Grappling with ‘the Jewish question’ – and ‘that Palestine letter’

Beyond the Liberals' exploitation of Jewish anxieties, the letter that Zoe Daniel signed remains a source of grievance. JULIE SZEGO unpacks its deceptive subtext

AT THE RISK of sounding basic, let’s start with an overview of the election landscape and where “the Jewish question” — a shorthand I feel comfortable using here— fits in. We have two metropolitan seats with sizeable Jewish minorities where Liberal incumbents are under challenge from “teal” independents: Wentworth in Sydney, and Goldstein in Melbourne.

Then we have the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, under challenge from an independent in Kooyong, where I had assumed Jews were also a sizeable minority but have since learned that out-and-proud Jews comprise less than one per cent of the electorate. Go figure. From this fact I might boldly extrapolate the good voters of Kooyong have been electing Frydenberg for reasons unrelated to his Jewishness.

It’s not just about Jews

For all the progressives in a lather of excitement about the independents and their undoubtedly impressive CVs, a gentle reality check is in order. The very presence of the green-tinged independents in these seats speaks to an unavoidable truth: no matter how frustrated some Liberal voters might be with the Morrison Government, they would rather stick their heads in a mincer than do the logical thing and back the alternative government.

Sure, they might be prepared to vote Labor at state elections — Hawthorn, part of Kooyong, fell to Labor at the last state poll and Brighton, in Goldstein, was 865 votes short of the same fate — but federal government, being constitutionally empowered to extract taxes, define the limits of union power and fight wars, is considered a more serious matter.

So to maintain the illusion they’re not really voting for Labor, these voters need reassurance that the independent candidates are centrist small “l” liberals. Any whiff of left’ism — an admittedly broad field that starts at Anthony Albanese, or thereabouts, and ends at Jeremy Corbyn — and these only partly-liberated Liberals rightly freak out. And apart from climate, women and integrity, we know very little about where the independents stand on other issues that they are likely to encounter should they get elected.