It’s a fabulous time for Anthony Albanese to escape the midwinter blues and cuddle a panda or two in China, because if he looked over his shoulder he might see the tangled mess of his government’s antisemitism policy.
We say this with sincere regret. Antisemitism is a scourge, although that cliché doesn’t tell the full story. It has proved itself to be a complex, nasty phenomenon that is impervious to easy solutions. Infuriatingly, it is the refuge of smart people and idiots alike.
But let’s not go on about that now. What matters today is the revelation over the weekend that John Roth, husband of antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, has financially supported right-wing political organisation Advance Australia, which has a record of using inflammatory material concerning migrants. It also described Albanese, who appointed Segal as envoy, as making Australia “weak, woke and broke”, and railed against pro-Palestine protests and the Labor government.
The scrapes of Roth
In a statement on Sunday, after a full day’s silence, Segal said she had no influence on Roth’s donations, made through an investment company of which he and his brother Stanley are directors:
“No one would tolerate or accept my husband dictating my politics, and I certainly won’t dictate his. I have had no involvement in his donations, nor will I.”
If you aim to heal social division, the message couldn’t be worse. It also has the look of a gold-plated official screw-up which will only provide fodder to those who really are antisemitic. It has, to say the least, been a messy 24 hours, and Segal’s flat denial may not be the end of it.
Here’s how it unfolded. On Saturday, digital publication The Klaxon reported that John Roth had given Advance $50,000 in 2023-24 through the Henroth Discretionary Trust. The Klaxon also published examples of divisive campaign material used by Advance. The group had also posted an image of $100 bills being sucked into a government job ad for a “Palestinian Settlement and Community Development Worker”.
The Klaxon’s Anthony Klan put a series of questions to Segal but received no response before publication. And there it sat for around 24 hours, as word spread far and wide via X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
Pressure point
Saturday’s report came at a sensitive moment, with Segal already under pressure. Days before, she had handed over her 20-page report recommending steps the government should take to put an end to antisemitism. Her critics, both inside and outside the Jewish community, considered the recommendations “an overreach” and a threat to freedom of speech, particularly in relation to the media, universities and the arts.
Given the response to Segal’s report, it was impossible to conceive that she could plough on without answering some obvious questions raised by The Klaxon about the Roth family’s donation. That came yesterday. The Politics has also conducted its own ASIC checks, which confirm that Henroth Investments is controlled by the Roth brothers, with no mention of Segal.
The Albanese government also has questions to answer. The Advance donation might have been revealed 48 hours ago but the information has been on the public record for over a year. Australian Electoral commission (AEC) records indicate that the Henroth Discretionary Trust’s donation was recorded on June 27, 2024. Albanese announced Segal’s appointment two weeks later, on July 9.
Giving notice
Segal was awarded an AO in 2019 for “distinguished service to the banking and financial regulation sectors, to not-for-profit organisations, and to women”. The honour capped a career which saw the lawyer and businesswoman travel from then leading Sydney law firm Allens to Harvard University to tenures at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Stock Exchange.
At the same time, the family investment arm, Henroth Investments Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Henroth Discretionary Fund, donated heavily to the Liberal Party for more than two decades, as well as a host of others including former prime minister Kevin Rudd. AEC records show that in 2023-24 it donated $45,000 to the NSW Liberals as well as $50,000 to Advance Australia. In the years stretching back to 1998-99, it has donated some $300,000 to the Liberals and around $50,000 to Labor.
It has also donated to lesser-known entities including $4,000 to the Warringah Marginal Seats fund, $2,000 to the Warringah Club and $10,000 to the Millennium Forum (a former business network of the Liberal Party). In 2002-03 it donated $1,800 to Rudd.
Reality check
Segal’s rise has been impressive. At the same time, her husband’s company has been heavily involved in the political donations business.
Amid all this the serious question for the Albanese government is whether it checked to see if Segal’s connections might lead to any actual or perceived conflict of interest. Or whether there might be any embarrassing associations which might undermine the hard work of countering antisemitism.
It is almost incomprehensible that a seasoned politician such as Albanese could make such a basic error even if, on paper, there’s nothing to explain. None of it makes it any easier to slay the emotionally charged issue of antisemitism.
Who is Albanese’s Islamophobia Envoy? Fear and hatred isn’t one-way …
Eg: Palestinians and Semites too
Are … Palestinians are Semites too
I thought Palestinians were Semitic as well. The Ishmailis appear to have a very rough deal.
Mr Aftab Malik is the person in that role. His appointment, however, had the aura of an add-on. He is a good person.
