Tuesday, 14 November 2023

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (19:00): (431) It is not necessarily a pleasure, unfortunately, that I have to raise this adjournment matter for the Premier. The action that I seek is that the government immediately release the funding it committed to one year ago to fight antisemitism and to protect the Jewish community. On 13 November last year – and I actually looked on my Facebook page – there was a post from a former candidate for Caulfield Lior Harel, which announced $3 million worth of funding to fight antisemitism, $1 million of funding for the Jewish community through the infrastructure program and $900,000 in funding for the Community Security Group (CSG). This was welcomed by the Jewish community. We had Jewish community leaders, representatives from the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, Zionism Victoria and rabbis all there welcoming this. That was at a time – 12 months ago – when antisemitism was on the rise but nowhere near where it is today. Twelve months on that funding is still missing in action. I plead with the government today to the make that funding available.

The Jewish community are absolutely up in arms in terms of the situation at the moment with the fallout from what has happened since 7 October and the ramifications of that on our streets in Caulfield. We saw that only on Friday night, not in our backyards but in our front yards in Caulfield, when we had protesters, vigilante groups, blaming the terrible burning down of a burger store – even after the police had said that it was not racially motivated – on the Jewish community and then coming down to take action for that. We had rocks and bottles thrown, we had a whole range of things.

The Minister for Police is here in the chamber today, and we have been working with him and with Victoria Police to do what we can in terms of increasing police presence, which we now have, but we need the funding to be able to support this. I want to acknowledge Josh Burns, the member for Macnamara, who has been working with me on some of the programs to combat antisemitism. The time is now to get the funding. We have got fringe party groups like the Greens, with the member for Richmond, stoking the fire in terms of what they are doing – on Remembrance Day actually going out there and using that for political attacks against Israel and the Jewish community. People like the Greens only fuel activity that we see on our streets, resulting in an increase in antisemitism. We cannot have that. We have got to come together. We need education programs and we need support in terms of security, and the best way to do that is with money. There was $3 million promised in terms of antisemitism funding and to CSG in terms of security funding. We need it now – not next week, not tomorrow, not next year but right now, as was promised over a year ago.