. Which, of course, would land more egg on the face of the Albanese government.

For $368 billion, Australians deserve something more convincing than bipartisan obedience and submarines that might turn up sometime in the 2040s. Or never at all.

ICYMI, the past week from New Politics:

Mortgage repayments rise long before the full effects of monetary policy work their way through the economy. In the meantime, households cut back, businesses lose customers and workers can lose hours and even their jobs. The squeeze lands unevenly, with some savers earning more interest while heavily indebted households pare back spending on essentials.

An RBA rate rise can cool demand, but it can do little directly about disrupted fuel supplies, a shortage of building materials or weak competition. And why raise the rates when the economy is slowing and unemployment is rising? It also puts responsibility back on the federal government. Energy efficiency can lower power bills, housing investment can ease shortages, and stronger competition policy can curb the pricing power of dominant firms. Australia’s responses to the global financial crisis and COVID showed how governments and the central bank can use different tools to pursue a common goal.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has changed the board’s structure, but how much room is there to challenge the prevailing thinking? When the Reserve Bank reaches for the jackhammer, the question for Canberra is what it’s doing about the problems that higher interest rates leave behind.

Listen to our recent podcast episodes:

Trump’s appeal depended on persuading voters that he understood their grievances and would confront the establishment responsible. But political identification has limits when petrol prices rise, essential services remain inadequate and overseas military commitments consume resources. The contradiction becomes harder to sustain when an administration promising to challenge powerful interests draws its influence from billionaires. Electoral backlash follows when the promise of economic security collides with the experience of everyday life.

The deeper question is whether this revolt reaches beyond Trumpism to the economic settlement that helped make it possible. Decades of neoliberal policy, weakened public provision and growing inequality have created grievances that neither major party has adequately resolved. Declaring an end to this is premature, because building an alternative requires Democrats to confront the donor influence and corporate power embedded within their own party.

Palestine is a crucial part of that challenge. Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan victory, alongside Zohran Mamdani’s political rise, challenges the assumption that defending Palestinian rights and opposing US military support for Israel must carry an unbearable electoral cost. The significance extends beyond any individual candidate: when politicians can speak openly about the genocide in Gaza and withstand campaigns against them, the boundaries of American political debate begin to shift. AIPAC’s influence remains a critical issue, but political spending no longer guarantees public consent.

For Australia, Washington’s upheaval exposes the risks of treating the US alliance as a substitute for independent strategic judgement. AUKUS, Pine Gap and deeper military integration create commitments that survive changes of president and congressional majority.

Listen to our recent podcast episodes:

In this episode, we examine Jillian Segal’s policy agenda through the broader politics of government overreach, freedom of speech and democratic accountability. Proposals affecting protest rights, face coverings, visa scrutiny, arts funding and complaints against the ABC and SBS could be considered individually but, put together, they raise a deeper concern: combating a specific type of discrimination is becoming a vehicle for expanding political control.

The distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel is essential part of that process. Jewish Australians hold diverse political views, including strong opposition to Israel’s occupation and its genocide in Gaza. Treating support for Israel as a measure of Jewish identity marginalises those voices while placing Palestinian rights, boycotts, sanctions and demands for accountability under suspicion.

The cancellation of Philip Buehler’s Wall of Tears exhibition by Shoalhaven City Council also brings these questions into focus. A memorial naming 18,457 Palestinian children killed in Gaza becomes a test of whether public institutions can accommodate Palestinian grief when controversy surrounds it. Its significance goes far beyond one council decision: cultural expression can be restricted through administrative decisions, funding pressures and security requirements without a government ever announcing a formal ban.

What happens to the right to commemorate children who have been killed, irrespective of who they are? And what incentives arise when cancelling an exhibition becomes easier than defending its place in public life?

Responsibility ultimately rests with Anthony Albanese and elected representatives. An envoy can recommend policy; governments need to justify the powers they adopt. Fighting antisemitism, protecting Palestinian expression and preserving civil liberties are responsibilities a democratic government must uphold together.

Listen to our recent podcast episodes:

There’s a fundamental difference between reducing antisemitism and giving an unelected government official great influence over what Australians can say, where they can protest, which cultural events receive funding and how public broadcasters handle the complaints that are made against them.

And it’s a difference that’s becoming increasingly difficult to see with the work of Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal.

Segal’s latest policy agenda is contained in ASECA Priorities, and is a substantial expansion of her ambitions – not for the Australian community – but that of Zionist interests and the state of Israel. In her report – which I have to say, is one of the more outlandish and extreme ambit claims that we’ve ever seen – there are calls for further restrictions on public protest, limits on face coverings, additional scrutiny over specific types of visas, conditions attached to arts funding and the external oversight of complaints involving the ABC and SBS.

You could mount an argument for each of these issues – only just – but when taken together, these are extreme measures that go far beyond protecting Jewish Australians, and affect the freedoms – and, arguably, lessen the protections – for the entire population.

We’ve gone past the point where every argument or every article that’s published needs to include the rider that of course, antisemitism shouldn’t be tolerated – it’s been so overused over the past three years and extorted for political gain by Zionists and pro-Israel groups, that fewer people now understand what it means, and even less people care about it.

The sole ambition of Segal seems to be to outlaw all criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel, and many people can see and understand that if this comes under the purview of her definition of antisemitism, it will become one of the biggest attacks on fundamental freedoms that this country has ever seen.

Segal has revealed her hand far too often, and too obviously, and this time around she’s introduced the concept of “progressive antisemitism”, and made the claim that the bulk of antisemitism – through her interpretation which now seems to include everything – emanates from the left side of politics. It’s a despicable slur and, as usual, there’s no evidence provided to support this claim – aside from ethereal feels-opinions – and it’s clear that applying a left–right divide to this debate is particularly dangerous.

There’s also an obvious contradiction here. Many prominent critics of Israeli government policy are themselves Jewish, including the author Antony Loewenstein, Sarah Schwartz from the Jewish Council of Australia, and many other Jewish organisations opposed to the occupation of Palestinian territories, such as Jews Against Occupation ’48.

Where would their opinions and opposition sit within Segal’s spectrum of “progressive antisemitism”? According to Segal’s proposals, their opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel would essentially place them in the category of “second class Jews”.

Segal insists that legitimate criticism of Israel under her proposals would be allowed, but this is another example of her duplicity. What exactly is “legitimate” criticism? Would we still be able to criticise Israel for its acts of genocide against the Palestinian people? Its war crimes and brutal practice of apartheid? What is illegitimate criticism, according to Segal? She’s never willing to provide examples of this because her aim is to force the government to introduce legislation that includes the more extreme IHRA definition of antisemitism and to criminalise criticism of Israel.

Segal is an appointed envoy, not an elected representative. If she wants to introduce these extreme measures, let her run for office, and propose this agenda as a lowly backbencher – presumabley as an elected representative for the Liberal Party or One Nation – and see how far she gets. As her title suggests, her role is to combat antisemitism, not to be a servant to Zionism and the state of Israel, and bend parliament to her will.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should reject this report, and if he hasn’t got the courage to do this, allow it to be swallowed up by the bureaucracy of Canberra, and slowly move towards ensuring Segal’s position definitely ends in July 2027, which is the natural expiry date of her three-year term. Segal’s appointment was supposedly to strengthen social cohesion, but her office is advancing a specific political agenda that risks achieving the exact opposite.

