Facing the fallout from an ugly election

For candidates running in “Jewish seats” at this year federal election, the campaign felt like being on the receiving end of a blowtorch. The temperature was destined to be high after the Hamas massacre of October 7, Israel’s retaliation and ongoing offensive in Gaza and the spate of attacks against Jewish property and institutions.

Even so, the personal targeting of candidates was a recurring theme. “Particularly nasty in respect to matters concerning the Jewish community and antisemitism,” was how Daniel Aghion, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), described the campaign on ABC radio.

“The most negative campaign I have ever seen,” Allegra Spender told her adoring supporters when she stepped up to acknowledge victory on election night at Bondi Bowling Club in Sydney’s east.

“There was ugliness in small parts of the campaign,” the Labor members for Macnamara, Josh Burns told The Jewish Independent, “but for the most part, I think civility and respect for one another was the biggest takeout.”

While both Jews and non-Jews were on the receiving end, the majority of smears and intimidation were focussed on Teal and Labor candidates who were running against Liberal candidates in Wentworth, Macnamara and Goldstein - seats with large numbers of Jewish voters. Several of the groups responsible have pro-Jewish sympathies.

The incidents included the following:

An anonymous letter, signed by “your Jewish neighbour”, was placed in the letterboxes of supporters of Teal candidate Zoe Daniel in the Melbourne suburb of Hampton. It claimed Daniel’s campaign materials made the Jewish community feel as unsafe as Jews did during the early Nazi regime.

“As one of your Jewish neighbours, we thought it pertinent to make you aware of how uncomfortable we are with your support of Daniel,” the letter said.

“Our sole reason for writing this … is to make you aware of our discomfort as neighbours and the fear it is evoking in our community – especially for those of us, like our parents and grandparents, who experienced Germany in the early 1930-40s and find the political campaigns signs evoking the same feelings in them.”

“For us this is an existential election for the future of Jews in Australia… the abundance of teal support in the neighbourhood makes us feel very unwelcome, not only in the neighbourhood but in Victoria and Australia.”

Daniel Aghion condemned the author of the “cowardly” anonymous letter and Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto said labelling a candidate as being anti-Jewish was “simply incorrect” and “deeply unhelpful”. He said there was no way to verify who wrote the letter.

In the last week of the campaign, volunteers from the Better Australia (BA) advocacy group, which campaigned to steer voters against the Teals and Greens, allegedly intimidated volunteers for the Allegra Spender campaign at the voting area on Macleay Street in Potts Point.

The Jewish Independent was told that one volunteer for Spender, who is Jewish, was targeted by a volunteer for Better Australia, who is also Jewish. The latter stood up close to the Spender volunteer and whispered to her: “Allegra is a Jew-killer”, and on another occasion, “you are a Jew-killer”. A second Spender volunteer also reported being subjected to the same treatment, among a series of other inappropriate behaviours.

In March, the team working for Liberal candidate Ro Knox accused Spender of having placed her corflute over a poster of the Bibas family, the Israeli hostages whose mother and two young sons were returned by Hamas in body bags. Spender’s team released a time-stamped photo as evidence that someone had placed the Bibas poster underneath her corflute after it was put up to make it look like Spender was showing disdain for the Bibas family.

The Jews of Sydney Facebook group used the juxtaposition of the two posters to trash Spender’s pro-Jewish credentials with the following post: “If this doesn’t tell you where Allegra and her supporters stand in relation to the Jewish community (and basic humanity), then I don’t know what does.” 

The Australian Jewish Association, an extreme right-wing advocacy group, posted a series of Facebook comments during the campaign that Josh Burns described as a “toxic culture” that was “vindictive and personal”.

At an early voting booth in Kew, in the seat of Kooyong (where the incumbent Teal Monique Ryan was being challenged by Amelia Hamer from the Liberal Party), a group of neo-Nazis handed out leaflets and pretended to be Liberal volunteers. The leaflets said: “give Jews free money.”

This vein of ugliness had prompted Daniel Aghion to issue a public message to Jewish voters in the week before the election: “I want to acknowledge that emotions are high in our community. It has been a turbulent and often distressing 18-month period…

“It is the nature of our democracy that we will agree with some parties and candidates on these issues, and disagree with others, sometimes profoundly.

“A further part of our democratic process is being free to ask questions of candidates and their supporters at polling centres to ascertain their positions on issues of importance to you. When doing so, it is essential that each of us acts in a dignified and respectful manner to all volunteers and candidates… Rudeness or abusive behaviour is never acceptable. It is not the Jewish way.”

