Refugee advocates call on PM Albanese to reject the Antisemitism Envoy’s Plan
The Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) condemns every type of discrimination and any associated criminal conduct – all of it being behaviour that Australian law prohibits. But RAC (Vic) opposes the intrusive, coercive Plan[1] that Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, recommends for adoption by the Albanese Labor government.
If fully adopted, the Plan would see new policies and self-appointed monitoring bodies that, under the cloak of combating antisemitism, would “go far beyond any protections offered any other group”[2] – and would, in effect, threaten freedom of speech in relation to Israel.
For example, the Plan’s item 3.1 Definitions would require (RAC’s italics) “all levels of government and public institutions” to adopt and use “the [very complex] International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition, including its illustrative examples” to identify antisemitism. But one example, “[Comparing] contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”, could see people being officially defined as ‘antisemites’ for comparatively criticising Israel’s genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians. That would threaten all pro-Palestinian protestors, writers and speakers – some of whom are Jewish Australians.
Yet, as lawyer Josh Bornstein has pointed out, a court recently “correctly determined that political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature, criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity and therefore was not antisemitic or unlawful”. Bornstein sees “Segal’s proposals … as an attempt to subvert the legal system …”[3].
Item 3.4 says “The Envoy will develop … a report card, assessing each university’s … [steps taken] to combat antisemitism”, … [so that universities which] “facilitate, enable, or fail to act against antisemitism” could have government funding cut, and “academics … [termin-ated for] antisemitic or … hateful speech or actions”. The PM must reject a report card that is a ‘self-appointed judge and jury’ of self-governing academic institutions and their staff.
Further, item 3.13 seeks “a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to track the imple-mentation and effectiveness of antisemitism … initiatives across all sectors [RAC’s italics]”.
The report pays no regard to such institutions as the Australian Human Rights Commission that work against racism and discrimination. It is also ignorant: item 3.9 recommends use of the Migration Act to screen out visa applicants for antisemitism, and cancel antisemites’ visas – yet screening and cancellation for any discriminatory threat (not just antisemitism) has been occurring for years under that Act’s section 501 “character test”. (However, RAC (Vic) opposes the ‘semi-automatic’ deportation of people whose visas are cancelled.)
In short, Segal’s Plan calls for antisemitism-only visa measures; and for yet-to-be-identified antisemitism monitoring bodies empowered to suggest de-funding of universities, the ABC, SBS and cultural bodies – for antisemitism or insufficient combating thereof. But, as Manne observes (at p 4), the Plan seeks no consequences whatever for “bigotry against indigenous Australians, Muslims, women and gays”. We call on Prime Minister Albanese to reject this partisan over-reach of a Plan, and terminate the appointment of its author.
[1]. Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism, July 2025.
[2]. Robert Manne, “The wrong way to respond to antisemitism”, Inside Story, 18 July 2025, p 2. Manne, a veteran Jewish Australian academic, is Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University.
[3] . Josh Bornstein, “Antisemitism envoy Segal has laid a trap for Albanese”, The Age, 16 July 2025.