Allow me to start on a personal note.
On Sunday night, 16 people were killed and some 50 people wounded by two Islamic terrorists who shot at the Jewish community celebrating the start of Hanukkah at the Chanukah by the Sea festival on Bondi Beach.

The Bondi victims include Alexander Kleytman, 87, a holocaust survivor and a close friend of my son’s family. Today is the funeral of Alexander Kleytman, and I forward our deep condolences to Mr Kleytman’s family and to my daughter-in-law Anna and her parents, Mila and Leo. Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time.

Looking at broader issues, the Bondi massacre has tested Australia’s social cohesion as never before. Although antisemitism was present in Australia before Hamas attacked Israel, following the tragic events of 7 October 2023, antisemitism has risen to deeply troubling levels, and some Australian Muslim leaders welcomed this atrocity. A prominent Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun immediately celebrated the killings of Israelis at a rally in front of Lakemba Mosque, describing it as “a day of victory”. The next day, well before Israel took military action against Hamas in Gaza, a demonstration involving hundreds of Hamas supporters took place in front of the Sydney Town Hall and marched to the Opera House with shouts including “F..k the Jews!” and worse.
Although such calls breached Australian law and ran counter to the core tenets of Australian multiculturalism, law enforcement authorities and political leaders initially took minimal action. The only person told by the police to move on was someone carrying the Israeli flag.
The Albanese government’s initial response to outbreaks of antisemitism was to couple its denunciations of antisemitism with equivalent denunciations of Islamophobia, although there were far fewer attacks against the Islamic community.
Following the Opera House demonstrations, talks were held between government officials and pro-Palestinian advocates, resulting in anti-Israeli rhetoric being toned down at subsequent pro-Palestinian demonstrations. However, antisemitic sentiments continued, and synagogues have been set on fire and vandalised, Jewish childcare centers and cars in residential areas have been firebombed, and schools have been targeted with graffiti. Radicalised preachers continued to spread anti-Semitic messages.

On 9 July 2024, the government appointed Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism and established the Office of Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
Segal’s Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism was presented on 11 July 2025. See: J. Segal, Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism. “A policy-oriented framework for government and the Australian community 2025” https://www.aseca.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-07/2025-aseca-plan.pdf. The Terms of Reference given to Ms Segal are available on: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2024/fa-240700972-document-released.PDF
The Report concluded that the “foundation of our nation” was at risk as Jewish people faced fearful and disrupted lives. It noted that antisemitism in Australia has become a mainstream threat, “ingrained and normalised and normalised within academia and the cultural space”, challenging national values, social cohesion and public safety.

From October 2023 to September 2024, antisemitic incidents surged by 316%, with over 2,000 cases reported – threats, assaults, vandalism and intimidation. In October and November 2023 alone, episodes increased by over 700% compared to the previous year, reflecting incitement by those with extremist views and misinformation in the media and online. These figures exclude much of the hate online, where antisemitism has exploded. (Page 4 of the Report)
The Plan is a bold call to action seeking to address the root causes of antisemitism, educate Australians about it, and ensure the Jewish community is protected. The report also called for strengthening legislation on antisemitic conduct and “intimidating protest activity,” for strict screening of foreigners entering Australia for antisemitic views, monitoring media and stripping government funding from arts bodies and universities if they fail to combat antisemitism.
The Prime Minister, who stood alongside Ms Segal for the launch of her plan, said that some recommendations would be implemented quickly, while others would require long-term consideration. Concerns were raised that some of her recommendations might compromise freedom of speech.

But since 11 July, the government has done nothing to implement the report.

The post-massacre government proposal to further restrict gun ownership in Australia is only a partial and limited response. We need to do more to stop Islamic hate preachers and hate-spreading pro-Palestinian demonstrations from undermining social cohesion in Australia. We also need to take another look at the refugee and migrant intake to ensure that we are selecting people who approve of our democratic system and accept our way of life and values.

