The other day I was castigated here when I wrote that the UK has fallen.

You know what, I’m right, the UK has fallen.

Australia’s 14th High Court chief justice Stephen Gageler AC was appointed by the Labor government after the retirement of Susan Kiefel AC, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus praising his ‘leadership and deep knowledge and understanding of constitutional law’.

The Coalition’s shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash also issued a statement congratulating Justice Gageler and applauding his ‘extensive experience’.

On Wednesday November 8, the most senior judge in the High Court read out the ruling on the case of a Rohingya paedophile and asylum seeker known as NZYQ, who had been in detention for eight years after confessing to raping a 10-year-old boy.

NZYQ arrived in Australia illegally by boat in 2012 but had his bridging visa cancelled in 2015 when he confessed. The Rohingya are a stateless Islamic people who live in western Myanmar but are not citizens so he couldn’t be deported there.

NZYQ challenged his detention because he faced the prospect of a being incarcerated for the rest of his life.

The fact the High Court ruled in his favour has meant he and 83 other detainees – almost all of whom had their visas cancelled over character issues and violent crime convictions – are now free in the community.

Almost 80 per cent of them were previously convicted for ‘very serious’ and violent offences including murder, paedophilia and rape.

It will cost about $180,000 a month to electronically monitor the former detainees with ankle bracelets – and taxpayers will be footing the hefty bill.

They will also be subject to mandatory curfews and will receive income support payment of about $660 a fortnight.

The landmark decision has left Anthony Albanese’s government scrambling to explain how it plans to keep Australians safe, with Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announcing strict new visa conditions for the former detainees on Thursday.

Both Labor and the Liberal party opposed the decision to free the asylum seekers.

During Question Time on Wednesday, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused Mr Albanese of avoiding the issue by flying to the APEC leaders’ summit in San Francisco when he should be staying in Australia to sort it out.

‘You just met with President Biden. The first responsibility for you, prime minister, is to be here and take care of the Australian public,’ Mr Dutton said.

Mr Albanese responded by saying Australian prime ministers had always attended APEC leaders’ meetings since the group’s foundation more than 30 years ago.

While Labor announced Justice Gageler’s appointment as chief justice on August 22, he did not start the job until November 6.</em>

On the call, Jeremy Leibler, a Melbourne lawyer and president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, argued the time had come for Jewish leaders to criticise Wong publicly.

He and others expressed concerns that Wong might be changing the government’s policy, which was to accept that the Israel Defence Forces’ invasion of the Gaza Strip was a legitimate defensive action.

Everyone on the call agreed that Leibler and Jillian Segal, the council’s president, would issue a statement saying they were “highly concerned” by Wong’s comments.

The rare, public repudiation illustrates the delicate position of Australia’s Jewish leaders. Preserving a good relationship with Wong and the federal Labor government is crucial; Leibler frequently communicates privately with Wong and her staff.

But they know that Labor MPs nationwide are under intense pressure over the government’s support for Israel from left-wing activists and Australia’s large Muslim community.

On Thursday, two federal Labor MPs, Fatima Payman and Maria Vamvakinou, attended a press conference in Canberra where they called for an immediate ceasefire.

It would likely have long-term consequences for the Jewish community’s relationship with the Labor Party too, driving political donors to the right and alienating left-wing Jews.

Two sources say the Israeli government wanted a visit by Wong or Albanese to demonstrate support, but decided against a formal invitation because it was likely to be rejected.

US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both went to Tel Aviv within days of the October 7 attack. (The Israeli embassy didn’t respond when asked for comment.)

While Jewish leaders who speak to Wong say she accepts that Israel’s existence is under threat, Albanese’s history of left-wing activism has attracted suspicion in Jewish circles. Historic video was recently broadcast on Sky of the prime minister-to-be speaking at anti-Israel rally.

But they also saw that Wong posted a photo of herself on social media meeting the senior Palestinian leader in Australia, Nasser Mashni, after the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was hit on October 17.

Initial reports, from Hamas, that it was attacked by Israel, killing 500 Palestinians, were largely debunked by independent analysts.

Mashni, the president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, is an opponent of the West. “Israel is the domino,” he said last year. “Israel falls over, not just the Middle East – South America, the Africans, the world is a far better place once we destroy Western imperialist control of the world.”