The Wall of Tears: when remembering dead children is not allowed

If we need to have a glimpse of what the future will look like if the agendas of ASECA Priorities are ever realised, look no further than the south coast of New South Wales, where yet another exhibition has been cancelled, this time by the “friend of Israel”, CEO Andrew Constance, the former NSW Treasurer who still maintains strong links with the Australia–Israel Chamber of Commerce.

The exhibition – an installation by American artist Phil Buehler – was scheduled to open on November 4 and commemorates the 18,457 Palestinian children killed in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces since October 2023. This is not a military installation, or a political cause, or an invitation to cause violence: it’s a simple memorial to children whose lives had been lost in a devastating conflict. It’s not overly didactic, and it’s simple: a title, a long list of names on a white background, with some smaller photographs next to a few of the names.

Yet Constance cancelled the exhibition just a few days before the opening, after he commission a risk assessment that nobody asked for, one that considered the use of security personnel, metal detectors, restricted entry and even armed guards. Why was Constance even considering this, and what exactly was he expecting would happen during the exhibition?

There was no specific threat that was identified, because it’s very likely that there wasn’t one. It also needs to be explained why this exhibition could be held in many parts of the world – London, New York, San Francisco, Mexico, Amsterdam, Sydney, Western Australian Parliament, the lawns of Parliament in Canberra – yet in the slumber town of Shoalhaven, the council decided that it needed to be cancelled.

For those who might be unaware of Constance, he is a model of political failure and incompetence. After an unspectacular 12 months as Treasurer, he was dumped and demoted to the portfolio of Transport and Infrastructure. Under his leadership, trains that were literally the wrong size for the existing rail network were procured; River Class ferries were built that were too big to pass under two bridges on the Parramatta River; and cost blowouts in the projects under his management were close to $5 billion.

After he resigned from state politics, he had four unsuccessful bids to gain either a Senate or lower house seat – five attempts if you include his abandoned Eden-Monaro bid in 2020, when he announced his preselection bid, only to withdraw the following day – and somehow became the CEO of Shoalhaven Council, even though he wasn’t the first-choice candidate, with some councillors suggesting flaws in the recruitment process and political conflicts of interest.

Of course, how Constance got into the position is a separate issue, but his competence and ability to follow due diligence are important factors. Where the police consulted in his considerations? Why would there be a need for security, and would ordinary security arrangements have been enough, if at all? Were organisers – Shoalhaven Friends of Palestine – given an opportunity to address the concerns, given the late notice they were given about the cancellation? And were there any complaints or pressure from pro-Israel advocacy groups and, if so, who made those complaints?

The history of cancellations over the past three years involving Palestinian material in public places makes that question quite a reasonable one, and what makes this particular cancellation significant is that it’s arrived at the same time as the release of Segal’s outrageous policy agenda.

If we are unfortunate enough to have Segal’s agenda introduced – and given the amount of compromised and pusillanimous politicians we have in this country, there’s always a good chance of that happening – not only will we see more of this type of censorship in publicly-funded institutions such as councils, state galleries and other venues, but it’s likely to extend to other areas as well.

After the cancellation of Wall of Tears was announced, it was quickly relocated at the nearby town of Berry at Uniting Church Hall (and then onto Kiama and Port Kembla) – which presumably had no security issues or need for metal detectors – and decided to show the world what Zionists would prefer to forget, in case they be reminded of the insanity and extremism of their own ideologies.

Segal’s proposals will prevent anyone seeing works of this nature, like a censorious high-priestess deciding what can be viewed, and what can’t, with the prospect of criminalising any attempts to reveal what it is that can’t be seen. That’s where all of this is heading: like a modern version of Plato’s cave, where we are taught to fear the shadows on the wall and denied the chance to see the reality that exists far beyond the fear.

If vaguely defined political expression – according to Segal’s proposed star chamber of acceptable political taste – becomes subject to lawfare, the consequences will move far beyond cancellation, on to financial penalties, and finally towards criminal prosecution.

There’s something quite disturbing about a society – under the influence of a cabal of Zionists – where commemorating children killed in war becomes so controversial that a regional council and a public gallery uses the ruse of a risk assessment – that for some reason includes metal detectors and armed guards – to cancel the proposed memorial.

Let’s enter a parallel world just for a moment and imagine how Australia would respond if an exhibition in memory of the 850 Ukrainian children killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022 was cancelled following interference by Russian operatives in Australia. The Prime Minister would make an announcement before the media even caught wind of it, and the Russian ambassador would be on the first plane back to Moscow. We would then be told that this constituted a serious interference in Australian affairs and a disturbing attempt to silence the truth. Which, of course, it would be.

But on Palestine, we have silence. No words from the Prime Minister about this cancellation. No word from the Foreign Minister. The freedom-of-speech warriors have nothing to say either. It’s as though these interventions by a foreign influence are perfectly normal, and we should simply accept that a South African-born zealot can influence our laws on behalf of Israel.

Wall of Tears was intended to draw attention to children whose lives have been taken in all wars – including those in Gaza killed as a result of decisions made using algorithms and AI operated by cowards sitting in a military office block in central Tel Aviv. Instead, its cancellation has become a central point over who really controls the boundaries of acceptable political expression in Australia.

A democratic society can’t claim to defend democratic freedoms while allowing political feels-opinions to determine which victims will be remembered, which injustices may be reported on, and which governments we are allowed to condemn. If the Australian community can’t freely commemorate children killed in war, what exactly are the freedoms our governments are pretending to protect?

We are not even allowed to grieve children

A memorial to the 18,457 children killed in Gaza should hardly need metal detectors, a restricted entry process and armed guards to ensure the event is free of incident. The Shoalhaven City Council is far removed from a real war zone – and a zone of genocide – but its risk assessment suggested that a military-type installation is required for the Wall of Tears exhibition, due to open on November 4, and because of this, decided to cancel the entire event.

No specific threat to the event has been identified by the council, or the reasons for why it decided to cancel the event five days before opening. But we know exactly what’s happened here, because it’s happened so many times in the past: Zionists and pro-Israel agitators – who don’t want to be confronted with the truth that the regime they support has killed over Palestinian 18,000 children – would have pressured or blackmailed the council into cancelling the event, and introducing the pressure at the last possible moment to ensure maximum damage to the event and the institution holding the event.

And where is the evidence for this? It’s everywhere: just look at the Adelaide Writers Week, Bendigo Writers Festival, the No Other Land screening, Sydney Theatre Company, Jayson Gillham’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert, State Library Victoria’s Teen Writing Bootcamp, Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino’s Venice Biennale commission. These are the cultural events that have been cancelled or severely damaged after Zionist pressure: there are many other workshops, medical conferences, talks and speeches that have also suffered the same fate.

The CEO of the Shoalhaven City Council is former NSW Treasurer Andrew Constance, and he needs to provide answers about how the event came to be cancelled, instead of hiding behind a spurious risk assessment that called for security facilities that would be more at home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

According to the 2021 ABS Census, there are around 220 Jewish people in the region, out of the overall population of 108,000, or around 0.2 per cent. Why is it that the unreasonable rights of 0.2 per cent of a population – supercede the rights of the other 99.8 per cent, the right to memorialise the 18,457 children who have died in a conflict?

The council should now publish its risk assessment, outlining who authorised the cancellation and the reasons, and identify what alternatives – if any – were considered. It’s unacceptable that so many of these decisions are made in favour of those who want to maintain a clear conscience over the actions of the state that they support – Israel – which is clearly committing a genocide.

What on earth is “progressive antisemitism”?

The Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal’s latest adventure into new measures for tackling antisemitism: it restricts the right to protest even further, bans the wearing of masks, additional visa assessments for you know who, proposes conditions on arts funding and external oversight of complaints against the ABC and SBS.

This outrageous overreach – which seems to be a wish-list developed from Zionist pro-Israel dinner party conversations in Point Piper – is supposed to be a document for protecting a small community, but proposes far more power over everyone else.

One curious point from Segal’s report – ASECA Priorities – is its new claim of “progressive antisemitism” as the most severe form of antisemitism and, for the first time, clearly delineates her office according to a political divide. And it’s totally offensive. Those who condemn Israel over the genocide and occupation of Gaza and West Bank are “of the left” which, obviously, leaves Segal and her ilk on the right, if not further.

What evidence is provided for this offensive ranking? And what about the many Jewish people who identify as progressive – such as Antony Lowenstein, Sarah Schwartz from the Jewish Council of Australia, Jews Against the Occupation ’48? Are they considered to be a part of this “progressive antisemitism”? This is feels-opinions presented to a government that will now be expected to implement the reccommendations of the report fully.

Segal keeps saying criticism of Israel would still be allowed, but this is classic doublespeak, because introducing the IHRA definition of antisemitism – one of her recommendations –within the law would restrict these criticisms which is, essentially, what this agenda is.

If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had the courage, he’d publicly rule this ASECA Priorities document out of order and dismiss it immediately. Segal has revealed her hand too often, her position is too political and far too powerful, and doing too much damage to “social cohesion”, that lofty ambition that Albanese held when he first appointed Segal, but has, so far, failed to achieve.

ICYMI, the past week from New Politics:

The Reserve Bank’s elixir: Make households poorer

Tuesday’s Reserve Bank decision will have a very familiar remedy behind it: more pain inflicted upon households, so the economy can recover. The inflation rate is currently at 4.3 per cent and, just like an automatum, the board is likely to raise the cash rate, and further squeeze mortgage holders who already paying dearly for this campaign against rising prices.

Higher rates will rein in spending, there’s no question about that. But how fairly will this be applied and how effective will it be in reducing inflation?

The Labor government does face some credibility issues here. Maintaining that the Reserve Bank does have its independence can deflect from the economic issues for a short period of time – remembering that it’s the government that has responsibility for economic management, not the Reserve Bank – but there’s so many other areas to look at. What is the government doing about housing shortages, the costs of essential services and excessive market controls over prices? Of course, relief to households is important, but so is changing the conditions that made that relief necessary in the first place.

If it comes to an interest rate rise tomorrow, the Coalition will blame Labor. Labor will defend its management and deflect blame over to the Reserve Bank, or the United States, or Ukraine. Or offer some other reason. But neither side of politics should escape the scrutiny of the policies they’ve introduced over many decades that have left households so exposed.

Computer says no: Old people can wait

After the Robodebt disasters inflicted by the Morrison government, the Australian community would have been entitled to think that the governments would approach automated decision-making with some humility, and implement this with a far greater level of human oversight and intervention. But it’s an expectation that’s proven to be misguided.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s findings on aged-care assessments have exposed yet more flaws in the provision of social services, where the verdict provided by an algorithm can prevail over human judgement, and it’s the people who are most vulnerable who are suffering the consequences.

The Ombudsman found inadequate administration, poor safeguards and funding bands that that human assessors couldn’t override. When this type of assessment process understates someone’s needs – and it’s usually understating, rather than overstating – the consequences reach into day-to-day life: must-needed assistance can’t be obtained, there’s more pressure placed on families, and more difficulties related to staying safely at home.

Ministers need to explain why the system was designed in this way and why, after the debacle of the Robodebt system – including a comprehensive Royal Commission that exposed that Morrison-era debacle – such an automated system without the human oversight still exists.

For sure, automation can assist public services, there’s no question about that: we’ve move way past the time where every government function is done by human hand. But not having the human oversight is a political decision, and it’s affecting many vulnerable and older members of the community, where, apparently, no one is left behind.

With Labor and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation level on primary support in the latest Essential poll, the temptation is to treat every movement as a preview of the next federal election. But primary votes are only part of the electoral equation: preferences, local candidates and the distribution of support determine whether national discontent becomes parliamentary power. Mid-term polling measures frustration more reliably than it predicts the government that follows.

That offers Labor an opportunity, rather than an excuse for complacency. Historical recoveries required a lot of hard political work, and voters facing cost-of-living pressures, inflation and mortgage stress need more than explanations about forces beyond Canberra’s control. Even when international events contribute to rising costs, a government’s credibility depends on its response.

Housing exposes the difficulty of delivering reform in a country accustomed to treating rising property prices as both a national achievement and a national emergency. Negative gearing and capital gains tax changes challenge vested interests, while falling prices generate warnings about the consequences of the affordability so many commentators previously demanded. Political leadership means explaining those competing pressures and defending the purpose of reform.

For One Nation, the challenge runs in the opposite direction: converting dissatisfaction into a credible governing alternative. Migration grievances and provocative social media can attract attention, but attention does not build affordable homes, improve aged care or relieve household budgets. Hanson’s rise also pressures Labor and the Coalition to follow her agenda, allowing the politics of resentment to displace debate about practical solutions.

In this episode, we examine the gap between political popularity and political purpose. Labor cannot assume voters will return just because its opponents offer far less. And One Nation should face scrutiny over its ambitions, which at the moment are mainly a racist attack on migration.

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In this episode, we examine three elections that complicate the narrative of an unstoppable global far right – and consider what they mean for Australian politics, Donald Trump and the approaching US midterm elections.

In Serbia, the student-backed movement’s victory over Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling party demonstrates how demands for accountability can become a powerful force. Protests following the deadly Novi Sad railway station collapse turned public grief into a broader challenge to corruption and institutional failure. These lessons go beyond Serbia: when governments treat public safety, civil liberties and accountability as obstacles to their authority, they can create the conditions that result in their own defeat.

Brazil offers a different message to the nationalist right. Lula da Silva’s defeat of Flávio Bolsonaro blocks a return to the presidency for the Bolsonaro political dynasty, while the close result reveals how deeply its appeal remains embedded. The outcome also complicates Donald Trump’s ambitions for regional influence and preserves Brazil’s independent role in international affairs, including through BRICS. Defeating a far-right candidate matters; rebuilding the public trust that sustains democracy remains a longer task.

Israel’s election presents a more troubling picture. Benjamin Netanyahu’s uncertain path back to government and a possible loss doesn’t automatically open a path towards justice for Palestinians. A change of prime minister means little if occupation, settlement expansion and the destruction of Gaza continue. The strength of Arab representation also tests whether Israeli leaders will respect Palestinian citizens’ democratic participation when their votes could determine who governs.

For Australia, these elections raise questions about political courage and foreign policy. Would a new Israeli government provide enough pressure for Palestinian rights, or simply provide a more comfortable diplomatic relationship? Recognition of Palestine needs practical support through diplomacy, economic measures and accountability, and the Albanese government should be judged by what their policies achieve.

With the US midterm elections approaching, the wider lesson is that nationalist politics can be challenged, but progressive change is never guaranteed. Governments earn legitimacy by improving people’s lives, protecting their rights and answering for their failures. When political leaders forget that, the voters will always send them a message to remind them.

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The most politically significant images coming out of France are of the crowds who have decided that their government is no longer listening, and that the economic conditions that they are repeatedly told to accept are failing to deliver a viable and acceptable future.