In mid-November 2025, my wife Hanna and I travelled to Barcelona, Spain, to attend celebrations of 100 years of the Harkness Fellowship. I was invited to address the Harkness@100 conference at a session titled “International Relations and Diplomacy: Navigating a Complex World”. My address titled “The Impact of the International Human Rights Law on Domestic Human Rights. The Case of Australia” is attached below.
I was a Harkness Fellow between 1984 and 1986 during Ronald Regan’s presidency. During my time, the Harkness Fellowship program (see: https://harknessfellows.org.uk/history-of-harkness-fellowships) was much broader than it is today, with a focus on Health Care Policy and Practice.
In 1984, fellowships were awarded to four Australians (myself, Christine Nixon, Michael L’Estrange and Glyn Davis) for stays in the United States lasting up to 21 months and including travel across the USA. The Harkness Fellowships were set up in 1925 by Edward Harkness and were envisioned as a “reverse Rhodes Scholarships”. The initial purpose of it was ‘To do something for the welfare of mankind' and to advance international understanding, and in particular to maintain the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the United Kingdom. Now, it provides a unique leadership development experience for mid-career professionals, policymakers and researchers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand,Norway, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. It is a very exclusive program offering about 40 places. Candidates were expected to demonstrate an excellent academic record as well as leadership potential and exemplary qualities of character, and be under 31 years old.
My wife and I, along with our three children, Adam, Agatha and Alexander, arrived in New York in August 1984 and completed the Harkness Fellowship program in San Francisco in March 1986. I undertook my postgraduate studies at Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the University of California, Berkeley. My research focused on human rights, with a particular emphasis on refugee rights, public administration and maintaining social cohesion in diverse societies.
At Harvard, Professor Nathan Glaser, of the Graduate School of Education, was my research sponsor. I have also attended lectures by Professor Glenn Loury and William Kristol of the J.F. Kennedy School of Government, and worked with Prof. Henry Steiner, Philip Alston, Ewa Eliasz-Brantley, and Novi Pillay at the Harvard Law School, and with many others, focusing mainly on the concepts of equality, racial discrimination, affirmative action and comparable worth. I also held useful meetings with many NGO’s including with Clarence Pendleton, Chair, US Commission of Civil Rights, Alex Rodriques, Chair, Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and his senior staff, Jonathan Fine, President, American Committee for Human Rights, Prof. Owen Harries of Heritage Foundation, Prof. Samuel Huntington, William Kristol, Charles Murray, leaders of the National Endowment for Democracy, and many others. I also attended many human rights-focused conferences and visited the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Commission des droits de la
personne du Québec.
Georgetown University was very different. Rev Thomas Gannon, SJ, Director of the Woodstock Theological Centre, was my sponsor, and I was given an office in the Centre. My research focused on the international human rights system, working with high ranking officials from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Department of State (including with Elliot Abrams (who was then Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, US Department of Justice and other Washington bodies, including the US Civil Rights Commission, Heritage Foundation, Centre for Migration Studies, and many others. It was also interesting to meet various scholars of Polish origin, such as Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Carter; Wladyslaw Sila-Nowicki, a prominent Polish dissident; Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Radio Free Europe, Tadeusz Wittlin, a writer; Prof.Henry Albinski, Australian Studies Centre, Pennsylvania University; and Jan Karski, a witness of the Holocaust and Czeslaw Milosz, a writer who won Nobel Prize in Literature.
At the University of California, Berkeley, I worked with Professor Frank Newman and many others on the legal status of Latin American asylum seekers and the refugee sanctuary movement. Again, meeting many interesting people, including Prof. Thomas Sowell, of Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, Paul Hoffman, National Coordinator of US Amnesty International, Peter Schey, Director of LA Center for Immigration Rights and many others.
I also undertook a month-long human rights trip to South America which took me to earthquake-damaged Mexico City, to Peru, dealing with Sandero Luminoso insurgency, to Pinochet’s Chile, where I visited political prisoners in Santiago prison, to Argentina, recovering from martial law, where I spoke to families of the disappeared under the military dictatorship. and to Brazil where I met top human rights lawyers and advocates. On my way back to Australia, I stopped in Geneva to attend the 42nd Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
To sum up, the Harkness Fellowship has charged my batteries for many years to come, and my contribution to the well-being of Australian society would not have been possible without it.
My presentation: 2025-11-14 BARCELONA FINAL – HARKNSS@100 PRESENTATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS