Segal's report lays a trap for Albanese. How he responds will have profound implications

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

In December 2024, when the ABC was confronted with the relentless lobbying by some members of a WhatsApp group calling itself Lawyers for Israel and demanding the sacking of its broadcaster, Antoinette Lattouf, it had a clear choice.
It could have responded by rejecting their demands to illegally sack Lattouf. Instead, as Justice Darryl Rangiah of the Federal Court of Australia recently found, the ABC capitulated and embarked on a $2 million campaign to defend the indefensible.
In its ruling, the court made clear that sacking an employee who expressed criticisms of the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians was illegal because Australian laws protected our right to express political opinion.
Last week, antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal walked into a press conference with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and laid a similar trap for the government. Her 16-page report contained recommendations that undermine the rule of law by seeking to bypass the institutions which protect our democracy: the parliament, the courts, tribunals and the Australian Human Rights Commission.
All forms of racism and antisemitism are already unlawful in Australia, and hate speech laws have been toughened in response to an increase in antisemitic incidents in the last year.
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When the issue has been put to the test, existing laws have worked, too. A court found this month that a Sydney Muslim cleric's lectures were unlawful because they were 'fundamentally racist and antisemitic'. The court also correctly determined that 'political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature, criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity' and therefore was not antisemitic or unlawful.
One of the key recommendations in Segal's report is that all levels of government, institutions and 'regulatory bodies' adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's controversial definition of antisemitism. In part, this definition states that it is antisemitic to target the state of Israel and/or claim the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Adopting the IHRA definition would render the opinions of many protesters in Israel as antisemitic, let alone those here in Australia. It is completely at odds with the Federal Court's recent finding and our existing anti-discrimination laws.