STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (13:42): At the end of May, I was able to visit the Sydney Jewish Museum, and I thought to myself, when I entered the building in which John Monash laid the foundation stone about 100 years ago—it is a great institution to have, and there are many hundreds of thousands of Sydney and New South Wales schoolchildren who have been through the Sydney Jewish Museum.

But I thought to myself how far we've come but how bad it is that these issues of antisemitism still require so much support and effort and consideration. At the moment, the museum is undertaking a significant renovation, and, when it reopens next year, it will have a complete display of contemporary antisemitism, which encompasses the tragedy that happened only a couple of kays down the road at Bondi on 14 December last year, and so I wanted to acknowledge the great work that has gone over many generations in building up this institution.

The Sydney Jewish community is one of many communities that has given more than it has ever received in our wonderful country, but it is a matter of huge regret that we must now teach the dangers of antisemitism in a historical but also in a contemporary context. The museum, of course, has always done a good job of representing the Holocaust, but now it must also speak of the extraordinary events that have happened in our own time and in our own city, such as at Bondi last year.