Last week, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across France over the issues of education, rising living costs and the inequality that exists throughout society. The rioting, clashes with police and the arrests attracted all the attention, but these incidents obscure the demands that brought people onto the streets in the first place.

The protests – which extended into other parts of Europe as well – raise a question that goes far beyond the day-to-day survival of any government: how long can an economic system have the consent and the support of the public, when the promises that governments keep making fail to materialise?

The familiar story of austerity is as follows: have the restraint today, and you’ll get the prosperity tomorrow. And to get that prosperity, governments need to contain spending, public institutions must somehow become more efficient through brutal cutbacks, and workers need to accept greater flexibility. Once confidence in the economy returns and growth improves, the benefits will supposedly follow. Just wait and see.

Financial sustainability and management is important, but these arguments become shallow when the austerity appears to be enforced for the many, but negotiable for the select few. A household struggling with housing costs receives little reassurance from improving national accounts when its school needs repairs and public services remain difficult to access. Political failure begins when the government’s definition of success – figures related to GDP, inflation rates, or statistics produced by a bureaucracy – loses contact with the everyday life that most people experience.

France’s unrest started off with student grievances about staffing, facilities and university admissions, and developed into broader protests over deteriorating economic conditions. These remain substantive concerns, regardless of the violence from some of the participants. Demonstrations elsewhere in Europe have also been caused by housing pressures, rising prices and corruption, and although this shouldn’t be seen as a coordinated movement, the connecting factors are that there’s a growing conflict over what governments are providing to their citizens, whose interests they are actually protecting, and whether political participation in the more traditional method – voting at the ballot box – can produce the meaningful change that people are after. And, so far, that’s just not happening.

Policing dissent while postponing reform

The French response shows how a dispute about social conditions can then transition into a confrontation over democratic rights. In response, authorities imposed bans on protests, local curfews and restrictions on movement, and the French President Emmanuel Macron advocated placing limits on demonstrations: a violence they helped to create, responded to with more violence from the state.

Of course, governments need to protect all people from violence on the streets, but if a growing dissatisfaction from the community becomes just another justification for governments reducing rights and abilities for democratic participation and voicing opinions, the public’s ability to demand much-needed change is being weaken at the time when it’s needed the most.

This is a familiar process: the grievances from the public start to build, the dissent escalates, and governments reduce rights and demand that people sit down and shut up, before they can start to address the problems. And it’s a similar formula that applies in Australia: the Minns government in New South Wales expanded restrictions on public assemblies after the December 2025 Bondi Beach terrorist attack, essentially to eliminate the regular pro-Palestine events in the Sydney CBD, with the bonus of being able to clamp down on other protests, such as those on environmental and coal mining issues, or nurses and hospital workers calling for wage increases.

It’s an odd response for a Labor government to extend police powers and use repressive tactics to silence dissent, especially for a party that emerged as a collective movement to make challenges to established power. In France, it’s not such a wise move from Macron, considering the country has gone through two major revolutions – and more repressions and bringing out the riot police and water cannons are not really going to offer any relief for the people who are suffering from weak economic conditions and wanting a far better future than what’s on offer at the moment.

While politics is a difficult grind – and we’re not suggesting these issues are easy to resolve – there is a basic function of government: not necessarily giving people what they want, but giving them what they need. People rarely take to the streets – whether it be in Europe or Australia – because they have nothing better to do; it’s because they are genuinely hurting as a result of government policies.

The recent election in Serbia shows that there are other possibilities. That election resulted in the Student List winning an absolute majority of 140 of 250 seats, defeating the authoritarian and autocratic government of Aleksandar Vučić. Student List is not even a political party, has no leader, was formed on the day the election was announced, yet managed to win enough seats to form government. That’s how thoroughly sick of establishment politics the people of Serbia are. They wanted change and they voted for it.

The message is: the governments that try to suppress dissent while leaving the causes of that dissent intact, if they don’t provide suitable responses to public sentiments – as was the case in Serbia – they’re not likely to be in office for too much longer.

Neoliberalism will not disappear just because it fails

Are these demonstrations the beginning of the end of neoliberalism? It’s been called for over the years, and there have been criticisms that the policies that favour unbridled free markets, privatisation, weaker organised labour and austerity are inflicting too much damage upon communities, and after almost 50 years of these failed policies, it’s time for radically different economic thinking that favours these communities, rather than the balance sheets of corporations and vested interests that have created a highly inequitable society.

These criticisms are not only come from the left: as far back as 2016, economists from the International Monetary Fund questioned whether the benefits of neoliberalism have been oversold to the public, identifying the inequality and continuous growth risks associated with austerity plans and the endless quest for financial liberalisation. It’s not a complete rejection of the markets, but it does suggest that while the collapse of neoliberalism is not imminent, it’s primacy as a key economic philosophy is being challenged.

The argument for change doesn’t need to naively pretend that institutions are woefully inadequate and implementing new thinking will automatically improve material issues: reform is genuinely hard work. But the political will and the courage have to be found first: first and foremost, governments need to decide what economic activity is meant to achieve. Housing should be considered an essential piece infrastructure where people can live, education should be treated as a contribution to the public good, and healthcare as a service that’s organised around need.

The onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 demonstrated how quickly governments can intervene when it’s absolutely necessary. It was a short-lived venture which essentially became a de facto test of several of the main tenets of modern monetary theory – or a new form of Keynesianism – but it was directed in a way that supported the status quo, rather than trying to install a lasting change to a dysfunctional system.

Recreating an idealised postwar economy probably isn’t the right to proceed, as applying Keynesian principles in 1945 is radically different to what needs to be achieved in 2026. But it needs to start somewhere. A contemporary version needs to address climate change, social services and health care, the concentration of technological assets in the hands of the few – including the increasing use of artificial intelligence – and housing insecurity.

For Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, this requires more than just a better slogan or the tinkering at the edges that have been symbolic of this government since it was formed in 2022. For sure, the government has introduced tax relief, housing measures and additional health investments, but those measures are not enough; that’s been made very clear in opinion polling since the Labor government won its massive majority at the 2025 federal election, and the rise of the support for One Nation.

Serious reform also needs the government to identify which vested interests they are prepared to challenge. Providing the public with what they need – expanding public housing, reducing speculative incentives and confronting excessive market power – will involve confrontation and conflict with those interests – and, potentially, the loss of political capital (which, by the way, is being lost by avoiding those confrontations).

Labor needs a purpose that goes far beyond just being better than its opponents, or offering the least-worst option: it needs to show that good government can improve material conditions and build institutions that people can rely upon.

Neoliberalism survives it ongoing failures, because it’s the easy way out for many governments around the world, and opponents of it haven’t provided an organised alternative – the solutions are out there, but until there’s a co-ordinated challenge – we’ll keep following this least-worst option, instead of seeking the best solutions.

Europe’s demonstrations make the demand for change more visible. What follows depends on turning that dissatisfaction into new and credible policies and creating a more durable pathway towards a better future. For Australia, it’s a very clear message: public patience is an opportunity to build something better, but it will definitely not last forever.

Democracy behind a barb wire fence?

As parliament resumes following the alleged attack on Helen Haines, there needs to be more than just the sombre speeches and assurances that security will be reviewed, and that we need a “kinder” version of politics. The lack of effective security requests mentioned by Labor Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah – who suggested that she gave up requesting security support because she rarely received the support she needed – raises some uncomfortable questions as to how many threats need to be raised before Parliament will take action.

