CAMERON MILNER: You want unity this Australia Day, Prime Minister? Why don’t you stand up for all Australians

Anti-Semitism is just plain un-Australian. It’s a hatred for our shared values and any attack on members of our Jewish Australian community is an attack on us all.

It’s this simple point that Albanese keeps missing and Dutton has latched on to with his announcement of penalties for those who would tear at the fabric of our nation.

The “F... Jews” graffiti which has become an all too common sight in Australia might as well say “F... Aussies’”.

Albanese was dragged kicking and screaming to a National Cabinet meeting on Tuesday after months of denying the need. He delivered a database to tally the crimes committed. Wow, we didn’t already have one of these thanks to our national media?

As we approach Australia Day and politicians including Albanese call for unity, perhaps he could reflect on the weakness of his leadership and failures to stand up for his fellow Australians, to call out Islamic extremism and defend our nation’s values.

While a synagogue lay smouldering in Melbourne after being fire bombed, the Prime Minister played tennis at an exclusive club with Andrew Forrest’s in-house lobbyist.

Scott Morrison might’ve been pilloried for not holding a hose during a bushfire, but when a synagogue is burning we know Albanese holds a racquet and keeps playing. Cottesloe Tennis Club was Albo’s Hawaiian holiday moment for Aussie voters.

Days later, Albanese issued platitudes rather than harsher prison sentences for the perpetrators.

I appreciate that members of the Jewish community are being targeted directly and are the direct victims of this horrible, hate-fuelled crime wave that speaks to events of the painful past.

But an attack on Australia’s Jewish community is also an attack on us all.

There’s been way too much weak hand-wringing and weasel words from Albanese and his ministers, such as chief apologist, Ed Husic. There’s been open hostility to Israel by Penny Wong who called for a ceasefire without any guarantee of the hostages being released.

The current ceasefire, however fragile, has only been delivered because of the military supremacy of Israel and its allies against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

But the ceasefire is welcome as is every hostage returned. But it should never be forgotten that there was a lasting ceasefire until October 7, 2023, when it was smashed by the terrorist attack by Hamas on sovereign Israel.

That said, the 3000 Gazans given tourist visas by Australia — 10 times more than any other nation in the world — by Pally ally, Minister Tony Burke, should now be given a one way ticket home.

The ceasefire is in place and can only be broken by Hamas so they should feel happy to return.

I’m sure the government-controlled Qatar Airways could put on some free flights to return them, given that country has such a great reputation for looking after tourists from Australia all while still hosting the most senior Hamas leadership in air conditioned comfort in their capital, Doha.

This Australia Day we should wish them bon voyage and let them return home.

Likewise this Australia Day we should re-commit to have zero tolerance for those listening to hate preachers in a Lakemba mosque or being radicalised to violence while their parents look the other way.

Australia is the land of great opportunity and has always welcomed those who come to share our values as a nation. Those who import their prejudices and hatreds shouldn’t hide behind claims of Islamophobia to excuse acts of terrorism from members of their community.

I don’t see mosques getting spray-painted with hate speech or firebombed.

Hate in Australia has all been one-way traffic.

It’s fuelled by Islamic extremism and fanned by Leftist activists backing boycott bans of Jewish businesses and a culture of victimhood that should’ve been left behind by more recent arrivals.

Share our wealth. Share the opportunity that Australia offers. Benefit from laws and rights rooted in our Judean-Christian heritage that defends the right to free speech and the rights of women and members of the LGBTIQA+ community.

Most of all though share our values this Australia Day.

We are a proud nation under vicious attack by a violent minority. It calls for a strong response and direct moral leadership. Dutton has picked the mood while Albanese once again looks pathetic and weak.

Premier Chris Minns in NSW impresses daily as he shows unwavering leadership, despite holding Government because of those very same Western Sydney ALP-held seats that Albanese is so terrified of losing.

Albanese looks like so many of those European leaders as well as those of the United Kingdom and Canada who met in June 1938 in Evian, France. Dachau concentration camp was already operational for five years at the time and Austria had been annexed a few months earlier and the persecution of Jews had commenced.

The conference was supposed to deliver safe passage for Jewish refugees living in Germany. The result, terribly, was no other country than the United States under President Roosevelt increased their intake.

Even after Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass”, where only Jewish businesses were ransacked and burnt — the UK in 1939 restricted Jewish people from fleeing to British Palestine, now modern-day Israel.

The Jewish community know what inaction and excuse-making looks like.

It’s plain for the rest of us to see who is under attack and threat in our community. Even plainer are the perpetrators and their motivations.

Aussie voters this Australia Day want their PM to stand up for our values and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Australian Jewish community.

Albanese says Australians want action. That should start with the PM standing up to the worst in his own ranks.

Albanese must stand up to the shameless electoral self-interest of Tony Burke. He needs to simply say no to Penny Wong’s embrace of Hamas.

But he is just so weak, so jelly-backed and wimpish. That’s why Dutton, a leader seen as strong, has even before the election campaign started pulled ahead as preferred PM.

This Australia Day we should celebrate what unites us, our shared values, but recognise that the peace we take for granted as a nation is under threat. And as Winston Churchill said of the dark times in Europe 80 years ago, the price of peace is eternal vigilance.

Cameron Milner is the former secretary of Queensland Labor