THIS IS AUSTRALIA - THE TIMES-THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ [i]

The Farrer By-Election

Shortly before the Farrer election, Pauline Hanson arrived at Albury airport on her private plane gifted to her by Gina Rinehart, saying confidently “Change is on the way”. David Farley as well as the One Nation chief of staff James Ashby and Hanson’s parliamentary team were all in attendance for her arrival.

On 9 May, One Nation took Farrer, the seat of former Liberal leader Sussan Ley with a swing of more than 30%,  reducing the Coalition vote to rubble. Farrer had been held by the Liberals  for 77 years. After the election Hanson remarked, “We’re taking our country back”. One Nation had won its first House of Representatives seat in its 29 year history with  David Farley becoming the first One Nation candidate to win a seat in the House of Representatives for more than 20 years[ii].

The Farrer result was a political earthquake. Hanson’s appeal is highly personal and even her opponents concede her ability to tap into a sentiment that has long been ignored. This win was only two months after One Nation had won a swag of seats in the South Australian state election. Barnaby Joyce remarked that the Australian people had not just spoken, they had “roared” adding, “Western Sydney, here we come”. Hanson’s sights were set on ousting Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke from their Sydney electorates saying, “That would be a good start to get this country on track”.[iii]

What Makes Pauline Hanson Tick

Hanson speaks for many Australians who believe that politicians have become deaf to their concerns but, not One Nation. For years much of the political class has regarded Hanson’s concerns about immigration, national cohesion and energy security as unworthy of serious debate but, NO More! She has come in for criticism in the past for alleged racist attitudes. However, in commentary by Greg Sheridan in The Australian on 12 May, he wrote, “One Nation has moderated over the years. It is certainly no longer racist, if it ever was”.

In February 2026, Hanson organised a visa for a 16 year old in Lebanon who was told by doctors that she had an inoperable brain tumour. However, a specialist at Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney saw the scans and said there was a good chance they could save the girl’s life. Her uncle contacted Hanson after Australia’s Department of Home Affairs rejected three applications to bring her to Australia for surgery. The department was concerned the girl and her mother would remain in the country but Hanson guaranteed that following surgery, she would personally take the girl to the airport and put her on a plane back to Lebanon.[iv]

As Janet Albrechtsen said, “Hanson is direct, authentic and even after three decades in politics, is refreshingly unpolished”! In 2003 Hanson spent three months in prison for electoral fraud, but was subsequently found to have been wrongly convicted and was soon set free. The wrongful conviction followed a hounding by the Liberal Party, led by Tony Abbott. That experience gave her a direct and personal understanding of struggling average Australians. It is not surprising that she believes passionately that even those who have been convicted of crimes deserve a shot at redemption. Today, many Australians think One Nation, rather than mainstream parties speak their language.

Kristallnacht [The Night of Broken Glass]

Having recently watched the performance at the Sydney Opera House of The Happiest Man on Earth and having then read the memoir of the same name by Eddie Jaku at the age of 100 years, it is impossible to ignore similarities in Australia with Kristallnacht, a massive Jewish pogrom across Nazi Germany on 9-10 November 1938 when hundreds of synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses destroyed and thousands of Jews were assaulted.

Only days ago, the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal published a paper entitled The Truth about Hamas. The article was republished in The Australian paper on 16 May. It is the most graphic, the most horrifying description of what happened at the Nova Festival on 7 October 2023. The article is attached at the end of this paper.

As Hanson warned, Labor’s politically motivated coddling of Islamic extremism was complicit in the rise of the anti-Semitism which led to the atrocity at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025. It was reminiscent of the kind of horror German Jews experienced in the 1930s.

The Government’s Failure to Act

After the Nova Festival - 7 October

The public response in Sydney to the October 7 attack in Israel began with Islamist celebrations the very next day even while Israel was still in the grip of the Hamas horror. Pleas for a strong response from Albanese fell on deaf ears allowing the Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism to flourish. In Lakemba the slaughter of Jews was celebrated as a “day of victory”. Instead of action, the government tacitly permitted the demonisation of Israel.

When the monstrous protests at the Sydney Opera House occurred, Islamist protesters chanted “F...k the Jews” and “Gas the Jews”. No charges and no prosecutions were laid or even attempted. The Prime Minister seemed to hope it would all just go away and relieve him of electoral challenges in crucial seats which had large Muslim populations. It was an appalling act of prime ministerial neglect. In Australia, cars were firebombed, there was anti-Jewish graffiti at shops, schools and homes and eventually a synagogue was burned to the ground in Melbourne. The government failed to act.

On 11 December the author, Chris Kenny wrote, “Anti-Semitism remains a huge challenge for this country” adding that “The Albanese government is either complicit or asleep at the wheel”. Four nights later Bondi experienced the worst imaginable terror attack and the slaughter of 15 innocent Jewish people.[v]

A former NSW Crime official suggested that anti-Semitism in Australia and the protests following October 7 “Set the tone for a permissive environment in which glorifying violence was accepted”. Immediately following the violent attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens, including women and children, a sickening display of anti-Semitic hatred took place at the Sydney Opera House to which Prime Minister Albanese meekly responded saying, “We should not celebrate such killing”!

Sydney Harbour Bridge Protest

Previously, on 3 August 2025, tens of thousands turned out for a protest march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, organised by the Palestine Action Group, and led by well-known Sydney identities including the former Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr and Julian Assange.