While politicians are not held in high regard by the public – it’s still a fundamental right that MPs and their staff should have a safe place to work, whether it be at electorate offices, or public events, and women should not have to accept intimidation as part of going into politics. There should be adequate measures to ensure they feel safe with proper threat assessments and proper actions put in place to deal with any reported abuse.

However, given all of these issues, we can’t just lock democracy up and have it functioning behind security and barb wire fences. This would leave regular people behind, while giving lobbyists even more advantages and access to the political system.

Intimidation has long played a role in making an already unjust political system even less accountable. It’s also very convenient for leaders now to call for civility. Without looking at the motivations within politics and the media to gain rewards from outrage, embarrassment and constant creation of enemies, there’s little point in giving a respectful speech if there’s no follow up.

When Princess Diana was killed in 1997 following harassment from media paparazzi, the entire media industry said they needed to change their systems to ensure that people’s privacy was respected. After a short lull, they were back to their invasive and disturbed obsessions with famous people, led by the likes of News Corporation, who are unwilling to change, whatever the circumstances might be.

The same will apply to politics: they’ll be talk about kinder politics, but we know that it will soon return to that standard political and media business model of grievance. For sure, we still don’t know why the alleged attacker did what they did and it seems that there were many issues at play. But still, we can take the opportunity to clean up political behaviour: Parliament shouldn’t use that uncertainty to avoid what needs to be done.

ICYMI, the past week from New Politics:

Senate Estimates and government accountability

Senate Estimates are a great way for the government to be held accountable for their promises, especially for the ones that seem just too good to be true. With the supplementary estimates running this week, Senators such as Sarah Hanson-Young and David Pocock will have the opportunity to grill officials regarding how public funds are being used, administered and if the policies that have been announced are actually delivered. Or not.

It’s a standard process: who is receiving the funding, what are taxpayers receiving and who will take accountability when the service doesn’t appear? While it’s easy for ministers to make announcements, to deliver actual services, there needs to be people and resources in place. The Reserve Bank is due to appear on Wednesday, so it’s good to see them held accountable and find out who’s paying for their economic decisions, especially for those on the lowest incomes in the community. Independence of the bank shouldn’t be a reason to avoid the tough questions.

And in the light of what Parliament is expected to focus on during the week, Senate Estimates could also be the place where the government could be asked about the so-called “dirt file” they created on Helen Haines, after she publicly criticised the invite-only grant programs, especially the $6 million grant given to the Marrickville Golf Club in the Prime Minister’s own electorate. In Parliament, Anthony Albanese said that the attack on Haines was “like a stone in our hearts”: let’s see if his actions match his words.

Will Israel’s election change Australian foreign policy?

Israel’s election this week creates a dilemma for the Australian government. If Benjamin Netanyahu loses, will this mean a different policy for Australia on Israel and Palestine? The main opposition leader is former army chief Gadi Eisenkot from the Yashar! party – a liberal Zionist party, which seems to be a contradiction of terms – and both sides have used the blame game for the security failures that caused the Hamas attacks on October 7.

Neither side seem to have a clear route to obtaining a governing majority so it might end up be a long negotiation period. While there are differences between the two sides, removing Netanyahu’s far right allies could create problems with judicial independence, settler violence and diplomatic relations.

However, just because a new government led by Eisenkot would be marginally less inflammatory doesn’t mean that Palestinians will gain their freedom, or that the dire situation in Gaza will change any time soon. The opposition’s pledges to restore Israel’s image in the international community should also be questioned – would this be by actually changing policy or just creating a better image and pouring money into public relations and more propaganda?

Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong might have a reason to look at new leadership as a chance for Australia to reset our relations after the demise of an extremist tyrant. We can then focus on real changes, including humanitarian access, scaling back the settlement expansions, stopping military actions and providing the autonomy that has been promised to Palestine through the state recognition that was granted last year.

However, if Netanyahu remains as a cancerous influence on Israeli society and another coalition is formed involving extremists, then there will need to be more calls for sanctions. Even if he doesn’t succeed, a new government should be held to the same standards.

We have to remember that just because a new Israeli Prime Minister might make Western diplomats feel more comfortable, but it doesn’t mean that Palestinians’ rights will be automatically upheld. If anything, a change of government might mean that even more pressure needs to be applied.

NAZA, the documentary that could force political change

The recently-released documentary NAZA brings together many of the issues that the critics of Israel have been talking about for years, and places them neatly into a 90-minute exposé of the deranged and inhumane policies implemented under the leadership of Netanyahu, that have been used against the people of Gaza.

Created by the Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, it takes a look at the cowardly and maniacal AI targeting practices and the amount of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip based on testimonies from soldiers in the military and secret services. In conjunction with the Israeli election, this could raise questions in Australia around how much we are supporting these actions diplomatically, and through defence relations and technology transfers.

Of course, governments will rarely change their policies overnight because of one documentary but it will make it more difficult for them to avoid the uncomfortable truths. For others, it might have no effect at all, because despite what they can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears, they are not for changing, and will always be in the service of the state of Israel.

The leader of the Liberal Party in Victoria, Jess Wilson, has pledged to ban the slogan ‘Globalise the Intifada’ if she wins the November state election, along with further scrutiny on protest permits and increased move on powers for the police.

However, renters waiting for affordable housing might be wondering when their emergency will become as politically exciting as Wilson pandering to Melbourne’s Zionist interests. Perhaps she’d be better off watching NAZA – which she’ll be able to watch for free in November – to find out what the true meaning of globalise the intifada actually is.

For Australia, this issue goes beyond the possibility of unrest. The cost-of-living crisis, housing affordability and the quality of public services test whether democratic government can still deliver meaningful improvements. The central weakness of neoliberalism is increasingly political: asking the public to accept restraint today becomes harder when the promised prosperity remains permanently out of reach. Changing the government offers diminishing reassurance if the underlying choices barely change.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers face a challenge that competent administration alone cannot resolve. People need relief, but they also need a credible account of where the country is heading, who will benefit and how government decisions will get them there. Housing, public investment and spending priorities belong within that larger argument.

That lack of a coherent direction also matters within the Labor Party. Leadership loyalty and parliamentary discipline can sustain a government, but a shared purpose gives them substance. A secure prime minister has room to pursue reform; the political danger comes when that security produces caution while public frustration deepens. Backbench participation means little unless there is a clear agenda to help shape.

In this episode, we examine what France’s unrest reveals about austerity, inequality and democratic legitimacy – and why the Albanese government should pay attention. Criticism of Labor from a progressive perspective reflects an expectation that government should use its power in the public interest. The electoral risk is that voters eventually stop believing meaningful change is coming.

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Palestinians deserve accountable leadership, there’s no question about that, and Mahmoud Abbas’s prolonged presidency deserves much scrutiny. An entire generation has grown up without participating in national elections. But democratic renewal requires more than just replacing an ageing president or announcing a polling date: it requires freedom of movement, independent observers, reliable political competition and protection from intimidation. In Gaza and the occupied West Bank, those conditions cannot be separated from Israeli military control, displacement and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Occupation can’t become an indefinite excuse for unaccountable government, but neither can demands for reform disregard the external issues and interference – from Israel – that determines whether elections are practically possible.

For the Albanese government, its credibility depends on making those links between diplomatic demands with practical action. Although Australia’s joint statement acknowledges obstacles to Palestinian elections, the bigger test is what will be done to remove them. Interestingly, Australia was part of a joint statement to condemn the Palestinian leadership, but was absent when it came to issuing another joint statement to end trade and sanction the brutal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. It’s a confused message.

