Albo Doesn’t Hold a Hose, Mate

Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned. Justin Trudeau danced while Montreal burned. Anthony Albanese played tennis and hosted drinkies while Melbourne’s synagogue burned.

Labor donors were entertained by Anthony Albanese over drinks on the banks of Perth’s Swan River on the day of the synagogue terror attack in Melbourne, and he then played tennis on Saturday afternoon in the leafy beachside suburb of Cottesloe, staying for afternoon tea with members of Western Australia’s most prestigious lawn court tennis club.

This is the same Anthony Albanese, remember, who pilloried Scott Morrison for not immediately cutting short a family holiday in Hawaii to rush back to Australia during a bushfire season.

To make it worse, Albo tried to lie his way out of it with a series of weak half-truths.

When questioned at a press conference on Monday about his decision to play tennis on Saturday, Mr Albanese took advantage of a reporter’s mistaken understanding that he had played in the morning rather than in the afternoon, saying: “Well, I wasn’t playing tennis on the Saturday morning.”

No, it was the afternoon. But Albanese carefully omitted telling that part. Just as he then tried to half-lie his way out of the fact that he was playing tennis.

Questioned further, he said: “That is wrong. I had six appointments on Saturday. After they had concluded, late in the afternoon, I did some exercise. That’s what people do.”

Albanese also placed fundraising and campaigning with Big Business ahead of Australia’s besieged Jewish community.

On Friday night, Mr Albanese was the star attraction at the Federal Labor Business Forum’s “End-of-Year Networking Event” at the Chevron building on Perth’s CBD foreshore.

He can’t lie his way out of that one by trying to make out that he was unaware of the terror attack.

Mr Albanese spent the night with party donors just hours after his first briefings on the firebombing and a phone call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog over the incident.

The Australian understands the drinks went for 90 minutes. The event is designed to allow businesses to pay a premium to have access to senior ALP figures such as the Prime Minister.

A very, very belated visit to the firebombed synagogue is only going to underscore just how contemptuously the PM has treated Jewish Australians.

Anthony Albanese is expected to arrive at the Adass Israel synagogue after midday on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister’s arrival would come four days after three suspected terrorists burned the place of worship in Melbourne’s southeast.

And, after a year of vile, open and increasingly violent anti-Semitism in Australia – a year after a Muslim mob marched on the Sydney Opera House, chanting ‘Gas the Jews!’ – Albanese is pretending to get serious about tackling anti-Semitism. Once again, though, he’s trying to pull the wool over Australians’ eyes.

Opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson says the government’s anti-Semitism taskforce is “a day late and a dollar short”, arguing it is more akin to an operation than a taskforce […]

“It’s actually not really a taskforce, it’s a special operation. That sounds like a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one,” he said.

“A special operation is a routine thing that the Federal Police and state police do all the time.”

Asked about ASIO chief Mike Burgess’ warning for public unity and for public figures to tone down their language, Senator Paterson said politicians needed to be “measured and calm in our language”.

But politicians, like all Australians, have to be absolutely unapologetic and resolute when it comes to calling anti-Semitic terrorism what it is. What Burgess apparently wants us to do, though, is not say anything lest it rile up the anti-Semites – meaning Muslims – even more.

Because we all know what happens when Muslims are ‘offended’.