Is Australia's multicultural project in trouble?

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An attack against Australia.

That's how the Home Affairs Minister Tony Berg has labelled an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue on Friday night.

The opposition has called for the Prime Minister to convene a national cabinet meeting amid the latest string of anti-Semitic attacks, which have once again prompted social cohesion concerns.

And it's the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC Week 2.

The milestone falls in the wake of Australia's first truth-telling inquiry, handing down its findings.

But has it put truth-telling back on the agenda?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvallis.

And I'm Jacob Grieber, coming to you with a new title I see here from our run sheet, political editor of 730.

It's the run sheet that did it.

It's not actually that it's the truth.

It is.

It's my first day in the job and

you know in strapping in for the ride, I guess.

Yeah, it's going to be a pretty, you know, big ride, I think, because the parliament's coming back in two weeks, so it will be very intense.

Now, you've been on the slopes living your best life.

How's the snow?

All my secrets are getting out.

Look, the snow is pretty good for June and July.

You know, it's early in the winter, but it was it was a lot of fun.

And I got out there with my

with some of my family and we had a ball.

Oh, yeah.

July.

Such a cool country, really, isn't it?

You don't have to go far to have fun in this country.

No, no, from Canberra and Melbourne, too, you can actually get to the snow pretty quickly, too.

So we are lucky.

All right.

Well, I've been here holding the fort.

You have indeed.

I have.

There's been a lot going on.

I've been watching and listening.

And can I say, Not very enjoyable fort.

The topics that I've been talking about and covering have been pretty ugly, Jacob, and let's go to the most ugly over the weekend.

And that was for the Australian Jewish community, the door of an East Melbourne synagogue set alight on Friday night.

One person has been arrested

and charged, and there is an active investigation into motive now.

So as we record Monday in the middle of the day, that's still, of course, evolving.

That's just the latest in a spate of what I think are really troubling attacks on Jewish sites across the city.

A restaurant owned by an Israeli was also stormed and pretty horrifying and frightening scenes for them.

The Victorian government has announced a new anti-hate task force, but Jacob, I reckon this is a bit, it's deeper.

I wrote a piece about this which we'll link to in the show notes because while all sides say you know that they love multiculturalism, that they agree that anti-Semitism is wrong, that we need to take this seriously, we do appear to be having a pretty deep issue around this.

How has the government responded?

Well, the government, I think, has been actually quite forceful in its language quickly this time on this incident.

They wasted no time.

Over the weekend, we've seen Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke standing at that Melbourne synagogue

and he made the very...

pointed remark that what we see in the door that's behind me is an attack on Australia.

That's how they've characterized it.

It's not an attack on a particular place of worship or a particular group, which of course it is in this instance, literally, but it's an attack on those values you talk about as a multicultural society.

And

it's a reminder that this stuff has to be refreshed in the sense that it has to be talked about.

that that is what makes Australia pretty unique in the world.

And I've lived in different parts of the world and we are one of, if not the most multicultural society you can think of.

But that doesn't come automatically.

It's not just a thing that happens because the sun comes up at a certain time of day.

It has to be worked on.

And I think this is really confronting stuff because it's this conflict is being brought here.

People are taking out their anger about something happening on the other side of the world on a particular group of people.

That community is feeling extremely vulnerable and under siege.

And they want to see governments react strongly to it.

And even with the federal government sort of being quite forceful in its language, there is still a sense of dissatisfaction, I think, from the Jewish community that it's words rather than deeds.

You know, these are really difficult, complex situations.

The courts are already involved, so

you have to be mindful of that.

There are individuals involved.

We've seen this year in the lead up to the election other incidents that turned out not to be what they were portrayed as.

And I'm talking here in particular about that caravan plot, so-called, that

ended up not being quite the sort of thing it was portrayed as.

So I'm being careful here with the language.

But yeah, there is still a mood, I think, PK, for more concrete action.

And

it will come down to, as you say, what the Victorian government does, what the New South Wales government does, what the federal government does.

Yeah, and I think that has to have a very nuanced conversation, right?

And we're not very good at nuanced on this issue.

And when we try to do it, I mean, that piece I wrote, I wrote because

I know

Jewish people in Melbourne are genuinely scared.

And it feels to me like we can't live in a community where our fellow citizens are scared because they are from a particular religious or racial group.

If that's the case, because we know, for instance, Aboriginal people also, we said it's NATO, week, they often feel targeted.

When we know that a particular community feels a particular way, we must take it seriously.

Now, I have been really struck by a lot of positive feedback, people saying, thank you for bringing nuance to this.

I'm really troubled by what's happening in Gaza.

I'm telling you, I've got lots and lots of emails from the public.