Aftab Malik
https://www.oseci.gov.au/
The fact that Albo employed an envoy for only for one kind of hatred is very telling.
That’s not correct. He appointed two, one for each side of the ‘fence’. If he made any mistake, it was appointing ‘envoys’ in the first place. Now he is at risk of kicking an own goal.
The only Envoy actually mentioned in the ALP National Platform is the Special Envoy for Refugee and Asylum seeker issues. Oh, hold on…that Envoy hasn’t been appointed.
Correct. Albo should not have appointed any religious envoys. You would have thought he was dedicated to a secular administration. But no, he drank the Kool Ade and bowed to the lobbyists. Now what a fine mess he has made. Here’s a fire for you to hose dawn when you get home, Albs. Clue – get rid of her.
Aftab Malik
All of these characters ar good at covering their tracks, and keeping prying eyes out of their business. So this is a error of judgement from Labor in appointing her. Now how to limit the damage.
Albanese doesn’t seem to be a very astute people-picker. Consider also his retention of Pezullo on the APS payroll.
Being a tenured PS Pezullo is difficult to shift.
Is he “tenured”? Departmental Secretaries are normally on five year contracts.
Tenure is not a problem. Just pay them money and they’ll go away. Pity people don’t understand MMT. The federal government can create as much money as they need to
do anything they want.
Or we could define these cunning stunts as ‘High Treason’ and lock them up. If David McBride gets 6 years for dobbing in some incompetent senior officers and politicians, a life sentence isn’t out of the question.
Don’t these people know what a conflict of interest is? Maybe all rolled and near high fliers should be lectured annually on the subject as we were in the public service. “Think of the headlines in the morning’s Australian”..
rolled?? “pollies”
Makes you wonder if Albanese seeks advice,takes advice, or just makes panicked decisions.Or is he just headstrong and stubborn.Smells a bit like Tel Aviv interfering in our sovereignty…just like the Septics.
According to one of the political scribes in one of the many sources I read he has a reputation for being stubborn.
If I were him, I would now be hoping the whole thing will blow over, with the media cycle moving back to submarines and picking a side in China v US. The problem will arise again next time someone does some anti-Jewish grafitti.
I was interested to see on BBC Newsnight on 10 July, Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, saying anti-Jewish grafitti and other attacks were being carried out by young criminals who were being paid by the Iranians. I wonder if the same applies in Australia.
Albo is no fool. He’s already distancing himself from this and the contentious recommendations.
Imagine the laugh they got when she was asked to do the job. Mind boggling incompetence!
Any due diligence done by the government?
Albo has got himself into another tight spot. Trying to appease the Jewish lobby at all costs and avoiding any open support for the Palestinians. It’s going to prove a deep hole to get out of.
Time for Albo to take a firm hand in this mess. Start by acknowledging that the State of Isreal is involved in genocide and planning ethnic cleansing of its neighbour. Second, while is in a truthful mood, spell out that criticism of that sdame Isreal is not anti semitic. Would go a long way in defusing the situation and raising his stature as a leader.
Albanese has continually demonstrated why middle managers aren’t leaders.They are bound to piss their so called ‘mandate’ up the wall .
Her position is untenable – as a lawyer, she ought to know that. She can’t just brush off the fact of this contribution by saying “He did it; it wasn’t my fault”. Her “antisemitism” report isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, and is compromised. As a basis for future action, it’s worthless.
Oh, and by the way, kiddies – “antisemitism” isn’t confined to abuse of Israel – it means abuse of ANY Semitic race, including Palestinians. And “abuse” is more than mere criticism …
Palestinians and semites don’t stand a chance with this self entitled rascist
Albanese – ‘seasoned’ and fried? His teams ‘due diligence’ efforts are looking a bit wobbly right now
Every bloody day we hear about another instance of racism or death in custody to First Nations people, where is their envoy? Why is a tiny section of the poulation pandered to at every minute of the bloody day?
Criticising the abhorrent genocide and Israel is not antisemitism, it is humanity.
It’s worth remembering that Advance lso campaigned aggressively, dishonestly and with plenty of dog whistles against the Voice.
And it’s utterly disingenuous of Segal to argue that it was her husband’s business not hers and that she didn’t know. Quite apart from the failure to do true due diligence, the hypocrisy of remaining married to a first-order bigot like Roth destroys any credibility she might claim on anything to do with eliminating any form of prejudice.
Thanks Robynne for expressing my exact same thoughts. I deplore the way that when zionists cry foul they get all the attention and get supported, despite their inhumane approach to the not zionist.
Robynne, couldn’t agree more. It makes me vomit at the double standards.
