Thursday, 6 March 2025

Community safety

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:07): (1496) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Local Government. I would like to congratulate Ballarat City Council for its swift and just action regarding antisemitic commentary. As has been reported in the media, Ballarat City Council has terminated a $285,000 grant to BREAZE, Ballarat Renewable Energy and Zero Emissions, an activist environmental group in Ballarat, over the conduct of one of its board members, who has been reported as sharing antisemitic material online and making derogatory comments against Jewish people. The post on X blamed Jews for the rise in antisemitism and called Israel ‘a stain on the planet’. Threads on the post included a statement from the board member tagging foreign minister Penny Wong, which said that the Israel Defense Forces continued to:

Dehumanise and torment people of Gaza in similar style to the way Nazis dehumanised Jews during the holocaust.

The board member who retweeted a post said the antisemitism was a reaction to harmful Jewish behaviour and a rejection of Jewish supremacy. When the comments were raised by council with BREAZE, they refused to sack the board member, citing no reason and no power to sack the board member, and the board member refused to resign. The council were left with no choice but to terminate the funding agreement, and rightly so. The board member’s X page has since been wiped. Later in February the board member decided of their own choosing to step down because, according to news reports, they did not want BREAZE to lose funding. The council stuck with their decision, and should be applauded. The action that I seek from the minister is that they write to all 79 councils within Victoria with the view of preventing grant funding going to groups that will not stand against antisemitism.