The events in the Eastern States over the last week have been truly shocking and again shows just how spineless and weak Prime Minister Albanese really is.
Shocking scenes at protests across Melbourne and Sydney last weekend were an absolute disgrace. As our leader Peter Dutton made clear, the fact that anti-Jewish protests are being considered and organised at a time when the Jewish community will be commemorating the greatest loss of life since the Holocaust is an utterly sickening and vile reflection on those who participate in these protests and those who sympathise with their ultimate goals.
Just how low can they stoop?
This is a continuation of that same failure of leadership we have seen in this country since the disgraceful Sydney Opera House protests on 9 October last year.
Enough is enough.
Mr Albanese has no choice but to start showing some leadership here. He needs to pick up the phone to community leaders organising these hateful protests and stop the glorification of a terrorist attack. Incitement to violence and displaying terrorist symbols are crimes that have no place in modern Australian society.
The law must be enforced. It's completely unacceptable that people have not been arrested by police already, or that the Government is not already cancelling the visas of those who are glorifying Hezbollah and Hamas on our streets. They have no place in our country. It is that simple.
The scenes Australia witnessed over the weekend have sadly been eerily similar to those at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 last year. The fact that anti-Jewish hatred and incitement continues to be on display at these gatherings is a national disgrace.
That those protests nearly a year ago were able to be conducted in the first place – without any consequences – has meant that even uglier protests have been allowed to take place. Mr Albanese has soft pedalled on these protests for 12 months.
The weekend’s protests were entirely predictable and should have been prevented. The fact the Albanese Labor Government wasn’t on top of it and didn’t have necessary resources to deal with these criminal acts is an utter disgrace.
It’s time for this Prime Minister to show some real strength and leadership. He must ensure the law is enforced, crack down on this vile anti-Jewish hatred and incitement on our streets and make sure that all Australians feel safe in their own country. Anything less is simply a cop-out.
Incitement to violence on the basis of religion is a crime. Publicly displaying the symbols of a listed terrorist organisation is a crime. The failure to enforce laws like these in the last year has emboldened extremists and led to Australia’s Jewish community feeling unsafe and unwelcome in their own country.
Any Australian citizen waving a Hezbollah flag should be charged under section 80.2HA of the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Any visitor to our country waving a Hezbollah flag should have their visa immediately cancelled and be deported.
Anyone inciting violence against another group should be investigated by police. Unless there are consequences, the extremism we have seen on our streets on Sunday will continue to flourish.
The Albanese Labor Government should also be joining the Biden Administration in agreeing on the need to remove Hezbollah's military installations near the Israeli border. These pose a terrorist threat to Israel, jeopardise the lives of Lebanese and Israeli civilians, and breach UN resolution 1701 which sought to remove Hezbollah from the border area.
While we support efforts to avoid an all-out war, a ceasefire cannot be one-way and leave Israel legitimately fearing another October 7 style attack. Tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese people are displaced because of Hezbollah’s rockets into northern Israel.
Labor's continued contortions ignore the reality of Hezbollah's daily and indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israel, including those that recently killed children in the Golan Heights. Labor's weakness and unprincipled position is driven by domestic politics rather than national interest.
It encourages those who use violence and fear to divide us and further undermines Australia's decades-long bipartisanship on the Middle East conflictAnd then we have the Albanese Government setting all of the wrong incentives and further undermining longstanding bipartisan support for a negotiated two state solution. Without a doubt a just and lasting solution to this conflict is important.
Plenty of innocent civilians have suffered due to this conflict across the divide. Yet such a solution can and will only be achieved through respectful dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations - not through the path of violence. It is not an arbitrary timeline to statehood that is required for peace, but clear preconditions that must be achieved. Statehood without security for both states will only further the endless cycle of violence. Setting a unilateral and arbitrary timeline rather than agreed preconditions will only incentivise Hamas terrorists or corrupt leaders to run down the clock rather than negotiate on final status issues that include security guarantees, borders and refugees.
LABOR’S ECONOMIC MESS
In recent days the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have been out patting themselves on the back. Yet the reality is, for Australian households who are struggling at the moment, they've been in 18 months of household recession.
The Government can go out there and tell people that 'they've never been better off' and that 'it's all good' and 'there are bright days ahead' and the rest of it, but families at the moment are struggling to pay their grocery bill. Families are struggling to pay their mortgage repayments because they've gone up on 12 occasions under this Government.
In the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, in New Zealand, interest rates have already come down. In Australia interest rates should already have come down, but the Government's economic settings are all wrong.
The Final Budget Outcome reveals Labor’s is taxing more and spending more than any government in Australian history.
Labor’s high taxing, high spending strategy is delivering no dividend to Australian families. Australian family budgets can’t win: facing higher taxes, and higher prices due to Labor’s inflationary spending.
Compared to before the election, Labor raised $104 billion in additional income in 2023-24 from higher taxes on households ($43 billion) and businesses ($54 billion). Tax receipts have increased by 0.2% of GDP over the financial year, while spending grew in real terms by 2.9%.
Labor’s claims of spending less are false. Labor spent more last year than was spent at the peak of the COVID pandemic when our economy needed it most in an unprecedented global health and economic crisis.
Labor is relying on higher taxes from higher commodity prices and insidious bracket creep caused by Labor’s high inflation.
All Labor has done is make the structural deficit worse. The consequence is these Budget surpluses will be short lived, with deficits as far as the eye can see.
Hardworking Australians are suffering under Labor’s fiscal mismanagement.
Only a Coalition Government can deliver strong back to basics economic management that gets Australia back on track.