Julian Burnside AO QC flirted with anti-Semitism. He won’t be missed.

This isn’t a great time for good political news, but hearing that Julian Burnside AO QC has quit as the Greens’ presumptive candidate in Josh Frydenberg’s seat of Kooyong warmed the cockles.

Burnside’s outspoken opinions on the state of Israel’s right to exist and defend herself finally caught up with him. The outrageous comments he and his wife have made on social media over the last week – Burnside likening Israel to Nazi Germany and his wife Kate Dunham labelling Frydenberg ‘just a Hungarian’ in reference to 2018 allegations he was constitutionally ineligible to be an MP because of his family’s displaced persons status after the War, were beyond the pale of civilised political discourse.

They were more than crass. They were anti-Semitic. They certainly don’t deserve to be reproduced here.

They were true to form, however. Burnside was the bloke who once posted an image of then Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton’s head on a SS death’s head badge. This was the bloke the Greens chose to stand against a decent Jewish man in Frydenberg. His wife subsequently deleted her even more offensive tweet, but she knew what she was saying in so viciously personalising her comment against Frydenberg: she turned a political statement into an anti-Semitic personal slur.

Yest there is a skerrick of honour among thieves. After a week of pressure to stand aside, Burnside did the right thing in resigning his candidacy yesterday.

But remember, he wasn’t pushed by the Greens party, or by its garrulous leader, Adam Bandt.

Instead of saying that Burnside had gone too far, and was getting the boot, Bandt murmured such platitudes as, ‘The Australian Greens abhor racism in all its forms, and are particularly concerned by the resurgence of anti-Semitism seen across the world’.

But, it seems, not particularly concerned about the anti-Semitism in the Australian Greens.

Burnside may have gone back to his beloved Savage Club (if they will have him back, that is), but the one-eyed, hard Left attitude of the Greens to Israel remains.

The Israel-Palestine question is a hard one to settle. The realities of the Middle East are nuanced. Israel is not perfect, as no state is. It is one thing to be pro-Palestinian – and that is the Greens’ right – but it is another to harbour and nurture anti-Semitism and racism in the party’s ranks.

Adam Bandt should not only have distanced himself from Burnside and Dunham’s ugly and offensive remarks. He should have disowned them. He should have condemned them. But he didn’t because he couldn’t. There are hundreds more Burnsides in the Greens, all clamouring to impose their anti-Israel policy on an Albanese government should Labor win the next election. Bandt doesn’t dare cross them, and may well agree with them.

Julian Burnside at least realised he failed a test of character. Adam Bandt has not, and that is his and his party’s shame.
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