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The former attorney general Mark Dreyfus has called on governments to consider banning protests outside synagogues and Jewish schools, invoking a high court decision allowing restrictions outside abortion clinics.
The federal Labor backbencher told the antisemitism royal commission the laws should be considered in light of a ۲۰۱۹ high court decision upholding safe access zone laws in Victoria and Tasmania, which prohibit protests within ۱۵۰ metres of abortion clinics.
“The high court said that kind of law directed at reducing distress and anxiety to Australians who need to attend an abortion clinic is within the constraints of the implied freedom of political communication,” Drefus said on Monday.
“It’s time to consider whether we need some similar restriction on protest activity outside synagogues, on protest activity outside schools and Jewish places of gathering, not to ban political protest … but rather to protect … Jewish Australians.”
Last year, the New South Wales government reintroduced laws restricting protests that block or threaten a person accessing a place of worship, after earlier legislation restricting protests near a place of worship was struck down by the state’s supreme court.
The royal commission’s fifth block of hearings in Melbourne this week will examine security arrangements for the Jewish community, including the role of the Jewish Community Security Group (CSGs) and their coordination with law enforcement agencies.
The counsel assisting, Richard Lancaster SC, said evidence would show “a substantial and ongoing threat to the safety and security of the Jewish community in Australia”, leading to a “shrinking of Jewish communal life”, including because of the financial burden of employing security guards.
Dreyfus, who is Jewish, told the commission that following Hamas’s ۷ October ۲۰۲۳ attack on Israel, he had been shocked by the “breach of that sense of safety” previously created by providing asylum to Jewish refugees, including his father, who came to Australia in ۱۹۳۹ as an ۱۱-year-old from Nazi Germany.
He said his former role as a member of the cabinet in the Albanese government’s first term had put him in a “unique position”, which he said had resulted in “particularly difficult and painful” criticism from some Jewish Australians.
Dreyfus said since leaving the cabinet in a reshuffle after the ۲۰۲۵ federal election, which saw him replaced as attorney general by Michelle Rowland, “I’ve been much freer as an MP”.
Dreyfus used his evidence on Monday to urge the commonwealth government to consider introducing a criminal offence for vilification, following NSW and Victoria, as well as a “private right of action” under the government’s proposed digital duty of care to allow for the takedown of online abuse on social media.
“It can’t just be left to the eSafety commissioner,” he said.
Dreyfus told the commission that while antisemitism in Australia had not “come from nowhere”, pointing to historical examples, solidarity with Jewish Australians after the ۷ October attacks had been “followed by an upsurge in antisemitism [that] has been deeply shocking to me”.
This included an incident in which a man approached him outside Victoria’s state library in April ۲۰۲۴ and said: “You are a genocidal Zionist. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
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“No one had ever hurled abuse at me because I am Jewish. This was a new development in my engagement in Australian politics, and I know I’m not alone,” said Dreyfus, who has been the MP for Isaacs in south-east Melbourne since ۲۰۰۷.
On Monday, the commission heard from members of state-based Jewish Community Security Groups, volunteer-led organisations which monitor threats to the Jewish community and provide security for schools, synagogues and events.
One senior member of the Victorian CSG said combined data showed the protection requirements for CSGs nationwide had nearly doubled since October ۲۰۲۳, but that organisations still did not have sufficient staffing numbers.
They said while the Victorian CSG “couldn’t do what we’re doing” without government grants, the funding was not sufficient to provide adequate security at Jewish sites, with the majority of funding coming from community donations.
“There shouldn’t be this financial burden on being Jewish today, and I don’t see how this is sustainable, nor do I see why it should be sustainable.”
Another CSG witness, appearing under the pseudonym ACR, described a feeling of being “always on call”, saying they “very much discourage my family from attending Jewish community events”.
“I don’t want to put myself in a position where I would have to decide between extracting them or dealing with a threat if something arose, and so that’s incredibly difficult.”
The commission heard from a staff member involved in preparing annual reports analysing antisemitic incidents reported to CSGs nationwide. They detailed how the ۲۰۲۵ report, yet to be released, included ۱,۲۷۶ incidents, a ۲۲% on the previous year and the most reported ever.
They said a rise in incidents at schools and synagogues, including those targeting schoolchildren, “wasn’t a trend that was seen previously”.
