As the country prepares for Australia Day, many Australians fear what is happening to our tolerant society. It has taken the firebombing of a childcare centre in Sydney to finally rouse Prime Minister Albanese out of his complacency and call a national cabinet meeting to deal with the tsunami of antisemitism that has swept over Australia ever since Hamas launched its barbaric invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023. On that terrible day, some 1,200 people were slaughtered, more than 250 were taken hostage, and thousands more were injured.

Within two days we saw Australian supporters of Iranian-backed terrorist organisations – Hamas and Hezbollah – celebrating the massacre in front of the Sydney Town Hall and the Sydney Opera House, launching flares, and chanting antisemitic threats of violence – ‘Gas the Jews’ and ‘Where’s the Jews’ – while the police looked on as if they were observing nothing more objectionable than a Sunday school picnic. The unmistakable signal that was sent was that the police would turn a blind eye – and a deaf ear – to antisemitic threats of violence.

Since then Australian cities and university campuses have been awash with rallies calling for the destruction of Israel to make way for a Palestinian caliphate from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.

Just this week we saw the Australian National University claim that its students did not perform Nazi-inspired gestures at a mass online student meeting in May last year even though there is video footage showing that this was exactly what one of the students did. The meeting was about a pro–Palestine encampment on campus and Jewish students had asked the student association to condemn Hamas, condemn the use of hateful slogans such as -’intifada’, and acknowledge that there was a toxic culture of anti-Semitism in activist circles at the ANU. Proving the point, the student association refused.

Against this backdrop of chanting masses demanding an end to the state of Israel and waving the flags of vilely antisemitic terror organisations, the Australian government has gone out of its way to attack Israel and accuse it of vile crimes of which it is patently not guilty while demanding a ceasefire and a fast track to a Palestinian state. Not once has Prime Minister Albanese or Foreign Minister Penny Wong explained who in Gaza would be the partner for peace in this new Palestinian state. The answer is all too obvious. There is no partner for peace in Gaza. There are only the jubilant throngs of well-fed Hamas fighters who emerged from the tunnels of Gaza wielding their AK47s in delight, like demons emerging from the bowels of hell. These terrorists are a living illustration of what has gone on in Gaza for the last 15 months.  Hamas fighters have sat in the tunnels, which have served as bomb shelters, eating the food supplies meant for civilians, while the people of Gaza have been locked out and forced to survive in the rubble. They are already crowing to the people of Gaza that they are preparing for the next October 7, the next massacre, and the one after.

It is a terrible indictment of the Prime Minister that it took him so long to call for the National Cabinet to meet. Now that they have, they must confront the reality that firebombing synagogues and childcare centres are acts of terrorism and must be treated as such.

It should also be obvious that the cycle of violence in Australia has spiralled out of control because the police have let it. The first step to restoring law and order must be to get the police to enforce existing laws. They could start by sending officers to the mosques where clerics have been recorded preaching sermons full of racist hate speech and inciting racially motivated violence and terrorism and press charges.

Given the widespread support for terrorist organisations in Gaza and the virulent antisemitism, now that there is a ceasefire, the 3,000 people who came here on temporary visas and who were not screened for security threats must return.

And why criminalise the use of swastikas but allow people to wave the flags of Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organisation?

The good news is that despite the unforgivable reckless incompetence of the Albanese government, the vast majority of Australians are well aware that we are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful, peaceful, and prosperous countries in the world. We need to ensure that it stays that way.  That means not just changing laws, but changing the government.