STEPHEN JOHNSON: Why Anthony Albanese needs to take on the Labor Party’s own base of Muslim voters

Real political leadership isn’t about telling your own supporters what they want to hear during a time of tragedy and carnage.

Any politician can do that. It’s about leaders having the moral courage to take on their own base out of principle, even if there is great political cost to their own party.

Labor needs to do the same when it comes to its Muslim and hard-left supporters who hate Israel to stop the spread of anti-Semitism. Other leaders have confronted their own supporters following bloodshed for the national good.

Anthony Albanese this week again praised one of his Liberal predecessors John Howard for leading a national gun buyback and outlawing semi-automatic and automatic assault rifles and pump-action shotguns following the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 that left 35 people dead.

“One of the things that happened there was that not just John Howard took action as prime minister and he deserves credit for that,” he said. “So, too does Tim Fischer, who was at the time the leader of the National Party.”

Indeed, Prime Minister.

The Coalition, which held a swathe of regional electorates, took on its own base of farmers who need guns to control feral pests like wild pigs. They also faced opposition from sporting shooters.

In the aftermath of Australia’s worst ever massacre, the Liberal and National parties stared down their own supporters with Mr Howard even addressing an angry rally in the Victorian Gippsland town of Sale, wearing a bullet-proof vest.

In the face of a potential political backlash, the Howard Government prevailed with lasting gun control that had politically eluded State Labor governments in NSW and Victoria, following a spate of mass shootings in Sydney and Melbourne during the late 1980s.

In the United States, President Lyndon Johnson outlawed racial discrimination by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, remarking: “Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime — and mine.”

For decades after the Civil War, the American Democrats had almost always carried every former slave state in the deep south.

They were part of the old Confederacy that had bitterly fought to keep black people in chains.

JFK, who narrowly won in 1960 with LBJ from Texas as his running mate, was so fearful of losing voters attached to racial segregation he did little on civil rights.

Two months before John F Kennedy’s assassination, four girls were killed when a splinter group of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church at Birmingham, Alabama in September 1963.

Instead of appeasing violent extremists who took out their racial hatred on the 16th Street Baptist Church, LBJ put in place the most comprehensive civil rights laws less than a year later in July 1964.

He went on to win the 1964 November presidential election in a landslide with 61 per cent of the popular vote, the American people awarding him for his conviction.

This wasn’t without political cost, however, with losing Republican candidate Barry Goldwater carrying Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina — states that were long Democrat heartland. LBJ sparked a new political realignment.

Albanese, whose Government three months ago recognised a Palestinian state run by terror group Hamas in Gaza, faces far less risk in confronting Muslim voters in south-west Sydney who don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.

Previously, under former leader Bill Shorten, Labor was prepared to confront its own Muslim supporters over gay marriage - in 2017 supporting the yes case in the postal vote survey despite its own electorates in south-west Sydney, like Watson and Blaxland, recording the highest no vote.

In 2025, the Jewish community is understandably distrustful of Mr Albanese, who lets domestic politics shape foreign policy.

NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns has really shown up the Prime Minister by today calling out inaction since the October 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel, as he sought to stop inflammatory protests designed to further intimidate the Jewish community.

“After two years, after the marches, after the division, after the huge police resources that have gone into it, the verdict is in,” Mr Minns said. “This will divide our community.”

The Premier of Australia’s most populated State also called out Labor’s outgoing national president Wayne Swan for having a go a Jewish people who booed the PM in Bondi at Sunday’s vigil.

“He shouldn’t have said it. I don’t know why he said it. This is the thing about roping everybody into the actions of one or two or 10 or however many people. It’s not fair.”

Sadly, it appears the Albanese Government isn’t prepared to confront its own Muslim and hard-left supporters over Israel, even in the wake of 15 innocent people being killed at the Bondi massacre on the first day of Hanukkah.

He offered an apology but no concrete action beyond a review of national security agencies. Nothing definite about banning Islamist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir that stir up hatred. Just a vague promise.

“I’m sorry for what the Jewish community and our nation as a whole has experienced,” Mr Albanese said.

Perhaps it’s the fact Australia was home to just 116,967 Jews at the last Census in 2021, making up 0.46 per cent of the population compared with 813,392 Muslims making up 3.2 per cent of Australia.

Politics is about who has the numbers. Moral authority is more important to address the hatred.