Focus Goldstein: Libs run hard on antisemitism against Teal incumbent

“This time don’t tust the Teals.”

So read the slogan on a mobile running board outside the Brighton Hebrew Congregation in Melbourne where, on a Thursday night in early April, the candidates for Goldstein faced off before 400 spectators at a Jewish community forum. The sign testifies to the febrile atmosphere in this affluent battleground Victorian seat; inside the synagogue, the moderators of the event hosted by mainstream Jewish and Zionist groups warned that hecklers would be evicted.

The heat is directed at the MP for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel, and it comes not only from her opponent redux, the Liberals’ Tim Wilson, who lost to the “Teal” independent in the 2022 backlash against the Morrison government.

Several third party groups — including Better Australia, the group behind the running board — are mounting guerrilla-style campaigns against Daniel and her fellow Teals, either with the barely-concealed aim of ushering in a Dutton government, or with the more agnostic ambition of diminishing the risk of either of the major parties needing to rely on independents, or the Greens, to form government in minority.

The anti-Teal groups lash them on two contradictory grounds: that they’re really Greens-style radicals disguised as conservatives and that they’re conservative sellouts disguised as Greens-style radicals. 

Either way, Daniel’s adversaries are fuelled by disaffection with progressive politicians in the aftermath of October 7. 

The Jewish population of the former blue-ribbon bayside electorate is estimated at 8.8 per cent — significant, if not quite decisive. But Liberal strategists reportedly see Goldstein as the most winnable seat of the six Teal-held seats due to concerns about law-and-order and antisemitism.

And “Jewish issues” carry a symbolic weight beyond the electoral maths. 

For the Liberal party, the Israel-Gaza war, and its local spillover, functions as a useful shorthand for key aspects of the conservatives’ brand: national security, border control (illustrated most starkly in the debates around the Albanese Government’s granting thousands of visas to Gazans) and a rejection of guilt-based narratives of Australia’s colonial past. 

Wilson, in particular, is running hard on antisemitism. 

“Goldstein is Ground Zero,” he declares. “We are fighting for the soul of the community and Australia.”

The question is whether the electorate’s 110,000-odd mainstream voters will find resonance in the loud messaging.

The volume was at full blast at the Brighton forum even before kick-off; an eruption of clapping, cheering and whistling. Seated upstairs, I couldn’t see the source of the commotion and wondered if a rockstar was making an unscheduled appearance in these outer southern reaches of Melbourne’s bagel belt. No, it was only that the former member for Goldstein had entered the sacred building. 

To his supporters, Wilson is a rockstar. A married gay man with Armenian heritage and a former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, he is a culture warrior of the urbane sort. 

Although it is Daniel, as a former ABC foreign correspondent, who might boast of pursuing the truth while under fire: she even went undercover in Zimbabwe to expose the human rights abuses of Robert Mugabe’s regime.

The Brighton forum was hostile territory of a different order. She gave herself a fighting chance. For one thing, she turned up. Her supporters likewise turned out in respectable numbers; some of them, I can testify, proud Zionists. 

And Daniel presented a credible list of achievements for the community, from pushing for anti-doxxing laws to advocating for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on campuses and in her telling, pleading directly with Anthony Albanese to come out more strongly against Jew-hatred. (Some days after the forum she distributed a pamphlet setting out her record, entitled “Jewish Australians Deserve Safety”.)

But as the forum’s moderator Zeddy Lawrence provocatively put it, some in the community accuse her of repeatedly “sleeping with the enemy”. She has been criticised for calling to restore funding to the UN relief agency in Gaza, UNRWA, despite some of its staff participating in the October 7 massacre. (She says she has been persuaded that for now, there’s no viable alternative to UNWRA for distributing much-needed aid to Palestinian civilians in the strip.)

More pointedly, leaders of the Climate 200 group, from which she and other teals receive generous funding, have reportedly expressed support for the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment) movement. (Daniel insists she’s politically independent and transparent about her funding). 

When Wilson reeled off the Coalition’s 10-point plan (must plans always be 10 points?) for the community — ending with a pledge to reaffirm that “Israel is our ally” — Daniel made it clear she agreed with “most” of the items, though “not all” of them. 

Ultimately, it’s the “most” and “not all” bit that plays against her in a community that Wilson correctly diagnosed as no longer the “optimistic” people they were three years ago. Australian Jews are feeling “marginalised”, “fearful”, and angry at what they perceive as abandonment by the nation’s leaders.

When the mood is incandescent, Daniel’s promise to “never use the community’s pain for political gain,” can be jarring. What good such a pledge, many ask, when the federal government’s sensitivity to Muslim pain over Gaza in western Sydney has undermined its solidarity with both Israel and the Jewish community in their hour of need. 

Daniel deplores the eruption of antisemitism; she spoke movingly at the forum about a child who “hasn’t slept a full night since October 7” and needed to be reassured there were security guards outside school. But she declines to attend rallies against Jew-hatred — only vigils. She believes in the state of Israel and thinks “now’s not the time” for a Palestinian state.

But she had never thought it necessary to declare herself a Zionist. And so on. While both candidates dressed in blue and white on the night, at the singing of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, only one of them was conspicuous for knowing the words. You can guess which one. 

All that said, we don’t know how many Jews voted for Daniel to begin with. Even at the last election she came under intense scrutiny for having signed a 2021 journalists’ open letter calling for an end to “both sideism” reporting on Israel-Palestine and a more openly pro-Palestinian perspective on the conflict. The letter came after the IDF destroyed a tower in Gaza housing media outlets. Asked why she has since declined to remove her name from the letter, Daniel said she believes journalists in war zones shouldn’t be “targeted”. (The IDF gave the press an hour to evacuate the tower before it was bombed for allegedly also housing Hamas intelligence.) 

In any event, it’s not only Jewish voters who confront a markedly different world to that of three years ago. Back then, the pandemic response and the “Scomo” factor were decisive in turning blue-ribbon seats Teal. Voters in the Liberal heartland warmed to advocacy on climate action, women and integrity in government. Today the electorate grapples with cost-of-living pressures and alarm at the chaos unleashed by Trump 2.0. 

 A poll in March found that while the Teal independents were holding on to their primary support, a fall in Greens and Labor support, whose preferences are crucial, could cost four of their six seats, with only NSW MPs Allegra Spender in Wentworth and Zali Steggall in Warringah expected to hang on. But Labor’s position has since strengthened in nationwide polls, which likely makes Wilson’s task harder.

After redistribution, Goldstein gains part of Bentleigh East from Hotham, and parts of Moorabbin and Highett from Isaacs — areas that add to the Labor and Greens vote. The ABC has Daniel’s notional margin at 3.3 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent. 

At the forum the last question to candidates dealt with cost of living. But for most of Goldstein’s voters, that question will come first.