In an interview with The Jewish Independent, Aghion acknowledged the strong swing within the Jewish community to the Liberal Party “because of the very obvious reason they have been the strongest backers of Israel, and probably the strongest on antisemitism. Having said that, with the exception of the Greens, all of the parties and the independents have been good on combatting local antisemitism”.

He added that he believed the anti-Teal advocacy by some components of the community was also shaped by uncertainty over who would win the election and whether either side was going to hold a majority of seats. “That raised questions about who would support a potential minority government, whichever side it would be, and what influence they would have.”

As to the hostility unleashed at non-Liberal candidates, Aghion replied: “We must always make our case firmly, but respectfully. That is exactly why I made that the statement that I did. It's incumbent upon leadership to do so.”

Josh Burns told TJI that although antisemitism and Israel were a prime focus for Jewish voters in Macnamara, he believed his victory was based on issues beyond these hot button topics. “People care about going to see a doctor, about having good schools, about buying their first home. They care about community safety. They think about what matters to them.

“Politics is not rocket science. You've just got to listen to people. We did the policy work that people thought ‘might actually help me’. The coalition didn't really come to grips with it. They didn't do the work.”

Beyond campaigning tactics lies a broader question of whether the “Jewish vote” actually shaped or affected any outcomes. Did it make a difference to any candidate winning or losing a seat?

Aghion is cautious. “Although our vote tends to be concentrated in certain areas, we are only 0.4% of the total population. And while there might be particular outcomes in particular electorates, the Jewish vote is never going to win or lose a federal campaign – we are just too small.

Does he think the Jewish vote made a difference in getting Tim Wilson over the line?

“The pre-poll vote seems to have carried Wilson over the line in a tight contest. That would have included a component of Jewish voters. I do not think that we can attribute the Liberal win in Goldstein to the Jewish community exclusively. But I think it was a significant factor.”

Political analyst Kos Samaras had a similar view. “The Jews have gone for Tim Wilson - 100%,” says Samaras, who is Director of Strategy at the Redbridge political research group.

“Last time, there would have been some in the Jewish community that may have voted Green or some other candidate. But this time, because of the geopolitics and what has occurred in this country, the Jewish communities have been a lot more strategic about their vote.”

Like Aghion, he stopped short of saying their vote tipped the result. “The Jewish community generally votes conservative. There may have been a smaller minority that has historically voted for other parties that may have come across [to the Liberals] but I don’t think in that seat they were the main reason for the seat flipping back.”

Similarly, in the Sydney seat of Wentworth, Samaras said Spender had considerable support from the Jewish community but it did not have material impact on the result. “The numbers for Spender are so big that she doesn’t rely on the Jewish vote.”

However, he is emphatic that the Jewish vote did make a difference to the result in Macnamara: “It's very clear that significant numbers… supported Josh Burns to stop the Greens.”

Although the Jewish community had initially shifted away from Burns because of anger with the ALP, “they realised that the Libs were going to lose and so they shifted. They thought that if the Libs are going to lose, then the Labor guy needs to win [to avoid Labor preferences enabling the Green candidate to win]. They moved on to Burns in big numbers.

“That was strategic.”

Burns said he worked hard to remind voters that Labor had done more than they realised. “While a lot of people placed their trust in the Liberal Party, a significant number did place their trust in me. I do think that the work that we did with AUJS in the university inquiry reminded people how important it is to have representation inside government and inside the Parliament, and I think that that demonstrated to the community that I take their concerns seriously.

“I didn't just want people to vote for me to stop the Greens. I also wanted people to vote for me because they understood that this is the community I grew up in, that I care about it. I'm a part of it and I take my responsibility to get things done really seriously.”

However, Burns added that more work is needed to rebuild trust between the government and the community. “A big part of that is tackling antisemitism. The spate of attacks that we saw in Sydney and after Adass [synagogue] was burnt down was as bad as I've ever seen things in Australia.

“The last couple of months have seen a slight calming. But it's something we have to keep monitoring and working on.

“This election wasn't about the Middle East and parties that tried to make it about the Middle East didn't succeed. It was about the Australian people and what government can do to help them. So that's got to be our focus. No-one who tried to make this election about the Middle East has won. So does that tell you something.”

Aghion says the challenge is not just over antisemitism. “Our difficulty with the re-elected government is clearly going to be Israel. I think they will continue to hear our views and be receptive to them. Whether our views hold sway or not, we'll just have to see. Clearly, we are not going to win every battle. But the government’s core position is a two-state solution and Israel’s right to safe and secure borders. I do not see any reason for that to change.

“Regardless of electoral outcome, the ECAJ will always be non-aligned and will always work with the Government of the day,” he added. “That is the only method by which we can properly advance Australian Jewish interests.”