I'm really troubled by what's happening in Gaza, but I really don't want to see people in my community attacked either.

So, you know, a lot of people believe this, and I think that's actually at the heart of what a healthy community believes, that you can hold many truths at once.

What you're hearing from people like Tony Burke is taking a stand on that line, right?

And there is, you said the Jewish community is disappointed.

Well, the Jewish community is actually...

Some parts of it is disappointed.

That's exactly.

That's what I was going to say, right?

Because some parts are disappointed.

Absolutely.

They want more.

They're not satisfied.

Some people believe that the...

Albanese government's position in being more critical of Israel increasingly in the way that they're behaving, particularly around Gaza, also the West Bank, is part of the problem.

Well, I think that's a conflation as well.

I think we need to de-link these things.

I don't think the government is obligated to take a different position on Israel.

And I don't think there is any evidence to say that they should be doing that as a way of protecting the community.

I don't think that's fair.

No, and it's not something I don't think that this particular government's going to do.

It's not.

It's made its position pretty clear about its concerns about.

And we're talking here about the Netanyahu government specifically, not just the Israeli state.

And even there, you find nuance.

Thinking back to

the strikes on Iran by the Americans and by the Israelis prior to that in the last few weeks, the Australian government's position was initially de-escalate, we're in support of taking the heat out of this and very quickly switched to the onus is on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, it's not playing by the rules essentially, and supporting the US and Israel and what it was doing in Iran.

So the Australian government is not sitting there only condemning

Israel.

It's actually supportive of what Israel is doing in its own war against Iran, which is what it is.

It's a war.

And

so

this stuff then inflames people's views here back in Australia.

And that's, I mean, that's not the first time that that's been a feature of our multicultural society.

Those conflicts, there's a great chunk of Australians who say, well, how dare you bring that argument to this country?

But those arguments are part of what those communities are about.

quite often.

It's hard to divorce that.

You can't ignore the history or even the present

of what's happening when you come from those communities.

And so those views are hardfelt.

But

the stuff that we saw over the weekend, there's no place for that.

And the question is

what signals have to be sent?

Are enough signals being sent to make it clear to people who would undertake such things that that is not acceptable?

Yeah, that's right.

And so lots of politics here, too.

And we've seen it for too long through a political lens, I think, when it's actually just a core issue of safety.

So what is the opposition calling for?

Well, every time something happens, they're always calling for a national cabinet meeting.

I've got to say, increasingly, I think is that the sort of secret source?

You have a national cabinet meeting, and you know,

that will solve everything.

Yeah, I mean, calling for a meeting is kind of easy to do, but I don't know how much that sort of changes things.

But, okay, the other point that Julian Lisa made when he stood up was that, you know, other world leaders had stepped up to support Jews.

Okay,

let's unpack that, right?

That's what we do here in Alice.

There's the anti-Semitism envoy that the government set up.

Government passed new laws in relation to this kind of hate that happened last year, you'll recall, before the election as well.

What else has it done?

It's also provided more security money.

Yes, that's the joint.

The police AZO joint thing.

So there's that as well.

There is also more money for security

for the Jewish community as well.

Schools and synagogues and things like that.

So

that's all part of it.

What's happening here?

Why are we seeing a divide?

Is it just, that was the point I was trying to get to, that the position on Israel is different.

And that's what I'm trying to decouple because...

I'll give you a very good example of the point I'm trying to make.

Tony Burke, he's standing outside the synagogue, which is in East Melbourne, one of the oldest synagogues in this country.

It's a sort of city synagogue.

So he's standing in front of it and he's asked, Netanyahu, for instance, Netanyahu has condemned these attacks.

What do you think?

He avoids that.

He's asked again about the opposition's course.

He ignores them.

Now, why did he ignore them?

Well, some people would say, you know, he wants to avoid scrutiny.

My understanding is the reason they're avoiding them is their view is we're just not going to play into the politics here.

This is all politics.

This right-wing Netanyahu government has a view about you dropping the ball, government.

They are going to demonstrate action rather than play into the politics.

Big question is, can they pull that off in this climate?

It's pretty hard.

It's a very hard political thing to pull off.

But their focus is on investing on the communities themselves and doing that cohesion work rather than talking here and yelling as a politician at the other side of politics.

Yeah, and look, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who's obviously, he says these things also for his own political constituency, and that's where his focus is.

But, I mean, go back to the election.

Do we think that sends a message, PK, about the way the community regards these issues?

Was there, I mean, the Jewish community, I think you could see them moving back to the Liberal Party in a lot of seats.

Tim Wilson is in parliament

to to some degree because of that move.

