Liberal frontbencher Julian Leeser is juggling multiple portfolios: shadow education minister, Indigenous Australians spokesman, and the opposition's leading Jewish voice. He will soon appear at the royal commission on antisemitism to address what he calls an 'explosion' of hate against Jewish Australians.
Loss of Confidence in Universities
Leeser, a former director of government policy and strategy at the Australian Catholic University, said the higher education sector has changed dramatically in the past decade. 'I think there's a lack of confidence in higher education at the moment,' he told the podcast. 'When I went to the University Australia conference, the universities themselves are talking about issues around their social licence to operate. You've had the antisemitism crisis that's been on campus, you've had issues around artificial intelligence and cheating factories. You've issues around foreign interference on our campuses. And I think there's a loss of confidence that the broader public has in the sector. But I think it's also a loss of confidence within the sector itself.'
Call to Close Iranian Embassy
Following the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador after Australian security officials concluded Tehran directed at least two antisemitic arson attacks in Sydney and Melbourne, Leeser argues Australia should go further and fully close the Iranian embassy. He said Persian Australians in his electorate of Berowra continue to be intimidated by Iran. 'I represent the third largest Persian community in Australia. And for years, the Persian community has been coming to me and talking to me about the fears that they have of being intimidated and being surveilled by the embassy,' he said. 'Recently we had the director-general of security give his annual threat assessment. He mentioned Iran there 16 times. He said that his great worry was that there would be some form of attack of the sort that they're seen in Europe, where an Iranian-backed person effectively attacks an Australian here. We've already seen Iran attack Australia twice: at the Adass Israel synagogue bombing in Melbourne and at the Lewis Continental Kitchen firebombing in Sydney. I think the Iranian embassy continues – at least this is what my Persian community says to me – that they continue to be a source of surveillance, they continue be a sort of intimidation for law-abiding Australians. And we just shouldn't have any of it.'
Leadership Failure on Antisemitism
Leeser said antisemitism was a problem in Australia long before the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, but that there has been an 'explosion' of anti-Jewish hate since then and after the Bondi terrorist attack last year. 'One of the reasons I think we saw an explosion after October 7 was because the leaders in government, in law enforcement, in universities and the Human Rights Commission were not strong enough, early enough, to crack down on things. You had those protests outside the Opera House where people were saying, 'gas the Jews' or 'where's the Jews', and burning flags and so on. And rather than clamping down on that vigorously, these things were allowed to fester. So I blame the leadership of Australia at the time, at those various levels. I think that's the first thing you need to deal with with antisemitism. Running a society, I often say, is like running a family. Children, like societies, need boundaries. They crave boundaries and they want to see those boundaries enforced. And they were not enforced.'
New Direction in Indigenous Affairs
Despite supporting an Indigenous Voice to parliament last term, Leeser now says a new direction is needed. 'I think after the referendum we needed a new direction to move beyond the Uluru Statement. So I think some of the big challenges we've got to face is Indigenous school attendance and school retention, and I'm looking forward to saying a few things about those in the coming weeks. We've got to do some things around Indigenous suicide, which continues to go backwards. And we've got do something about the fact that I think something like 47% or more of Australia's land mass is under Indigenous title. We need to be able to unlock intergenerationally transformative economic opportunity that hasn't been done there. In a broader Australian community, people often take their house and use the equity in their home to start a business, because you've got the freehold, you're able to borrow against that. You can't do that with a lot of Indigenous title. We want to be able to drive economic aspiration and economic opportunity from Indigenous land rights and that's why we need I think to look at this and work out what are the things that we can do to get better economic benefits.'
