A t his 21st birthday costume party, a young Dominic Perrottet, donned some sort of Nazi costume. When this recently came to light, he stated publicly how deeply ashamed he was and apologised effusively particularly to the Jewish community. He also paid a quickly arranged visit to Sydney’s Holocaust Museum in Darlinghurst, which has become almost a pilgrimage for public figures who misuse Nazism or the Holocaust.

There is quite a history of wearing Nazi garb in the entertainment industry. When I first saw Jewish comedian Mel Brooks prancing around dressed as Hitler, I found it confronting and disrespectful. Somehow, I survived and continued to enjoy the comic genius of Mel Brooks. The hit TV series Hogan’s Heroes set in a Nazi German prisoner-of -war camp had Nazi costumes aplenty.

There is no serious claim Dom Perrottet ever displayed any personal neo-Nazi characteristics so likely he wore the costume for the amusement of those attending the birthday party, nothing more.

The Australian Jewish Association (AJA) was contacted by an attendee of a bad taste dress up party. The costume put together was of a Taliban terrorist with fake beard, turban, Islamic style robe and carrying a fake gun. No one suggested that such a costume meant the wearer had jihadist tendencies or sympathies.

Nevertheless, by today’s standards what Perrottet wore is unacceptable. Any Nazi imagery outside a memorial or educational context is particularly confronting and offensive to the Jewish community. It is seen as disrespectful to the six million Jews and other victims murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

It can be argued that as an intelligent, educated youth, the young Perrottet should have known better. But even intelligent educated young people sometimes make significant errors of judgment and do stupid and occasionally offensive things.

Since entering politics, Perrottet’s track record has been very positive on Jewish community issues. He is widely regarded as a friend of the community and supporter of Israel. As NSW Treasurer he provided grants to enhance Jewish community security and helped fund a renovation of the Holocaust museum. In 2022 as Premier he approved legislation to ban the swastika in NSW and facilitated combatting antisemitism by supporting the important International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

There is a Jewish principle called teshuva. It means that genuine repentance earns forgiveness. AJA says that given the timing of the event, the Premier’s track record and the nature of his apology expressing genuine remorse, Perrottet meets the criteria. We accept his apology and regard the incident as having no relevance to the present in judging the Premier or his government.

So, what’s really going on here? Why the great pile-on?

There is the strong theory that the matter being exposed 19 years after it occurred and just weeks before the NSW State election, has a lot to do with internal frictions of the NSW Liberal Party. Almost certainly that’s true but it does not fully explain the massive media pile-on and why Perrottet’s historical error should be treated so differently to those of other politicians who also made errors within the same general subject of Nazism or the Holocaust.

In the lead-up to the Victorian state election, Premier Dan Andrews smeared his opponents as preferencing Nazis. He provided no names and no evidence to support the allegation that there were Nazis on the Victorian ballot papers. The bulk of the media made no effort to hold him to account. A serving premier appropriating the Holocaust or Nazism for domestic political point-scoring is reprehensible and much more significant than Perrottet’s costume 19 years ago.

In April 2022, then-Teal candidate, now MP for Kooyong, Dr Monique Ryan, apologised for a 2017 tweet which trivialised the Holocaust. Her Tweet included an image of Hitler’s Mein Kampf with the face of then -president Donald Trump renamed Mein Covfefe picking up a spelling error from a Trump tweet. A message from her campaign office said, ‘Dr Ryan is deeply sorry to anyone who is offended by her misguided attempts at humour’. This error was treated as minor and quickly faded.

Former NSW -remier Bob Carr seems to have launched a campaign to denigrate Perrottet on the issue of the old Nazi costume. Amongst Carr’s string of tweets he declares, ‘Perrottet needs distractions from his Nuremberg parade ground and Hitler jugend passions.’ He also tells the Jewish community to demand Perrottet’s resignation. Given Carr’s track record this is bizarre. Carr makes numerous statements highly critical of Israel and has used the term ‘Jewish lobby’ repeatedly to dismiss the opinions of Jewish voices and imply Jews have too much influence. Carr vigorously takes the side of Arab Palestinians in influencing Labor policy while it is not unusual to see Nazi flags flown with the Palestinian flag or find support for Nazism and Hitler from prominent Palestinians.

When making statements critical of Israel and influencing Labor policy, Carr does not declare his relationship with Islamic funds. Carr has been appointed chairman of Crescent Foundation, the charity associated with Australia’s Halal-compliant superannuation fund, Crescent Wealth.

If it was a Labor party strategic decision that Carr should be the pointy end of the attack, then it is a ridiculous choice. Carr has no credibility with which to criticise Perrottet.

There was little or no media outrage piled on Andrews or Ryan for their forays into inappropriate Nazi references, even though much more recent. Perrottet has been subject to a massive attack across the mainstream media for an error of youth. Perhaps a major contributing sin is that Perrottet comes from the political right.

This whole disgraceful and opportunistic episode says more about what passes for political debate and analysis in some of our media than it does about Dom Perrottet.