Beyond the argument over election timing, there is a bigger issue: is democracy being pursued as a right Palestinians can exercise, or presented as yet another impossible condition they need to satisfy?

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With the motive still under investigation, attempts to turn the accused man’s reported political interests into an explanation risk substituting partisan convenience for evidence. Environmental activism, support for Palestine or engagement with a journalist’s social media posts cannot, by themselves, establish why someone allegedly committed violence. When political commentary treats association as proof, it encourages the same collective blame that responsible analysis should challenge. And, intellectually, it’s a weak argument to put forward.

Australia’s history of attacks on public figures challenges any comforting assumption that political violence belongs elsewhere. Yet recognising that history does not mean every incident has the same cause, or that aggressive rhetoric establishes responsibility for a particular crime. The more useful question is whether our political and media culture makes threats easier to normalise, rewards hostility and raises the personal cost of participation – particularly for women in politics.

In this episode, we examine the Helen Haines case through the broader questions of political violence in Australia, media framing, women’s safety and democratic accessibility. Strong disagreement is necessary in a democracy; intimidation progressively narrows who can participate and whose voices are heard.

The political challenge is to protect public representatives while preserving the public’s ability to reach them – and to resist turning a person’s suffering into another weapon in the argument.

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An act of cowardly violence

The alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines in regional Victoria raises some disturbing questions about political hostility, the intimidation of elected representatives and the increasingly toxic environment in which Australian politics is operating in.

Before drawing the conclusions about what occurred – and it’s not clear at this stage what exactly occurred – the immediate priority has to be for the wellbeing of Haines, followed by a thorough investigation, and establishing why a 43-year-old man decided to drive his Toyota Landcruiser – allegedly – into one of Australia’s most respected parliamentarians.

While the suspect’s motivations are unclear, eye-witness accounts and police statements suggest that the incident was deliberate. Whether it was politically motivated, however, is a matter for investigators and, hopefully there will be some answers soon. What cannot be ignored is the deterioration of political discourse, with more than 1,000 reports of threatening or harassing behaviour against federal parliamentarians over the past year, and growing concerns about the abuse, intimidation and sexual violence directed towards female politicians.

Haines represents the rural Victorian electorate of Indi, a region that also experienced the bizarre seven-month manhunt for Dezi Freeman, the self-declared “sovereign citizen” who shot three police officers, killing two. There’s no established connection between Freeman and the incident involving Haines – and we’re not suggesting that there is – but his actions show how anti-government hostility can result into extreme violence.

We need a better understanding of why some individuals come to regard violence as a legitimate response to their frustrations, and whether inflammatory right-wing populist rhetoric – which seems to be fashionable at the moment – is contributing to this process.

Labor’s problems start at the very top

During his time as the leader of the Labor Party – since 2019, and now the party’s third-longest serving leader – Anthony Albanese’s greatest political asset has been an obedient caucus that given him the most power over the factions that any Labor leader has ever had. But it seems that it’s a power that’s starting to fray at the edges.

For too long, Labor MP’s have been accepting the decisions handed down by a small leadership group, and are beginning to question the mistakes that they have to defend, and an economic agenda that they are increasing unable to clearly explain to their electorates. This has been one of most disciplined Labor governments that we’ve ever seen, but with a large Caucus – 124 members and so many ambitious and impatient backbenchers – their recent overwhelming success might be sowing the seeds of their downfall.

And it’s the smaller issues that seem to be causing the problems: the ATO credit-card debacle is probably the best example, where credit cards payments were no longer going to be accepted for the BAS and GST obligations of small businesses. Ministers knew months ago that changes were being considered, yet when the time came, the government still scrambled to manage the backlash. Albanese’s intervention in the issue then invited other questions about Chalmers’s authority on financial issues, although the treasurer denied that he was overruled by the PM. This itself shouldn’t be a factor because a Prime Minister will always have the ultimate say, but an avoidable policy mess became another distraction from the main political issues of the day.

We’ve always pointed this out that the bigger question is what Labor intends to do with power, because it seems very unprepared to expend any of its political capital so, in the absence of a powerful and overriding reformist narrative, it’s the smaller and more esoteric issues that the backbench doesn’t really understand anyway, that end up causing all the problems.

There isn’t a leadership challenge to Albanese at the moment – perhaps he has too much power for that to happen, and some of these issues could be related to mid-term problems that governments always come across and have to work through – but problems don’t go away by themselves. And if they don’t go away, he might be checking over his shoulder more frequently than has for any other time during his time as Labor leader.

Wong’s bizarre election call for Palestine

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has demanded Palestinian elections “without delay” – now! – after President Mahmoud Abbas cancelled the upcoming November 28 elections, and rescheduled them for September 2027.

But based on recent events – even more recent than Israel’s occupation commenced in 1967 – Palestinians might reasonably ask who will guarantee they can actually survive an election campaign. After Israeli settlers attacked photojournalist Heidi Levine and, then on the following day, European diplomats and a visiting French mayor, demanding an election requires more than castigating the leadership of a country that has suffered a genocide, apartheid and war crimes. If foreign visitors cannot safely observe an olive harvest in the West Bank, what are the chances of protection for Palestinian voters, candidates, election workers and international observers?

The Palestinian leadership has cited concerns of continuing Israeli attacks and restrictions on election materials and observers entering Gaza. But what is Wong thinking: where can people vote safely, who can campaign freely, and who can independently verify the result? And who will keep the maniacal and genocidal Israel Defense Forces away from the scene, who will have a massive incentive to disrupt the election as much as possible?

The President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has delayed elections in Ukraine since March 2024, over two and a half years ago, yet Wong has never said anything about this, or showed that she is “deeply disappointed” with that delay. Likewise for Nicaragua, which has delayed its elections until 2027. Obviously, Wong has selective vision: Palestine is “difficult to judge from afar” when Israel commits genocide in Gaza – or when an Australian aid worker is deliberately targeted and killed by the IDF – but it’s never too far away to make judgements about when the Palestinian Authority should hold an election.

Of course, the 90-year-old Abbas deserves serious scrutiny over the lack of elections, with the previous one held in 2005. This is unacceptable: Palestinians do deserve a government that is held accountable for its actions. But the hectoring from an insignificant foreign minister about their elections while failing to secure the conditions for them to success goes beyond the pale. Australia should make more concrete demands for Israeli compliance, civilian protection and unrestricted electoral access: that would be a far better pathway to follow.

Why now? The politics behind a crisis for the Greens

The allegations concerning Jordon Steele-John needs serious investigation, but with procedural fairness for those who have been raising these concerns, and for the Senator himself. He’s currently facing allegations of sexual misconduct – which he denies – including an alleged incident of sexual harassment and a separate sexual assault complaint that he says police investigated without laying any charges. And these are complaints that need to be investigated properly and without fear or favour, and any investigations need to be carried out in due course.

But there’s the curious issue of timing. Older concerns have circulated within the party for some time, and the WA Greens says those matters were addressed at the time and not unsubstantiated. Why, then, are they resurfacing alongside more recent allegations now, just as new Greens leader David Shoebridge attempts to establish his leadership and sharpen the party’s challenges to the Labor government? What new evidence has emerged, and what explains the timing of this release?

Of course, allegations of this nature should never be based around political considerations, but it’s a question of why this has surfaced just at this point of time.

