E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW – ABC SYDNEY MORNINGS WITH HAMISH MACDONALD
WEDNESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2025
SUBJECTS: BLOCKED VISA OF ISRAELI POLITICIAN, ANTISEMITISM.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Now, presumably you will have caught this in the news this morning in a social media post, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called out Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a 'weak leader' who has betrayed Israel. It comes after Australia announced that it would recognise Palestinian statehood in September, but also a decision by the Home Affairs Minister to refuse to grant visas to a number of high-profile Israeli politicians, including a current serving Israeli politician called Simcha Rothman, who was due to visit schools and synagogues here in Sydney. The Home Affairs Minister is Tony Burke. He's also the MP for Watson in southwestern Sydney. I spoke to him a short time ago.
Tony Burke, good morning.
TONY BURKE: G'day. Good to be with you.
HAMISH MACDONALD: What is your response to the commentary from Benjamin Netanyahu calling our Prime Minister 'weak,' particularly in relation to not just recognising a Palestinian state, but also the visa decision, which you're more closely involved with?
TONY BURKE: Yeah, that one's me. Look, first of all, there's a lashing out that the Israeli Prime Minister has been doing against a number of countries that have decided that they're recognising Palestine. So, UK, France, Canada, Spain, Ireland, Norway, there's been similar, not identical, but similar lashing out. In terms of the claim of strength versus weakness. Strength isn't measured by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can make go hungry. I think the better measure of strength is to look at Prime Minister Albanese as going - knowing that he was going to make, or heading towards making a decision that Israel would not like with respect to Palestinian recognition and what did he do? He made the strong option. He rang Prime Minister Netanyahu and had the conversation person to person, made it clear what our reasons were, what we were considering, and faced the difficult conversation and then went ahead and announced what we would do after a period of time of further consultation. And in making that announcement, did something where he never compromised, never compromised on some fundamental principles, about the need for hostages to be released, about the need for Israel to be able to be secure, but said the cost of that can't be that Palestine is not secure, consistent with our principle for the two-state solution. But also, of all the people in the world right now, the Palestinian people must feel so invisible, must just feel so invisible and to have a series of nations now saying, we see you, we see the injustice in what's happening to you at the moment, and we will recognise you. That matters.
HAMISH MACDONALD: The substance of the assertion, though, from Netanyahu, goes to the question of whether recognising Palestinian statehood now is a capitulation to Hamas, which wanted this outcome when it conducted the October 7 attacks.
TONY BURKE: Well, what they want is a single state, and that's what Australia is not supporting, and that's what the world is not supporting. So, you look at what Hamas want, they certainly don't want two states. They certainly don't want our position, which is in the Palestinian state, Hamas should have nothing to do with it. They don't want our position, which is that they are a terrorist organisation. So, there'll be different attempts from Hamas at propaganda. But the reality is, if you look at what they want, what we are offering is a very, very different thing, but is consistent with what Australia's aim has been for a very long time. And as you know, as Penny Wong said, if we don't recognise now, we could end up, given what some in the Israeli Government want to do, we could end up with a situation where there is no Palestine left to recognise.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Do you think the Prime Minister's weak? Obviously, some members of the Jewish community here in Sydney see this as a weak position.
TONY BURKE: Well, as I say, the strong position is to do exactly what the Prime Minister did. The strong position is that - you can hide from the people who you're about to disagree with, or you can pick up the phone and you deal with them directly. You can. You can kow to what some of the tabloid media will do when you know what their response is going to be. Or you can say, “No, I see injustice, I see a role for Australia and we're going to play it.“ There's a limit to how significant our role is on the other side of the world, although with respect to the visa decision, asked about me at the top, which I haven't got to yet, but with respect to that, that part of it is entirely, entirely within our control.
HAMISH MACDONALD: So, Simcha Rothman is the name of the Israeli politician who's been subject to this decision. He was due to visit Sydney, a number of Jewish schools, synagogues were set to host him. The organising body said that this was to deal with, show solidarity to Jewish Australians facing a wave of antisemitism. How do you explain the decision to prevent an elected politician from another country, with which Australia up until now has had strong relations, prevent them from coming here and speaking in a public setting?
TONY BURKE: I've got a power under the Migration Act where if I believe that somebody is going to - or there's a serious risk that they're going to incite discord in the Australian community, that I can block the visa. And I've been doing that on both sides of this particular debate. I do think social cohesion in Australia has been under extraordinary pressure, under extraordinary pressure. And I can't stop news organisations, for example, from interviewing people who will incite discord. I can't stop what comes through on the Internet. But I do have a power as to whether someone has the legitimacy of an Australian visa. Now, if someone's just visiting back and forth, I use a much lower standard. If someone is coming for the purpose of making public statements, and I don't obviously get notice personally of every individual, but where myself and my delegates are aware of previous public statements that that person's made, then we have to work on the basis that that may well be part of their public speaking tour.