Wong hasn’t posted a photo with an equivalent member of the Jewish lobby since the war began. Wong has been more even-handed in her comments.

Even on Insiders, and in a Guardian article setting out the government’s position, she included qualifications, often ignored in media coverage, which made it harder for Jewish leaders to argue she isn’t supporting Israel against Hamas, which Australia has designated a terrorist organisation.

Instead of calling for a ceasefire – one of the global left’s main demands – she spoke of the “next step towards a ceasefire” that could not “be one-sided”.

“Hamas still holds hostages,” she said on the ABC. “Hamas is still attacking Israel. How Israel defends itself matters.”

Western appeals to spare the Gaza hospitals frustrate Jewish leaders, who say they are used for military purposes.

This week the Israel Defence Forces’ top spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari – carrying a rifle – took reporters to a children’s hospital close to the fighting. He showed them weapons and a room where he said hostages may have been kept. A small kitchen knife was found on the floor.

Later, Israeli soldiers entered Gaza’s largest medical complex, the al-Shifa Hospital, where they filmed about 10 guns, ammunition, protective vests and Hamas military uniforms, some of which they said were hidden behind MRI machines, The New York Times reported.

Fake corpses placed outside the office Victorian Labor MP Ged Kearney this week by pro-Palestinian activists.

Hamas, which has denied basing fighters in the hospital, called the claims “a fabricated story that no one would believe.”

Jewish advocates regard the hospitals as an example of Hamas cynicism that has seduced some Westerners.

The war makes it impossible for independent reporters to verify either side’s assertions.

Leibler says, “I have a lot of respect for Penny Wong. She is a thoughtful and principled person. But when we hear rhetoric such as ‘Israel must stop bombing hospitals’, without the context that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes and civilians as human shields, [that] is misleading and risks perpetuating more mistruths about Israel’s conduct which can have direct consequences here in Australia.

But the response is always the same: “But these marches?” Now perhaps they will say “… and the vote?”

It amazes most Israelis – as it amazes me – that Britain has seen some of the worst scenes of all the anti-Israel marches across the world.

And I say “anti-Israel” for a reason. The first protests in London happened before Israel had even begun its military response to October 7. Rallies were held within hours of the massacres. To most Israelis this is nearly unfeasible.

What other country would see 1,400 of its citizens slaughtered, 240 kidnapped and countless more wounded for life, and not be allowed even a day to mourn?

What other country, having suffered a set of atrocities hardly superseded in the whole history of violence wouldn’t get even one day of sympathy?

Only the Jewish state. And everybody in Israel knows as much.

Pakistan is currently in the process of forcibly deporting two million Afghans.

Nobody cares. Bashar al-Assad is in his twelfth year of killing Muslims in Syria and the world’s cameras turned away long ago.

Only Israel, when involved in any military action, or even when it is simply on the receiving end of extreme violence, cannot rely even on the world’s understanding.

And it is in this light that Israel notices the British politicians calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The ignorance of a large number of figures in British political life, from Humza Yousaf to Jess Phillips, can hardly be exaggerated.

As it happens, a ceasefire of a kind existed in Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, and very painfully, in 2005 – removing every Jew from the strip.

They handed over the land and got rockets in return.

Everyone around the Gaza border and across wider Israel was used to running from rockets to the shelters.

But despite various exchanges over the years, nobody ever foresaw the battalion-sized terrorist attack of October 7.

It was Hamas who broke what ceasefire existed that day when its legions gunned down young people at a music festival, went door to door in small communities, and burned people alive in their homes.

I have been to the sites of many of these massacres. I passed by one – the utterly destroyed kibbutz of Be’eri – earlier this week as I went into Gaza.

It is a reminder of a dream that once was.

Many of the residents of kibbutzim such as Be’eri were peace activists.

I have seen with my own eyes the peacenik literature that lies among the blood stains and looted remains of their houses.

Their dream died with them on October 7.

Not one Israeli believes they can now live with Hamas – a group whose leaders say they want to repeat the October 7 time and again.

To call for a ceasefire now shows an astonishing lack of military understanding but also a horrific lack of decency.

I have watched the Israeli Defence Force manage the evacuation of Gazans from the north of the strip to the south, so that the IDF can try to isolate Hamas and destroy them.

It is a righteous mission, though one that is likely to prove incredibly hard.

I have also met many of the parents of the children and others stolen into Gaza.

They want their children back.

Why has there been no mass movement of MPs – from Labour, say – demanding that there be no ceasefire until Hamas hand back the hostages? Such a move seems to have never been on the cards.

Anti-Israel Labour MPs and others only ever campaign and condemn when they attack Israel.

Perhaps because they know that Hamas would never listen to them anyway.

These MPs are internationalist eunuchs.

But my, do they talk a big game. Especially while they whip along the sectarian politics, which are the real driver of the protests on our streets.

Staff were told about the move via an internal email, which informed them that they would be moving away from “the merit principle” towards a “more inclusive suitability assessment“.

Vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil told ABC Radio Brisbane the suitability assessment would consider factors such as gender and ethnic backgrounds.

Professor Sheil said it would also consider the current demographic breakdown of their various schools and disciplines.

She said women, for example, were under-represented in science and engineering at QUT whereas men were under-represented in teaching and nursing.

She dismissed suggestions that the hiring process should be colourblind, saying that was impossible in practice.

“When people say things like ‘We do this on merit’, they’re actually reflecting the bias of their own experience,” Professor Sheil said.

“There’s so much data on this around selection, whether it’s recruitment into orchestras or into universities.

“There isn’t a way of being colourblind that’s not got some form of bias into it.”

She said staff undertook unconscious bias training, and that the selection committees were chosen with diversity in mind.

She said they would aim to hire a diversity of personalities, such as recruiting more outgoing scientists who were good at industry engagement.

‘We don’t want everybody to look the same’
Professor Sheil denied the policy was a “political” decision, insisting it was a practical move to improve the university’s talent pool.

“We need to access the entire talent pool, and we don’t want everybody to look the same,” she said.

“We need the workforce to reflect the students coming through, and we also know people look at things differently when they come from different backgrounds.

“I’ve been working in improving diversity in academic environments my entire career; it’s got nothing to do with contemporary politics.”

Professor Sheil said she was the first female professor of chemistry in Australia and has subsequently spent her life trying to get more women into science.

Before his departure to San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, for what was his second trip to the US in three weeks and his third this year, the Prime Minister contended, however, that he must go.

Otherwise, he would be the first Australian prime minister to miss APEC since it became a leaders’ summit 30 years ago. (Julia Gillard came home early from Vladivostok in 2012 when her father died).

Other leaders are not so diligent. This time last year, for example, the three annual summits – ASEAN, the G20 and APEC – were held back-to-back over a week in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand respectively.

Joe Biden attended the first two but skipped Bangkok so he could attend his granddaughter’s wedding. He sent Vice-President Kamala Harris to APEC instead.

Similarly, Biden pulled out at the last minute from attending the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in Sydney in May to stay home and sort out the deadlock in Congress over the debt ceiling.

Domestic issues are important, and Biden made a choice. In deciding not to skip APEC, so did Albanese and, in doing so, the longstanding bipartisan support for prime ministerial travel was shattered.

For months, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been dropping the odd bon mot to tap into voter discomfort with a frequently absent prime minister.

On Wednesday, he gave up all pretence and demanded outright that the PM abort his trip to the US and stay home to deal with both the rise of antisemitism in Australia, and the release from immigration detention of more than 84 “hardened criminals” following last week’s High Court decision.

It was a massive stretch to conflate the two issues and was not helpful in terms of trying to maintain social cohesion on the back of the latest Israel-Arab conflict.

In doing what he did, however, Dutton blew up the joint and elicited the angriest response from the Prime Minister since he took office.

Albanese was still shaking with anger after question time at what he deemed to be Dutton’s temerity.

During that skirmish, both men gave as good as they got and ultimately appealed to their respective constituencies, and thus, Dutton was unperturbed by the condemnation that came his way from Albanese and sections of the commentariat.

Sometimes, to make a point, you have to drop a big rock in the pond, and that was his tactic – to drive home growing perceptions among suburban and regional voters – that the PM, via his months-long campaigning for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and his frequent absenteeism, was becoming increasingly detached from suburban and regional voters.

It’s not true, but the perception is growing, and perception in politics is almost everything.