They moved away from a teal independent back to a Liberal because that's where they saw

their interest most clearly represented by the Liberal Party.

But the rest of the country also didn't react particularly violently in the other direction either.

I think there was a sense that Labor was able to tap into that this is not who we are.

these conflicts and that de-escalating the the fight rather than politicising it looked to me like what voters rewarded rather than the fight, if you know what I'm saying.

I absolutely know what you're saying.

And I think that's what we're seeing in terms of the language from Tony Burke.

Like, I'm not buying into the partisan stuff.

He said it was an attack on Australia.

And I think that was a really strong statement, as you said at the beginning.

He was trying to say it's not just an attack on Jews, it's an attack on our values, that Jews can go to the shoal and do a Shabbat dinner safely, like that that should be absolutely non-negotiable in our country.

And we should have him saying that.

And I think that is actually quite strong leadership.

So, okay, let's just keep watching.

This is a story that, of course, we'll have more dimensions emerge.

Look, Jacob, I want to change our conversation.

It's NADOC week.

It's kicked off officially, marking its 50th milestone.

The theme is the next generation's strength, vision, and legacy.

Of course, there's lots to celebrate.

So much success in the Aboriginal community and also really significant challenges.

I mean,

that's not, you know,

pretend that there's not.

We saw that laid out, I think, in the Europe Commission that was handed down last week.

It declared Victorians who were Indigenous had experienced a genocide and were experiencing continued injustice as a result.

We spoke about this on the party room as well, if you want to go back and have a listen in some depth.

But the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Melandira McCarthy, this morning seemed to be signalling more openness to the idea of a national truth-telling process, more than we've heard for a while.

That piqued my interest, but I want to say this.

She also said this to me a couple of weeks ago on afternoon briefing, got picked up a bit.

I noticed, and then I went, I've said this before, but I just want to really test this out with you.

I went back to some senior Labour people and I said, this is really significant.

And they said to me, absolutely, Melandira is trying to open this door, but without the Prime Minister's opening, it ain't going to happen.

So this is

the minister.

It feels early, doesn't it?

It feels early stage of preparing the ground.

Maybe first we should just point out what she's actually said,

both to you and again this morning.

The language was really around it is time to go back to looking at this.

There's famously been money in the budget for a truth-telling commission since, I think, early in the first term, Labor's first term.

There's five odd million dollars to hold this process.

That's never been taken off the budget.

So it's sort of sitting there.

It's this

sort of clax and horn in the policy world sort of pointing to this still being on the agenda for the government.

And the minister's making it clear that she thinks now is a moment to look at what we can do is the wording she's using.

So yes, is the PM behind her, PK?

Yeah, that's the question, right?

Because without him, according to my sources, and it's logical anyway, but without him really investing, it ain't going to happen.

Is he behind it?

Well, I asked him.

I asked him the very question.

He was

lukewarm would be a very polite way to, like it was lower than lukewarm.

I would say it was sort of cold water from the fridge, right?

There was no interest and it backed in, that source who said to me, without him, it's not going anywhere.

So when I heard her say it again today, I thought,

there is something going on here.

And I want to know what the black Caucus will end up deciding, because that's something that was pointed out to me too, that the Black Caucus is going to meet.

I reckon they are going to push.

That's going to leave the Prime Minister in an interesting position because he keeps saying, I want to do economic development.

I want to just focus on that.

Yet I reckon internally he's facing a bit of pressure now to actually use his majority on some of these issues.

But I reckon the Europe Commission findings will make him even more

cold about it because some of them are quite big ideas.

And I reckon he'll be very worried about going near them because they come with political risk, Jacob.

Like they are risky ideas.

Sure, and that commission's work, I mean, you can see that turning into a culture war immediately, a massive, massive culture war.

And if there's one thing that PM learnt from his first term is that he wants to steer clear of all of that stuff.

And we're just talking about it then in terms of what was going on over the weekend

in that other big conflict that sort of shifts into cultural war very quickly.

So

he's going to want to avoid that.

But Pika, you know, he's got this huge majority and there's a lot of people sitting there saying, well, what's the point of this majority?

What is a majority for?

Is it just to tend to shop or is it to deliver things for constituents?

and for groups of voters that put you in those individual seats.

And there are still,

you know plenty plenty of seats including on the Liberal Party side seats they regard as their own that they've lost where support for these processes is quite high I think yet again of Bradfield where the yes vote was overwhelming so there's a community that wants to see action on that I assume based on their their decisions to vote yes I think it's one of these things there's going to be a bunch of these this term core issues for parts of the Labor constituency and let's call it what it is the left wing of the Labor Party wants action on this.

It'll want action on

climate.

It'll want much more bold action on environmental law

and the Prime Minister saying well I I wiped out the Greens.

I stared them down on

topics

such as

payment when she defected.

And so he's not of a mind to go there.

So I think this is your mail that you're getting here about the Prime Minister being on board or not is interesting.

but the Minister's now out there front running.

And

that requires a response.

Yeah, that's right.

She is doing that, though.

And I think the reason she's doing it is because in her constituency,

where overwhelmingly, as we know, black people voted yes, Indigenous people voted yes in the communities, she's advocating for those communities, right?

As the Minister for Indigenous Australians, who is Indigenous herself, she's advocating for her constituency constituency who are saying, how on a minute, you know,

make this meaningful.

Now, the only caveat here for me is,

you know, if the Prime Minister does, because he's not at this stage, but if he does engage with this, you want it to be real and heartfelt and have his political imprimata.

You know why?

You don't want...

people to spend years on truth-telling and coming up with ideas that are completely ignored.

I think that is a real waste of time.

But that's the challenge, isn't it?

Like this is a,

if you feel that way and you feel strongly about it, the Prime Minister's sitting there saying, well, I got burnt last time.

So what's my level of assurance that this will be successful if we go down that road?

And,

you know, you're shaking your head.

I'm shaking my head.

I don't know.

Probably not high.

Probably not high.

Because the numbers are always stacked against Indigenous Australians on the numbers.

And so that's where it takes some bravery and leadership, right?

And that's it.

It has to be a thing that he makes part of his legacy.

And he wanted the voice to be that.

He told people that.

I want the voice will be my legacy.

Anyway,

that's where it lands, unfortunately.

Now, just finally, a story is breaking as we are recording, and we can't tell you all of its findings, but the Northern Territory Coroner is handing down her long-awaited findings and recommendations following, I think it's been like a three-year inquiry into the 2019 police shooting of Kumanjai Walker.

Kumanjai Walker was fatally shot by the then NT Police Constable Zachary Rolfe during an attempted arrest in the remote community of Undemoo, that's about 300 kilometers northwest of Ellis Springs.

He was later charged with murder, manslaughter, and engaging in a violent act causing death, but was acquitted by an NT Supreme Court jury in 2022 after a six-week trial in Darwin.

But this report is handing down the long-awaited inquest findings following that shooting.

And it's a pretty intense

piece of work.

It's still ongoing,

all of the things it's finding.

Basically, it finds that Mr.

Roth was racist, but actually that there was a broader culture of racism and that this had developed because of negative interactions police often had with Aboriginal people, and then a culture was allowed to basically

manifest.

It's pretty dark stuff, I've got to say.

Some of it is really going to be very difficult for Indigenous people to hear, but recommendations that she will come to, I think, will be pretty significant.

And

again, on NAIDOC week, I think put governments, the NT government, of course, chiefly, but on notice on these issues.

Yep, yep.

Watch this one carefully, I think there's plenty to come here on that.

Now, Jacob, finally, this is your first day at 7.30.

I know you got to run and do stuff, but what's on your political radar?

Oh,

you want all my plans.

Well, I don't want your yarns.

I don't want you to give away your yarns, but like we've talked about the stories unfolding right now in front of us.

What's going on?

So, this childcare story, which broke the last few weeks, is

horrific, essentially, and yet it is squarely in the political realm.

The Prime Minister wants to make universal childcare

one of his big policy legacies, and the sector has big problems.

It has big problems finding enough people, big problems finding venues that are affordable.

And we're seeing big, big problems here with child safety, which should be the primary goal, really.

And so there's talk now of the opposition, Susan Lee, with this sort of

new approach of trying to be as helpful as possible on all things and she's offering to work with the Prime Minister to get these reforms through that you mentioned so that's very interesting space

no doubt if there were quick fixes they would have been taken a long time ago and I think also the other area that's interesting to me is

the world of the Trump administration and all this pressure it's putting on our government to spend more on military matters.

I think this is far from resolved.

I think there's a long way to go here.

Labor is in a bind about it.

It wants to spend money on other things that do not involve missiles and submarines and drones.

But the world has changed and they're having to look at it very closely.

I think that's a fascinating area.

It is.

It's just wild dealing with these guys.

It's like and you know if you saw Steve Kinane's Four Corners it's even wilder dealing with if you're running imagine being an American living under that.

I mean, tariffs, the people who pay tariffs are Americans.

That's who pays, the consumer.

That is exactly who pays.

Well, Jacob, happy first day.

Can't wait to talk to you next week when it's, I don't know, a week in.

So, you know, you'll be very, very accustomed to it all.

And I'm glad you're back.

I'll be back tomorrow with another Politics Now episode.

See you, Jacob.

Take care.