Prime Minister Anthony Albanese baulks at calls for national Cabinet following latest synagogue attack

Anthony Albanese has snubbed calls for a national cabinet meeting following last week’s attack on a Melbourne synagogue, declaring Australians don’t want a meeting but “want action”.

The Jewish community and the Coalition are calling on the Federal Government to do more after the historic East Melbourne Hebrew synagogue was targeted in an alleged arson attack on Friday night while worshippers - including children - gathered inside to mark Shabbat.

It served as a harsh reminder that anti-Semitism, which has spiked in Australia since October 7, has not gone away. Action to date has failed to stamp out what the Prime Minister again on Tuesday denounced as a “scourge”.

More talking is not the answer, but as synagogues are again targeted, Jewish leaders are pleading with the Government to do something different.

The Prime Minister was defensive in Hobart on Tuesday as he dismissed Coalition calls for a national Cabinet and suggestions that his Government hadn’t done enough.

To prove his point, the PM said the reason the 34-year-old NSW man charged with the alleged incident had been apprehended so quickly was because Commonwealth-funded CCTV had been installed.

That more damage hadn’t been done to the synagogue was because the door had been reinforced thanks to further funding.

“Every time there has been a request, it has been met expeditiously,” Mr Albanese declared.

“We will respond. We will respond to any request constructively”

The Federal Government committed extra funding to the The Executive Council of Australian Jewry to enhance security in December, after a fire tore through the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne’s south.

That followed a $25 million grant to the ECAJ in October 2023 and the appointment of Jilian Segal as special envoy.

But he has been reluctant to agree to the Jewish peak body’s 15-point plan to stamp out anti-Semitism, which Opposition Leader Sussan Ley recommitted to on Tuesday outside the synagogue.

After first writing to Mr Albanese in February, calling for a national, coordinated response, ECAJ have this week re-urged the Government to meet their demands.

They want a joint counter-terrorism taskforce to be established, spearheaded by a single minister who can coordinate and mobilise the relevant agencies. They have also urged for uniform policing guidelines to be established.

Before the Dural caravan plot was revealed to be a hoax, there had been mass concern about an apparent lack of communication between State and Federal law enforcement and politicians. There are lingering fears a mass incident could unfold if there is not a consistent national taskforce dedicated to combating anti-Semitism.

Shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser said governments across the country should adopt that 15-point plan.

“We need a coordinated approach across governments. What (ECAJ) are calling for is a coordinated approach,” he said.

Mr Albanese, who spoke with ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim on Saturday, said he would continue to engage “constructively with the community to make sure that they get the support they need” - but that the Government already has a taskforce.

“What we’re doing is working with the Special Envoy on anti-Semitism and we’ll have more to say about that in the coming days,” he said.

“We have a task force and what we do is take on security issues, we take advice from security agencies. That’s precisely what we have done.”

He dismissed the idea of a National Cabinet, saying, “what people want is not a meeting. They want action”.

Back at the Melbourne synagogue, Ms Ley, accompanied by Jewish community leaders, demanded to know what the Government’s plans were to protect Jewish Australians.

Asked whether she would like to see the Allan Government’s anti-hate taskforce expanded to a national level, Ms Ley said she didn’t want to suggest it wouldn’t work, but “there have been too many taskforces, there have been many talk fests, there have been many conversations, there have been many words”.

“As we heard today, words are not enough,” she said.

Those words echo the Prime Minister’s own. There is a bipartisan acknowledgement that actions speak louder than words when it comes to keeping Jewish Australians safe.

As to what such tangible action could look like, Ms Ley has backed Education Minister Jason Clare’s willingness to reform school curriculum to teach children more about anti-Semitism, should Ms Segal make such a recommendation.

The third point of the ECAJ plan called for anti-Semitism education to be included in the national curriculum, “to equip students and educators with the resources to understand this ideology and recognise how it is expressed today”.

The fourth step calls for that to be backed by a public awareness and advertising campaign to “debunk the ideology of anti-Semitism and undermine its appeal, particularly directed at young audiences”.

Ms Ley said if the Government was open to that point, they should be looking at the other 14.

“It’s about much more than that. It’s about education. It’s about the governance of our universities, it is about what happens in schools, and it’s about social media, and it’s about national security responses,” she said.

“That’s why the plan makes sense.”