Robynne, I agree with you on the points you make, in particular regarding taking a critical view of the genocide that is happening while the world watches. Meanwhile some erroneously conflate this critical view as antisemitism. Benjamin Netanyahu has lost his humanity and should be prosecuted as a war criminal. Saying this has nothing to do with antisemitism. The issue is the ruthless killing of thousands upon thousands of innocent people with no end in sight. Surely Netanyahu had his pound of flesh a long time ago.
Anita – well said. It breaks my heart to see the terrible distressing pictures coming out of Gaza. Couldn’t agree more Netanyahu is a war criminal and should be locked up. But conflating criticism of the Israeli government and IDF actions with anti semitism is lazy and dangerous. Time to stand up PM to these thugs and criminals. Makes me ashamed to be Australian!
Right from the beginning the idea was ridiculous, Anti-semitism was rare in Australia before the genocide began and if the Australian government had operated free of Jewish organisation lobbying and properly opposed Israeli breaches of international law this would not be happening. This is a supreme example of Government being subservient to lobbyists. And if you had to pick a person to do a silly job, Jillian Segal raised a whole lot of red flags anyway. Stupidity all round including her’s for accepting the job
Perhaps the Labor Party is as beholden to the enormous AUSTRALIAN Jewish dollar as the USA has been forever.
Tread carefully, Labor – and remember the huge numbers of good-living Arabic people who now live here.
Bernard P Ryan, St Leonards, Vic.
Having read the report that Jillian Segal made for the Government which does seem to effect free speech. it is difficult to believe that Jillian and her husband do not discuss politics and that his views
Labour seems to have lost its moral fibre.
Interesting indeed would be a bit of social profiling – if that was not also proscribed and rightly so- of all the loudest voices proclaiming all manner of critique as ‘antisemitism’. Who are these people in our communities- and what motivates them?
I abhor violence, especially such as we now see in Gaza. Am I antisemitic to call it out publicly and to criticise the perps???
Maybe because we have a word to describe being opposed to the Jewish religion it has allowed all opposition to the actions of the Jewish state to be dismissed as anti-semitic.
The situation in Gaza is basically a form of genocide and our government should be calling it for what it is and making a clear distinction between that and local instances of anti Jewish behaviour.
Last night I watched Louis Theroux’s documentary on the Jewish settlements across the West Bank in Israel. What an eye opener. They want all the Palestinians to be forced out of Gaza.
The Zionists have successfully woven the Jewish religion into their ideology.
How many Politicians, Rabbis, high media profile and leading members of the Jewish community have come forward to denounce the holocaust taking place in Palestine and distance themselves from Zionists and Israel???
A pitiful and suspiciously small amount
Thank you for another thoughtful, well researched and nuanced piece. It is as if our PM is taking advice from Murdoch and the Sky After Dark crew without considering the consequences. Antisemitism is indeed vile but to quash and allow valid criticisms of Israeli policies and conduct to be labelled as purely ‘antisemitic’ is dangerously reductive.
It seems almost universally held that any comment critical of Israel is regarded as antisemitic, when – as quite rightly pointed out here – Palestinians/Gazans are Semitic too, so it’s a nonsense argument… My take is that most in the West (at least who are neither Jewish nor Arab) cared very little about those who are from the Middle-East and just wanted them to go away and take their problems with them, that is until we started seeing all the images of the tens of thousands of innocent Gazans being bombed, starved and then shot as they queued for the miniscule aid being supplied. Our western racism is/was always quite anti-Arab and perhaps almost equally anti-Jewish (stemming from the Christian view that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s death) but has now been pricked by these images on our screens, much as happened when the Vietnam war victims were all over our TV screens in the first ‘televised warfare’ in the 1960s.
I know my (now departed, he’d have been 99) old dad used to treat Arabs as beneath contempt, because that’s how he was brought up in 1930s Britain and his observations in Egypt in late and post WW2 only confirmed his view and his pro-Israel stance. I was therefore brought up in a very strongly pro-Israel family with two older siblings even going to work on Kibbutz in the 1970s and ’80s. But my own view turned in the 1970 and ’80s when I realised as a young man that what happened in 1967 was the theft and settlement of Palestine by Israelis and immigrant Jewish settlers who displaced Palestinians from their land. Ever since, observing the Zionists settling, displacing and even killing Palestinians with western backing or blind-eye turning has made me believe that Israel will eventually turn much of the rest of the world against not just Israel, but also provide an excuse for the rise of antisemitism mirroring 1930s Germany. Has no one read The Merchant of Venice? Using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut not only destroys the walnut but also raises questions of judgment and justice, regardless of who was ‘right’ in the first place. Shylock was entitled to his loan being repaid and the Merchant should have been forced to do so, but taking the ‘pound of flesh’ as per the contract was a step too far and Shylock was not only denied justice despite being ‘right’…and ‘righteous’…he was found guilty of the greater crime. My Jewish and Israeli friends don’t seem to understand that conundrum and to a man/woman admit they’ve still not read Shakespeare’s very wise play. You’d think that a 500-year-old play might have turned that table, but is seems we’re destined to repeat the lessons we failed to learn from history.
