There are three takeaways from the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s latest social cohesion survey: firstly, Australians are overwhelmingly fed up with mass immigration. The second is that there is a sharp polarisation between left and right. Thirdly, while the right are focused on a clear and very real threat, the left have allied themselves with the most extreme of the far-right on one issue: Jews.
Actually, there’s one other, very big, takeaway from the report: Australia is a much worse place after five years of Anthony Albanese.
Begin with immigration, because it is the finding most likely to terrify the comfortable classes who have spent five years treating mass immigration as a fait accompli rather than a public policy. The survey of more than 10,000 adults found that 93 per cent of One Nation supporters believe immigration is too high. Among Greens, that figure was 24 per cent; among Labor voters, 37 per cent; and among coalition voters, 66 per cent.
The pattern is clear. The further left a person travels, the less concerned they become about immigration. The further right, the more certain they become that the numbers are unsustainable. That is not a marginal political difference. It is a division running through the electorate at the level of basic national cohesion, although it is being eroded. The dissatisfaction on the left with mass immigration might still be a minority, but it’s a growing one. In Labor ranks, it’s approaching parity.
Compare the one-quarter of Greens voters compared to just seven per cent of One Nation supporters who are comfortable with current immigration levels. Pauline Hanson has noticed, seized upon the discontent and proposed slashing temporary visa numbers by 750,000. The major parties have been left scrambling to prove that their own policies would make a meaningful difference, though the most likely achievement is a collection of targets set for the convenience of newspaper headline writers.
Then there is the most disturbing finding of all: negative attitudes towards Jews have increased by more than 120 per cent. One need not accept every premise of those hostile to Israel to recognise that a rise of that magnitude is not incidental. It is evidence of a moral collapse – and it’s almost entirely a left-wing phenomenon.
While incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia have been building in recent years and since the current conflict in Gaza and the Middle East, the horrific violence of Bondi has now shattered any complacency around the hatred that lurks in Australian society and the potential damage it can cause for people, families, communities and the country.
The institutional prophets of progress are forever claiming that they’re ‘anti-Zionists’ (which, curiously they never seem to be able to define), not antisemites. They offer semantic distinctions with the solemnity of mediaeval scholastics debating how many angels might fit upon the point of a needle. Yet when “Palestine” becomes the respectable euphemism and criticism of Hamas becomes impermissible, the distinctions become rather less convincing.
Meanwhile, 35 per cent said their sympathies mostly or entirely lie with the Palestinian people, a figure that rises to 67 per cent among left-wingers and 49 per cent among those aged 18–34 years.
The ‘Palestinian cause’ is, it must be remembered, the Hamas cause. Pretending otherwise is like claiming that you backed Germany in WWII, but not the Nazi party. Israel is not the villain of the story, no matter what a progressive is parroting from the Guardian. The violence of October 7 began with Hamas, with the vocal support and enthusiastic participation of the ‘Palestinian’ people, and the organisation’s subsequent conduct has not softened the position of those who support it.
By contrast, negative attitudes towards Muslims are at least readily understood in light of two decades of Islamic terrorism, Australians travelling to join the Islamic State and continuing radicalism within Muslim communities. Rightly or wrongly, Australians who distrust Islam base that judgement upon observable behaviour in this country.
The Jewish contribution to Australian life, on the other hand, has been overwhelmingly positive. From business to the arts, to philanthropy, Jewish Australians have always punched above their weight in ways that have benefitted Australia. Antisemites are driven by a conflict in the Middle East, begun by Muslims, and then transfer its grievances onto Jews here.
One is a response to conduct. The other is hatred seeking a target.
The Bondi massacre, which killed 15 people and injured many others, should have ended the AHRC’s fashionable pretence that ideological motivation is a secondary consideration in radicalisation. ASIO and the AFP understand the matter rather better than the human-rights mandarins: violent extremism does not arise from nowhere. Beliefs have causes, and causes must be confronted if the disease is to be treated.
Australia after five years of Albanese is a nation with crowded streets, too often blocked by knuckle-dragging mobs howling for violence against Jews (and getting it). Mass immigration has strained infrastructure, corroded public rhetoric and left communities in fear of their very lives.
Oh, but GDP went up a poofteenth of a per cent. Does anyone think it’s a good deal?