The Royal Commission

The December 2025 Bondi Beach shooting brought the issue of Jew hatred firmly into public consciousness leading to calls for a Royal Commission but, this was resisted by the Prime Minister. What followed was a lengthy period of public pressure urging the government to reconsider. The Royal Commission was eventually launched allowing accounts to be heard of harassment, threats and fear experienced by members of the Jewish community.

More than 5,000 submissions have thus far been received including more than 1,000 from non-Jewish Australians. Witnesses spoke of their experience as being very confronting but they acknowledged that truth telling was essential. However, some who gave evidence at the Royal Commission expressed doubt as to whether the Commission’s recommendations would be enough to stem the surge of anti-Semitism while others expressed uncertainty as to whether they could see a future for Jews  in Australia.[vi] 

The Royal Commission is reminiscent of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was established in 1995, in South Africa to uncover the truth about human rights violations during the apartheid era. Victims were invited to share their stories through public hearings. The objective of that Commission were described as, “To promote national unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past”. There are obvious similarities with the objective in Australia of bringing about “social cohesion”. [vii]

However, in the absence of strong leadership, real conviction and a willingness to bring effective legislation into force so as to stop the ongoing violence against Jewish Australians, it seems unlikely that the Royal Commission will bring an end to surging anti-Semitism in this country.

In a report by journalist Julie Szego, she describes how witnesses have accused the ABC and The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age of biased reporting which contributed to a climate of anti-Jewish hatred and the libel that Israel was “genocidal”. The newspaper reported that “The world’s largest academic group of genocide scholars has resolved that the legal criteria had been met to establish that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza”. However, the report failed to say that more than 500 genocide scholars had signed a letter objecting to the resolution and demanding its immediate retraction.

Szego acknowledges that the Gaza war  was horrible  and imperfectly prosecuted  but it was a war in which Israel was forced to fight a fanatical enemy whose chief weapon was its willingness to sacrifice tens  of thousands of its own civilians and she adds, “Show me an existential war that is perfectly prosecuted”. [viii]

Although ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) has for years been saying that the primary threat to the Jewish community was from radical Islam, the Australian government has been unwilling to do anything about it.[ix]

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM – HEAR THE OTHER SIDE

[i] Bob Dylan 1964

[ii] The Australian, Dancin’ Hanson - One Nation’s landslide -10 May 2026

[iii] Sydney Morning Herald, Farley wins but Hanson is One Nation's dancing Queen – 9 May 2026

[iv] The Australian, Why Pauline Hanson's influence has never been stronger -18 April 2026

[v] The Australian, Government failure to act fanned the flames, by Chris Kenny 28 Feb 2026

[vi] Times of Israel, Chilling testimony – can the enquiry bring change -8 May 2026

[vii] Desmond Tutu, A Spiritual Biography - 2021

[viii] The Australian, My fear: It’s too late to solve Jew-hate now – 9 May 2026

[ix] Sky News, Radical Islamic elephant in the room, failure to confront extreme ideology 1 May 11, 2026

The Truth About Hamas

WSJ Editorial Board 15 May 2026

 Reading “Silenced No More,” the new report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, we were transported back to October 27, 2023, and a screening of the raw footage of Hamas’s atrocities. The mouths of journalists were agape, but time dulls horrific reality.

The new report is a catalogue, for memory’s sake, of Hamas depravity. Testimony from site after site attests to rape and assault. Screams and pleas. Gunshots to the face and genitals. Mutilation. Burning. Bodies naked, legs spread. Grotesque scenes staged. All forming an evidentiary record, the result of more than 10,000 photos and video segments and more than 430 interviews, testimonies and meetings with survivors, witnesses and experts.

“I saw them raping her,” says Raz Cohen, who escaped the Nova Music Festival where 396 people were slaughtered. “Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again.”

Eden Wessely, who came to Nova to rescue a friend, found and filmed a naked, burned body. “Her dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace … Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed.” A review by forensic pathologists confirmed these details.

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Yoni Saadon recounts another horror: “She fell to the ground, shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too … I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologise to her, saying ‘I’m sorry.’” Later he saw “a beautiful woman with the face of an angel and 8 or 10 fighters beating and raping her.” The last one shot her in the head. Each example here is of a civilian non-combatant.

A male says he was gang-raped at the Nova site, providing medical records and a detailed account: “They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll.” The Hamas invaders had been given operational materials including Arabic-to-Hebrew phrase lists such as “take off your pants/take your clothes off,” “lie down” and “spread your legs.” The planned sexual degradation speaks to years of Palestinian propaganda that treats Jews as sub-human.

Sexual abuse continued for hostages, who are on video being groped and humiliated during abductions. In one video, a female hostage begs for her life while the narrator says, “This is one of the Jewish dogs.”

Former hostage Ilana Gritzewsky says, “one terrorist started touching me; he put his hand under my shirt and started sliding it down my leg. That’s when I fainted.” On waking, she was “surrounded by Hamas people, my shirt up here, my pants down here.” After being freed, she learned they had broken her pelvis.

Romi Gonen tells of 16 days of assault. Arbel Yehud says she was assaulted throughout her 482 days as a hostage. Two former hostages, minors who are family members, “reported that they were forced to perform ‘sexual acts on one another.’”

We regret having to relate such details, but it is crucial to remember when the understandable human impulse is to forget such horrors. All the more so because the sexual violence by Hamas has been aggressively denied by an antisemitic global left that wants us to forget. Everywhere denial serves the same purpose: to distort Israel’s defensive war as if it were wanton violence. Such deniers prefer anything to reminding the world why Israel has no choice but to fight for its life.