HAMISH MACDONALD. So, what would you have worried about if you were to have come here to Sydney and made these speeches? What's the lived, I suppose, reaction that you feel may happen that would justify saying, actually, no, you can't come to this country?
TONY BURKE: There are two Israeli politicians, one former Minister, Eilat Shaked, and then this individual, Mr Rothman, who a current sitting member, not a Minister, but a member of the Knesset. They've both had similar comments, which I find horrific. This gentleman has described Palestinian children as the enemy. Ms Shaked described Palestinian children as little snakes. Now, I work on the basis that I start with, what would our view be if it were the opposite? If someone were to want to describe Jewish children as some form of reptile or as the enemy, would I let that person in? And the answer is no, not for a public speaking tour.
HAMISH MACDONALD: And you said you have barred people with the opposite views from coming. Are there examples that you can point to?
TONY BURKE: Yeah, look, each of these ones, I have tended to not put their name in the public arena unless they've chosen to put their name in the public arena. The two that are in the public arena on the other side of the argument very much have been Candace Owens and Kanye West have been the two. Now, Kanye West was actually a visitor visa. He wasn't coming on a public speaking tour. But my view was that the Heil Hitler song and straight of Nazism just went to such an extent that even a visit of visa wasn't appropriate.
HAMISH MACDONALD: You represent a diverse seat in Western Sydney. Can you describe what the nature of, I guess, community sentiment is right now? You've referred to sort of discord, disharmony in Australia generally. Here in Sydney, how would you describe it right now?
TONY BURKE: One of the great challenges we've got right now is people - people sometimes feeling alone and people feeling that they’re wanting to know whether or not they've got the backing of their government. You and I will go through our lives in Australia without ever receiving religious or racial discrimination, but that's not true of almost any of my neighbours where I am. And words can be bullets and one of the worst things when this sort of bigotry arrives and is amplified is people feel isolated and wonder whether that's everyone's view.
HAMISH MACDONALD: I mean, members of the Jewish community here in Sydney are saying that's how they feel now that they don't have the government's back.
TONY BURKE: Absolutely. And that's why --
HAMISH MACDONALD: Sorry, that the government doesn't have their back.
TONY BURKE: Yeah. That's why when the east Melbourne synagogue fire happened, it happened late on a Friday. So, on the - by the time I knew about was about the Sabbath had started, so I couldn't actually call anyone. So, Skye and my wife and I, we just flew down to Melbourne, waited until people turned their phones on in the evening and said, do you want to see us tomorrow. So, that immediately I could physically be there present, not simply in solidarity with the Jewish community over that horrific antisemitic attack, but also to be able to make clear to the nation that these attacks are an attack on Australia when in a multicultural nation, you attack any part of us because of who we are, and that is an attack on the nation itself. And any chance I get to get that message out, I'll do it. Whether it's turning up after a horrific attack like that or whether it's blocking a visa from somebody who wants to incite discord in Australia.
HAMISH MACDONALD. So, you do say to Jewish Australians, Sydneysiders, that as a government, you do have their back?
TONY BURKE: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I say to everyone, including the people listening right now, you should never blame other members of the Australian community for the horrific views you see on the other side of the world. There are tropes that affect - that affect so many different communities. There are Jewish tropes about conspiracy theories that then link in and people blame people in Australia for what they see the government of Israel doing. That is wrong. And similarly, there's a trope against Muslim Australians trying to link them to terrorism. That is wrong. And so, when I see people wanting to apply to come here where the purpose of their visit is to espouse their views, then I'm going to have a look at those views. As Australians here, there's freedom of speech on the airwaves, media organisations will choose who they want, but I can send a signal about whether or not someone's got the welcome mat out from the Australian Government. And, you know - and I think drawing those hard lines also allows us to keep the public support for some really good, compassionate things that we're doing. Out of parts of Gaza and parts of Israel at the moment, we've had both Palestinians and Israelis seek refuge in Australia as a safer place to live. And we don't talk about it a lot, but we've been providing humanitarian visas for some people, they've now found their way to become permanent residents in Australia. We are able to do that on the basis that people can have the confidence that when it's hatred that someone wants to bring here, we draw a really sharp line, because that's not who we are.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Tony Burke, good to see you.
TONY BURKE: Great to be back.
ENDS