Greg Barton

North America, it's very dramatic, but Europe...

And that doesn't automatically generate anti-Semitism.

And if we refer to every criticism of the Israeli government under Netanyahu as anti-Semitic, then we're sort of undermining the ability to fight anti-Semitism.

But it does give an opportunity space for both bigots and for terrorists, for violent extremists to step in and try and persuade others to join them.

So we need to sort of just have a very mature public conversation about this, recognising that it's nuanced and that we're going to find people with very different opinions than our own, but they're not necessarily working against us.

The temptation is to say, if you don't agree with me, you're part of the problem.

And then we can very easily use the label anti-Semitism and that can actually do damage to trying to fight anti-Semitism.

Yeah, I believe we are in Australia, but it's one of these things where we've got to lean into a sense of competence in what we've achieved in a multicultural society, one of the most successful in the world, but not perfect.

And I think particularly we've got to sort of lean into the political discourse.

And when somebody strays a bit, say, just, you know, politely say, look, that's not helping.

That's adding nothing to the quality of our politics, certainly nothing to the quality of our public life.

There's enough people with goodwill and wisdom for this to work.

But of course, there are others who will, for short-term political gains or for just genuine ignorance, end up making a contribution which undermines those good efforts.

But yeah, I'm confident in Australia that we can do this because we have done it in the past and we continue, you know, for the most part to succeed.

The fact that we sometimes fail and sometimes fail very badly doesn't mean we should give up and say it's hopeless.

I suspect that many of those details are already contained in the interim report in the redacted sections.

I think anyone can tell just from common sense if you're paying attention that if we look backwards and say, were the security settings for the Hanukkah celebration sufficient?

Clearly they weren't.

There's lots of things where it's clear that we failed.

This was a high profile, you know, joyous event that was going to draw the attention of actors who would try and