The term ‘Semites’ has a long and interesting history. It has, at different times, referred to ethnic, cultural, racial and/or linguistic groups. Nowadays, ‘anti-semiism’ is somehow conveniently restricted to anyone who was/is hostile or discriminatory towards Jews and in particular Zionists who believe (religiously and politically) they have a biblical right to live in a State of Israel with Jerusalem as the capital. Hence, it has turned into a strong political movement. I tend to agree with the notion that existing laws already protect all minority groups (and individuals) against discrimination, abuse and/or defamation. Of course, improvements and updates (amendments) can always be made.
Could the wily old Albo be playing a double political bluff? Already knowing about Roth’s connection with the diabolically racist Advance Group, he could support Segel’s plan publicly and then allow it to be watered down/amended once the conflict of interest, hypocrisy and lack of credibility was exposed?
Frankly,Psepho, I don’t think he’s that smart.
nor his Cabinet full of blunt tools! Albanese is ONLY Chair of Cabinet – not President!
I am just fundamentally disgusted by the whole “god said this land is ours millennia ago, and so, as we did back then, we are entitled to slaughter/displace anyone that gets in our way” zionist belief…just wtf
Our prime minister nickname is two way albo in regard to everything a great manager but leader he is not
It may be small now, but more Jewish people are coming forward to condemn the genocidal slaughter.
Interestingly, those hypocritical idiots, SUCH AS SIMPLE SUPERSTITIOUS SUS(S) and her CHEER SQUAD, AND OF COURSE, INCLUDING MOST OF THE RANKS OF THE LITTLE GREY DORMOUSE LEMON COLOURED LABOUR JELLYFISH. WE ALL KNOW WHO THEY ARE WHEN THEY REVEAL THEMSELVES, and the rest of her toxic totalitarian LNP Mobsters, who bleat about Anti-Semitism being out of control and on the rise, have nothing to say about the underreported but increasing incidents of Islamophobia and racist attacks on ethnic minorities, including Indigenous Australians. Anti-Semitism is just as revolting and despicable as Islamophobia, Homophobia, Racism, and all other forms of hateful thoughts, bigotries, and hate crimes, and are equally unwelcome and have no place anywhere in the world, let alone Australia. Yet to accuse those of us, who have genuine concerns regarding the shockingly genocidal Israeli abuse of the Palestinians’ human rights, which more and more Jewish people, including Israelis, are speaking out and demonstrating against (as we have concerns regarding human rights breaches of the Rohingyas, Uighurs, Jewish minorities in Egypt and Iran and other persecuted nations and peoples too) as being anti-Semitic, is revolting, despicable and an insult to the nearly 6 million Jewish people, along with the 2.5 million Romany and 10s of millions of others, who were slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis.
Jillian is no different to Gai Waterhouse.
If Gai was believed to have no idea what her husband got up to, then why shouldn’t Jillian be afforded the same luxury?
As dumb as it sounds.
The undeclared conflict of interest and the tenor of the Report which has a resonance with IPA and Advance attitudes and underlying beliefs takes away any credibility of this venture. Burke may praise Segal as a financier and lawyer but who is to know that with names suppressed she was one of the complainants from the group of lawyers to the ABC; also to say it was misogynist to state that Segal was connected through association with the Trusts donation to Advance through her husband, is disingenuous. I do not see opposing political opinions there in her Report. She is no Adler in her beliefs.
Shame on Labor for another poor recruitment decision and idea.
Excellent point.
All lawyers are now under suspicion constantly with any submissions or inteference on such matters related to antisemitism, Gaza, etc.
A winning own goal.
Sallow people with sallow souls, maybe time to give up dragging around the victim mantra that this type of narrow PR engenders for no greater good at all.
If Segal’s report has demonstrated any intellectual rigour and honesty instead of being a copy and paste from the Israeli government, MAGA and AIPAC press releases exercise, I could care less about her husband’s distasteful alliances. That she is obviously unable to accurately understand the difference between anti- Semitism and an objection to war crimes, human rights abuses and genocide is WAY more problematic. The role is a pathetic pandering to the Israeli/Zionist lobby as is Segal.