Steele-John alleges that complaints have been weaponised in an internal preselection contest, and has released a lengthy public statement that seems to be more a document to tell the reader how to interpret these historical events, rather than trying to establish what actually happened.

Have these disclosures arisen from the factional struggles within the Greens? Have tensions following the leadership contest several weeks ago played any role? We’ll never find out, but who brought this material to the media, why now, and whose political interests does it really serve? Is it a shot across the bow after the UK Green Party “Zionism equals racism” resolution, a warning that suggests it’s something the Australian Greens should not even go near?

The Greens are like any other political party, and there will be internal machinations based around personal grievances and payback. But despite this, sexual misconduct is still sexual misconduct, if that’s what has occurred – this material doesn’t establish any guilt at all, that has to made clear – but a credible inquiry needs to examine these allegations and then the public can view the party’s response, and decide if there’s any consequences out of this, politically or legally.

France burns while Australia fiddles

It might not seem apparent, but the recent upheaval and riots in France is the beginning of the endgame of neoliberalism, at least in that country: it’s that constant promise of imposing austerity today for the sake of prosperity tomorrow, but it’s a promise that for many people has yet to be fulfilled, and it’s likely that the prosperity will never arrive.

For the many households facing rising costs and students enduring deteriorating schools, that version of tomorrow keeps being postponed. Hundreds of thousands people marched on the streets of the big cities in France on the weekend, overwhelmingly peacefully, before violence and looting started to grab the headlines. Despite this, it’s a message that’s starting to resonate, and resonate very strongly: people are hurting, and they want change, now.

This is how economic insecurity can morph into a political crisis. Governments keep insisting their choices are responsible, while citizens everywhere are experiencing those supposedly responsible choices as a decline in public services, poor budgets and the rapidly diminishing prospects of a positive future.

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised expanded powers to prohibit gatherings, as if banning protests is the solution to massive economic problems. It’s a familiar solution: instead of resolving the issues that caused the problems in the first place – worshipping at the altar of neoliberalist economics and endless material growth – governments prefer to exert more police control and clampdowns.

These events should be a warning for Australia, they’re not happening in isolation: while Australia begrudgingly accepts whatever illogical solutions are proposed by government – unlike the French nation, which is quick to show its unhappiness and disillusion with government – there isn’t an infinite supply of patience within the electorate.

Albanese and Chalmers cannot indefinitely ask struggling households for patience, without presenting a roadmap for where the Australian economy is heading. Ultimately, successful politics is based around giving the public want they want and, at the moment, they’re after improvements in housing, better public services, higher wages and security, supported by fairer taxation system and a willingness to confront concentrated wealth and the vested interests. The government isn’t providing enough of what the public wants, and that’s the problem.

ICYMI, the past week from New Politics:

Hasan’s murder of 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 was an appalling crime. But turning a firing squad execution into online content – death porn – would make spectatorship part of the punishment, inviting audiences to consume a death as a demonstration of American power. The spectacle carries its own political message: the state can kill, command attention and call the combination justice.

For Anthony Albanese, the controversy also tested the substance of Australia’s opposition to the death penalty. His eventual condemnation of the proposed livestream as “completely abhorrent” was warranted, but it was issued not so strongly, and almost a week later.

Australia readily invokes human rights when criticising strategic rivals. Its credibility depends on applying those principles to allies with the same conviction. AUKUS, critical minerals agreements and the US–Australia alliance make that consistency diplomatically uncomfortable, which is precisely why it matters. Opposition to capital punishment cannot depend on the identity of the executioner.

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The Red Line Package seeks to prevent Australian weapons, investments and trade from contributing to genocide, war crimes and illegal occupation – this shouldn’t be a problem for a government that presents itself as a defender of human rights, and it’s a very basic premise: Australia should not finance, equip or profit from atrocities. Yet Labor and the Coalition combined to block a Senate inquiry into the legislation.

An inquiry would allow the proposals, their practical consequences and any shortcomings to be examined publicly, and fit into the public interest test. There are also questions about Australian defence exports and the global F-35 supply chain, and trade with illegal settlements. What safeguards follow Australian military components beyond the factory gate? How should financial institutions assess their exposure to atrocities? And why should commercial complexity become an excuse for avoiding responsibility?

Although Israel and Gaza give these questions immediate urgency, the package proposes a broader standard, applying across countries rather than singling out just the one government, which in this case, is Israel. That makes the political test even more important: whether Australia will accept enforceable limits, even when they inconvenience powerful partners.

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Luciana Carusi, the NSW Greens candidate for Blue Mountains, approaches that question from an unusual starting point. A former banking and finance professional, protests against Adani and the devastation of the Black Summer bushfires prompted her move into climate activism and politics. Her argument challenges the assumption that governments have struck a sensible balance between economic growth, environmental protection and community needs. When commercial interests consistently prevail, whose definition of balance is being applied?

Coal and gas expansion sits uneasily alongside emissions targets, while the promise of future employment offers little security without a credible transition to renewable energy. On PFAS contamination, Carusi argues that access to information, permanent water treatment and publicly funded testing should be matters of government responsibility rather than household purchasing power.

The same debate runs through privatisation and the cost of living. Public housing, a public energy provider, public banking and free public transport raise a larger question: has government become too comfortable managing markets while retreating from directly providing essential services?

The discussion also considers Palestine, Gaza and Australian political accountability, exploring how international solidarity and local activism share a concern with whose lives, rights and voices carry weight.

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The controversy surrounding Navi Pillay, the Nobel Peace Prize and Israel’s conduct in Gaza exposes a deeper struggle over justice, accountability and political power. Attacks on Pillay following her investigation of allegations of genocide and war crimes reflect a familiar strategy: when evidence becomes difficult to confront, discredit those responsible for examining it. The implications extend beyond Gaza to the selective application of international law by Western governments.

Donald Trump’s confrontation with the International Criminal Court represents a dangerous escalation. US sanctions targeting ICC officials and operations demonstrate how financial power can undermine institutions established to investigate serious international crimes. Neither the United States nor Israel belongs to the ICC, yet Washington has an extraordinary capacity to obstruct its operations. The message is clear: accountability is acceptable, provided it doesn’t reach the ones who are powerful enough to resist it.

For Australia, this is a critical issue. Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong repeatedly champion international law and multilateralism, yet become very cautious when those principles need to be applied against the US or Israel. Australia’s delayed participation in international opposition to US sanctions against the ICC also raises questions about the independence of Australian foreign policy and whether diplomatic considerations are overriding these principles.

Other American allies, including Canada and European governments, have demonstrated that challenging Washington doesn’t mean abandoning relationships but Australia’s reluctance suggests a political culture increasingly confusing loyalty with national interest.

The question isn’t whether Australia should abandon its American alliance, but whether that relationship has become so dominant that successive governments struggle to articulate an independent national interest. Is Australia an independent middle power with principles of its own, or just a pliant supporter of American power, regardless of how that power is exercised?

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Australian governments have always wanted to have the prestige of moral leadership without the small troublesome matter of having to exercise it – it always provides lectures to others about international law, human rights and the need for a “rules-based order”, but then becomes quiet when applying those principles requires criticism of the United States or Israel. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese can collect global citizen awards – as he did last month – but global citizenship needs to involve a lot more than accepting a small glass token at the Waldorf Astoria in New York: it means defending and applying the same standards, irrespective of which country violates them and, at the moment, we can see Albanese selectively picks and chooses.

