Royal Commission – Treehouse Writers

This is a quick note because my week is just a tad busier than usual. First, there’s always catching up on paperwork to do after Yom Kippur, because people always send me things, assuming it’s a normal day. I’ve made a little list of some of the things that must be done by Wednesday afternoon. It’s 14 tasks long and some of them are quite hefty tasks.

The question is, why Wednesday?

I’ve talked about the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion at great length, but I didn’t mention the other one. I’m giving my testimony as part of a group testimony on Wednesday afternoon. It’s into disability. I tick all the “Who has been left out in our current system” box.

I’m not doing a written submission for this. My right eye is problematic and my vision is even more impaired than usual, so it would be a lot harder than the earlier submissions. But the RC into disabilities is allowing for such things and a group of us is being brought together online to work through the framework and explain the things the Commission needs to know about our lives.

I’ve never done things for two Royal Commissions within six months before. I had a whole submission published and cited in the report for one, many years ago. They’re not an ordinary part of our lives, but they’re one of the places and times when we can interface with government on issues that are beyond the ordinary. They are terrifyingly expensive, but they’re also exceptionally valuable. Even when the government in power pretends to accept the outcomes of a Commission and never does anything, the process shifts Australia and makes us choose our paths more carefully. Initially, the RC into Antisemitism caused a tsunami of hate, but as people saw that tsunami and thought it through, I think the hate is diminishing a little. I won’t know, however, until the studies of it are in.

If I remember and if it’s not classified, next week I’ll let you know what happened on Wednesday. The government methods of other countries always entertain me, so maybe they will also entertain some of you.

If any of you would like a 101 on our parliamentary system and an explanation of how we vote, I’m happy to explain. We are so different from the US and Canada! And all this stuff used to be my meat and drink. Being Jewish excludes me from those circles right now, but I had 20 years of working to help people within the system and I loved it.

I am late! I am late and want to talk about Jewish matters.

The Australian Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has just released the total number of submissions and it’s a lot higher than anyone expected. I predicted 10,000 submissions and everyone around me said that 5,000 would be a lot and would reflect what was happening in our country a lot more. Even 10,000 was considered an overprediction because of the way most people saw antisemitism in Australia, in other words. So what does 20,000 mean? That things matter. That people have things to say.

What the submissions give us is something amazing, especially given that this is a census year and that we can fit those submissions into a snapshot of Australia in 2026 (the last census was in 2021, and you can see what it shows about jewish Australia here: The-Jewish-Population-of-Australia-Report_2021-Census-1.pdf . There are issues with the way data was collected and how unsafe the collection made Jews, and that Judaism was not listed as a religious or cultural option ie people had to write it in manually, but it still gives some indication of who we are in Jewish Australia. We have a surprising number of old people, for instance, and an unsurprisingly high average level of education.

Put these 20,000 submissions into analysis the way that Mass Obersvation Project has done for the UK, and it becomes an enormous data base for research into one aspect of Australian life: how people see Jewish Australia and how Jewish Australia sees itself. What we are. Who we are. How we deal with hate. This will lead to insights into how Australia sees other cultural and religious groups in the country. It has the capacity to change Australia’s self-knowledge.

What’s really interesting is how silent the far left is about the number of submissions. We don’t yet know if those submissions reflect their views as leading or typical. I strongly suspect that their views are bigoted and hateful, but I’m willing to wait and see how the data presents itself. And I want to know what Australia does with all this information about how we think and feel.

Given that the trigger was the Bondi murders and there is a very strong likelihood that those murders were caused by links to certain terrorist groups, we can’t exclude the outside world. But we can take a close look at ourselves and find out who we are and what we want to be.

Australia is in a strange place politically. Everything’s changing. I suspect those 20,000 submissions are part of that change. Who we are and how safe we are and the paths we take are all up for grabs in this very interesting year.

Tag: Royal Commission

Not another Royal Commission!

Australia – again