Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing backlash over a lackluster response to an antisemitism question in the fallout of the Bondi Beach terror attack — as his predecessor slammed him for not doing enough to tackle hate and deflecting with gun reform.
In an interview with ABC Sydney on Tuesday, Albanese insisted his administration was working as hard as possible to stamp out antisemitism following allegations that his failures allowed Sunday’s massacre to occur.
When ABC Sydney Host Chris Taylor asked Albanese if adopting the recommendations of a 2025 antisemitism report earlier would have saved lives, Albanese got on the defensive.
“Antisemitism didn’t begin in 2022,” the PM said, referencing the year he came into power.
“We are working as hard as we can. Antisemitism, tragically, has been around for a long period of time,” he told the outlet.
Albanese insisted that his office had taken the lead on fighting hate against the Jewish community, with his administration establishing the Antisemitism envoy’s office that made the 2025 recommendations in the first place.
The premier, however, has repeatedly come under fire for failing to condemn antisemitism, including a spate of anti-Israel protests in Sydney during the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.
During the interview, Albanese also dodged questions about how the gunmen skirted law enforcement’s radar despite suspect Naveed Akram, 24, being tied to a convicted ISIS terrorist who was busted in 2019.
“Well, I obviously wasn’t Prime Minister in 2019,” he responded as he defended the Australian Security Intelligence Organization’s then-decision to drop Akram as a person of interest to monitor.
As Albanese pivoted to his push for stricter gun reform in Australia, which already has some of the strongest gun laws in the world, former Prime Minister John Howard said the whole issue was one “big attempt at diversion” away from Albanese’s failures to address rampant antisemitism, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“His greatest failure is not to provide the moral leadership that a prime minister can in denouncing antisemitism,” Howard told reporters Tuesday.
“What you can say is that governments and individuals can do a lot to discourage the spread of prejudice, antisemitism, hatred of Jewish people, and I don’t think the present federal government and the present prime minister have done enough in that area since 2023,” Howard added.
The former premier called on Albanese to accept his failures and acknowledge that the government needs to do more to disavow antisemitism.
The criticism was echoed by Nationals leader David Littleproud, who has criticized Albanese’ lackluster response and that of his Labor party.
“Labor has ignored the cues that have come from society, including their own special envoy against antisemitism, that there is a violence problem towards those of the Jewish faith,” he said. “This isn’t a gun problem, it’s an ideology problem.”
Even Queensland LNP Premier David Crisafulli, who backed the latest push for gun law reform, said Albanese’s fixation on guns rather than combating antisemitism is not the proper response to Sunday’s shooting.
“It can’t be the panacea for fixing antisemitism,” he told reporters. “If we rely on gun reforms as the only thing we do in response to this, then the terrorists have a win.
“If that is the only part of the conversation, evil triumphs over good,” Crisafulli added.
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