The Nobel Peace Prize recently awarded to the international jurist Navi Pillay is an excellent example of this selective conscience. Pillay is a former South African High Court judge and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and has devoted her entire career to confronting abuses of power within the international community. Her work on the UN commission investigating the occupied Palestinian territory, including its findings that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, has made her deeply unpopular to those governments who would prefer to have their poor human rights records swept away and totally forgotten about.

Predictably, pro-Israel commentators and organisations have attacked Pillay, making the endless accusations of “blood libel”, while denouncing the Nobel Foundation as “irreparably compromised”. Of course, there were no claims of compromise when Menachem Begin won the award in 1978, who was the leader of the Irgun terrorist group that bombed the King David Hotel and killed 91 people in 1946 – apparently, that’s totally acceptable and very deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, but recognising an international lawyer who has called out Israel’s genocide is just a bridge too far.

Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong haven’t offered any public congratulations to Pillay for receiving the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. And that’s not where their silence ends: Britain, Canada, Japan and other governments have all condemned the latest US sanctions against the International Criminal Court. Australia’s name was absent from the list, so we can see that when the government proclaims its support for international justice, but is silent when either the US or Israel act against justice, all it’s doing is speaking from both sides of the diplomatic mouth, engaged in weasel words, and proves that it can’t be trusted on any of these issues.

The campaign against the ICC also exposes the limits of the US commitment to accountability, even though they don’t recognise this court. Justice is always welcome when it pursues one of its adversaries; but when it reaches the shores of the United States, or at the front door of Benjamin Netanyahu’s house, the investigators become the targets, which is exactly what happened with their attacks on Pillay this week.

The Albanese government should have recognised the dangers of the behaviours of the US and Israel a long time ago – a court whose independence depends on avoiding powerful governments and their vassal states will never be able deliver international justice. Instead, Wong has praised US President Donald Trump in the past for making “the biggest contribution to peace that we have seen in a very long time”. What an extraordinary statement from a government that is happy to display its weakness and reluctance to challenge the US, even when it’s so egregiously wrong.

And this is all in the context of Australia’s pursuit of a UN Security Council seat in 2028: what’s the value of winning a seat at this table if this government arrives already committed to avoiding the difficult conversations, and all it’s going to be do is providing another vote that the US and Israel can depend on when the issues become a bit too difficult to handle?

Wong’s suggestion that events in Gaza were difficult too “difficult to judge from afar” has become an emblem of her many failures as foreign minister, and long may it be posted on her political epitaph, when that time comes. This distance apparently affects her judgment when there needs to be scrutiny over the maniacal actions of Israeli, but no problems at all in castigating the Palestinian Authority over their decision to postpone their elections until September 2027. Obviously, distance is no problem at all, once those powerful countries ask a foreign minister to stop squinting, adjust the lenses, and look more closely in a way that favours their own interests.

Of course, there needs to be elections in Palestine, but has Wong asked about how it could be possible to hold elections in Gaza, which has suffered genocide, catastrophic destruction and displacement? The West Bank faces military incursions, movement restrictions, settlement expansion and an increasingly brutal occupation by Israel Defense Forces. Has Wong even considered how international observers would be able to get into the Gaza strip, let along distribute ballot papers? Once again, it’s a thoughtless and inane commentary coming from a foreign minister who should know better – but doesn’t – who never applies the same logic to Ukraine, even though Volodymyr Zelenskyy has deferred their national elections for almost three years.

The same inconsistencies and selective conscience operate within Parliament too. The Red Lines Package which was proposed by independent crossbenchers and the Australian Greens, seeks to restrict Australian weapons, the investment and trade that is contributing to a genocide, war crimes and illegal occupation. This should be a straightforward proposition: that Australia should not help finance, equip or profit from atrocities that are caused by any country in the world.

Although we all know which country is likely to be targeted, the package didn’t mention Israel at all, but it does look at a wide range of areas, and the transparency and enforceable requirements within the legislation would make it more difficult for governments to hide behind their own assurances that existing arrangements are adequate and there’s nothing to see here. This would also give substance to the belief that Australia takes international law seriously.

So what did the government do? Labor and the Coalition joined forces to oppose the legislation, a bipartisan agreement that demonstrates of how quickly political differences will disappear between government and opposition when any attempt is made to hold Israel to account.

Then there’s the proposed livestream of Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad in the US. Let’s be clear about this, Hasan is no saint: he murdered 13 people in 2009, and the horror of those killings cannot be disputed or qualified in any way. But the severity of a crime cannot justify turning a state killing into gratuitous entertainment for billions around the world to watch. What exactly is the purpose that this will serve?

This is the politics of the spectacle, in which cruelty becomes performance art and human degradation merged into the one event. Whatever the rules on capital punishment might be in the US, broadcasting an execution takes this to the grotesque extreme: the state doesn’t just kill people, but it’s recruiting an audience to witness its political power as well.

Of course, this is a matter for the US, but if it chooses to go down this path of extreme human degradation, it’s a problem the entire world community has to deal with. Australia officially opposes capital punishment quite stridently in all circumstances and for all people, and Amnesty International has urged Albanese to seek a commutation of Hasan’s sentence and push the US to abandon this macabre event.

This should be a fairly uncomplicated process of letting the US understand Australia’s position on the issue, a process which has been made a lot easier now that One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce has also condemned this proposed event.

Imagine the response if Iran, Saudi Arabia or the Taliban announced a similar livestream event – and while all have hosted public executions, none of them allow the broadcast or recording of these events – Australian ministers would have little difficulty publicly voicing their opinions about the state cruelty that’s being implemented.

So why is Anthony Albanese so quiet about this issue and seems to have lost his voice? His government should condemn the proposal, seek clemency and consider lawful measures to limit the footage in Australia. Diplomatic friendship – irrespective how flawed it might be – cannot involve the denial of basic human dignity.

Albanese occupies a powerful position, yet too often treats power as something to hang onto rather than use up and achieve something that’s in the public interest. As I’ve always said, he’s a weak prime minister in a powerful position, and does little to use that power effectively.

Domestically, the much-needed reforms have become a process of managing expectations and government public relations; internationally, long-established principles are applied inconsistently and thrown out the window as soon as the US and Israel are mentioned.

The Australian electorate wants to see a lot more than the empty rhetoric of “concern”, or ministers squibbing it by saying that it’s “too difficult to judge from afar” when the issues become too difficult. There is the expectation that they should use their authority to make the difficult decisions, even when doing that will carry a political cost, or cause them to use up their highly-banked political capital: that’s literally the job of political leadership and, at the moment, Australia’s political leaders are not doing their job.

Australia can’t dictate American policy or end the occupation of Palestine through a speech or media conference where they are either silent or declare that some things are just too far away. But it can voice what it supports, what values it holds, what it condemns and which international institutions it will defend. Those are real choices, and in most cases, they should be simple choices to make, as former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser did in 1977, with his leadership on the Gleneagles Agreement, which started off the process to end apartheid in South Africa.

Anthony Albanese is not even a bootlace of a leader when compared to the leadership of the Fraser, and even less when it comes to comparisons with former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who, admittedly stood up to the US and ultimately paid the price. But that’s what real leadership is.

A government that claims global citizenship should apply their values and principles openly and consistently. Otherwise, fancy awards at the Waldorf Astoria, ambitions of a seat at the UN Security Council and announcements about a “rules-based order” just have a decorative value and are nothing more than window dressing. And it’s that very familiar case of Australia speaking confidently about its values, until a powerful friend asks it to sit down and keep quiet.