“It’s coming up in our research; wrong priorities, [Albanese’s] not focused on us,” said a Liberal strategist.

By Thursday, as Dutton was doubling down on his criticism of the PM for being abroad while, supposedly, hordes of murderers and rapists roamed the streets, the government had been forced to reconfigure the parliamentary agenda to rush through stopgap legislation to respond to the High Court decision.

Not since Scott Morrison declared a national emergency over a few needles in strawberries and rammed through legislation imposing tough penalties, has the parliament been subject to such rude haste.

On Thursday, curfews, monitoring controls and jail terms for visa breaches were added to the conditions already imposed on those released by the court. The Coalition demanded amendments, and Labor accepted them.

Yet, it had been over a week since the High Court ruled it illegal to indefinitely detain non-citizens who can’t be deported, after hearing the case of a detained Rohingya man who was a convicted child sex abuser but with no prospect of repatriation to Myanmar.

In the interim, the government said it was doing all it could, in co-operation with the states, to ensure community safety, but contended it could not legislate a response until the High Court published its reasons.

The pressure brought to bear by the opposition, talkback radio and breakfast television changed all that and, once more, Labor backbenchers were scratching their heads at how flatfooted the leadership had been

Why, they asked, had the government not been ready with a legislated response so it could move immediately in the event of losing the case?.

“No doubt, we should have had a response ready to roll,” said one MP.

Instead, it allowed itself to be boxed around the ears for a week by the opposition and the tabloid media before being made to look reactionary.

Even during this period, when the government was clearly looking at options, its obsession with secrecy and its growing disdain for transparency meant it refused to answer even basic, harmless questions from journalists about what it was considering.

Instead, all we got were smug answers, such as this from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on Monday in response to a detailed question: “As a government, we will do all that is necessary to keep the Australian community safe.”

This attitude made the hole even bigger for Dutton to drive through and ultimately claim victory following what was, in large part, a confected crisis.

“The government had the ability in June … to be able to respond by way of legislation or other administrative changes to deal with this very real threat to the Australian community,” Dutton told parliament as the bill sailed through the lower house on Thursday.

“So, was legislation drafted in June? Was it drafted in July? Was it drafted in August? Was it drafted in September or October? It wasn’t even drafted 24 hours ago.”

It was Labor’s nightmare and Dutton’s fantasy to be again fighting on immigration issues.

The letter was signed by hundreds of people and if you scroll through the names, the journalists who have signed it – some I know – do not refer to themselves as journalists but media workers.

Did they not want to be recognised as journalists? Perhaps they believe the designation journalist is now no-longer meaningful. After all, being a journalist implies an adherence to certain values and ethical principles.

Like fairness, like factual accuracy, like making sure you are not – and could not be seen to be – pushing an agenda, being an activist for a cause.

It is on that basis that journalists have certain rights.

The right, for instance, to ask questions of people in power and even the right to poke into the lives of people who are not particularly powerful.

The right to protect sources and the right to offer a public interest defence of journalism that breaches privacy laws and even national security laws. Among other rights and privileges.

All this is why the codes of conduct of most media organisations, including the ABC, forbid journalists from being members of a political party or any other organisation that they might one day have to cover.

That’s the price we journalists pay for the rights and privileges we enjoy.

How then does the MEAA letter – signed by media workers, most of whom once called themselves journalists – square with this sort of ethical basis for journalism, for this sort of code of conduct?

This letter is not the only one journalists have signed.

In May 2021, hundreds of journalists and media workers signed a petition urging journalists and media companies to “no-longer prioritise the same discredited spokespeople and tired narratives” and instead make space for the Palestinians who are the victims in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

I assume that included making space for Hamas?

It went on to say that media companies should respect the right of journalists to “publicly and openly express personal solidarity with the Palestinian cause without penalty in their professional lives”.

Is this not troubling?

Journalists demanding the right to a sort of activism for a cause?

Journalists demanding to prioritise some voices over others, on the basis of what these journalists believe about this most complicated conflict.

Is it not troubling that one day they may have to cover the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, or the way that conflict is playing out in Australia? How could their reporting ever betrusted?

Indeed, it has happened. Journalists who signed this petition have written major stories about the conflict and its impact in Australia. They wrote news stories.

Were they “prioritising voices” in their reporting?

Were they activists for the Palestinian cause? Who knows?

But they clearly had a conflict of interest. They should not have been allowed anywhere near the story.

There have been other petitions and letters since the Hamas slaughter of civilians on October 7.

Journalists signed these letters too. There was no mention of October 7 in most of these letters.

They signed a letter produced by the cultural and literary magazine Overland, which is supported by the taxpayers of Victoria.

One of the signatories and instigators of the letter is a senior lecturer in journalism.

The letter is full of the crude jargon of anti-colonialism, so ideologically driven, essentially justifying the Hamas attack, that Barry Jones, the magazine’s patron, described it as “appalling”.

Journalists signed this letter. Including senior journalists who work in the mainstream media.

An increasing number of journalists want to be social-justice warriors, anti-racism warriors, anti-colonialist warriors. This is a trend across the English-speaking world.

In the main, media companies have not called them out.

Mostly, they have been silent.

They cannot remain silent.

Media companies need to get over their timidity and fear of offending their staff.

They must tell their journalists that they cannot sign letters and petitions. That they cannot be promoters of any cause.

The exclamations of celebration over death and pain.

The callousness, inhuman pleasure and amusement over slaughtering innocent lives.

The shameless brutality.

These are monsters.

They can never be reclaimed. They can never be forgiven.

The systemized, organized, methodical approach to killing. Go back and shoot this person in the head. Make sure those girls are dead. The organization of mass killing.

The Gazan ‘innocent civilians’ who came over the border in the 3rd wave that morning, to loot, rape, kill, & capture bodies, live & dead, for Hamas rewards.

The joy of the ‘innocent civilians’ who rejoiced in the streets as hostages & bodies were paraded in the streets.

The cheering.

The spitting and kicking and beating.

The hate.

The cruelty.

The social acceptance of kidnapping and killing Jews in Palestinian society.

The two boys seeing their father killed, watching as a terrorist takes a bottle of coke out of their fridge.

The tortured and raped young girl with her underwear around her ankles, joints bent backwards.

The girls screaming.

The terror.

The burned bodies, wrists tied behind their backs.

Mutilated corpses.

The first responder trying to find live bodies and realizing that everyone, everyone around him was killed.

Evidence of beheadings, babies shot in their cribs, parents shot in front of their children, entire families massacred, the torture and execution of the elderly, people burned alive, and hundreds of young people gunned down while attending a musical festival for peace, were widely reported and verified by video, audio, and forensic evidence.

Most people would be horrified.

Yet in an interview on Lebanese television, Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad hailed the brutal October 7 attack and pledged to repeat the October 7 attack again and again until Israel is “removed,” claiming Hamas “was the victim,” therefore “everything they do is justified.”

That interview was the inspiration for a recent cartoon I drew for the Washington Post depicting Gazi Hamad and his human shields.

But my cartoon was pulled off the Washington Post editorial website amid an internal outcry.

That person is Ghazi Hamad. The caricature of the central figure looks like Ghazi Hamad.

Hamad’s words and the innocents bound to him as human shields and their forced martyrdom reflect the official position of Hamas.

“When I got up in the morning I could see that the phone wasn’t working and so I immediately decided to head into the office,” Ms Rosmarin told the committee.

“At that time, I thought I would call the team on the way because it is quite unusual to for both the data and voice networks, which are run separately, to be down together.

“Once I was in the car and I couldn’t not call the team, I realised it must be a more serious outage since I was already en route, I continued driving and I did not stop and switch to an alternative SIM.”

Ms Hanson-Young was quick to respond, tersely pointing out the similarity between how ordinary Australians and the Optus CEO discovered the problem.

“You woke up, your phone wasn’t working so you knew something was going on, many Australians did the same thing,” she said.

“But of course, you are the boss of Optus. So you knew something really wasn’t working.”

When pressed on what sort of backup Optus had to ensure its leadership team could still communicate during an outage,

Ms Rosmarin explained some key members had extra SIM cards on hand but acknowledged the system needed to be improved.

The Greens Senator then issued a stinging rebuke to the Optus chief.

“You’re the second largest communications company in the country and you couldn’t communicate,” she declared.

“But some of your people have the ability to switch SIMS … most Australians don’t have that. You had insurance for yourselves, but your customers didn’t.

“Do you think that is a problem?”