In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into social cohesion.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Rita Panahi:
Joining me now as former Labour MP Michael Danby, and Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Colleen Harkin. Michael, I’ll start with you. Is this a failure of our counterterrorism services?
Michael Danby:
Yes, it is. Once he was identified, Australians would’ve thought automatically that the police and the security services would’ve put out a ring to his family to see, surprise, surprise that his father owned six guns. Now, that would’ve been reason to expose and report him. It should have been automatic and hopefully it will be from now on.
ASIO has generally done a very good job in exposing the Iranian Intelligence Services, coordinating all of these attacks on targets all over Australia, including burning down the synagogue. And God forbid that these ISIS people, these ISIS-linked people who went to training with the Bangsamoro, again, something that ASIO should have picked up might actually be a revenge operation for the Iranian Intelligence Service.
Rita Panahi:
Well, we’re going to find out a lot more about this case, but Colleen, the PM has been quick to make this about gun control and that has its merits, but a terrorist isn’t going to not get a gun. They’re going to get a gun illegally. Is this just a diversion because he doesn’t really want to tackle the deeper issues here? And we’re talking about radicalization. We’re talking about mass migration without assimilation, all those issues that he knows are hot button issues with the electorate that he’d rather ignore.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah, completely. I mean, of course, you can’t legislate away hate. And being able to get a gun and not being … We have the toughest gun laws perhaps in the world. And so it’s a bit of an insult, I think, to sort of try and turn this around and pivot into a conversation about guns. The prime minister has given a fairly mealy mouth kind of response to all of this and has been very careful to try and avoid using the vocabulary that needs to be used, which is this was an Islamic terrorist attack.
And until we actually use the correct vocabulary, we won’t be getting to anywhere near addressing the problems. Just saying it’s antisemitic is putting the focus on the Jewish community. The focus actually has to be on the Islamic terrorist attack component. And what are we doing about that? So until we actually use the right terminology and we’re prepared to face what the actual problems are, we’re not going to get anywhere. And unfortunately, I suspect we’ll see more of this.
Rita Panahi:
Well, yeah, words are important and they have to be using clear, accurate language here. Now, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has come under fire for the government’s failure to act on the warnings of antisemitism. Victoria Teplitsky’s father was shot as he tried to escape the gunmen on Sunday Night. He has undergone surgery in hospital. She accused Tony Burke and the Prime Minister of committing treason.
Victoria Teplitsky:
Tony Burke, as far as I’m concerned, sorry, and Wong, and Albanese, they’re committing treason upon Australia. They’re betraying Australia with the way that they’ve handled everything. I don’t believe anything that he says. I don’t think anyone does. And they’re bringing unvetted people into the country more and more for votes. And I’m sorry if I’m not being politically correct, I’m just a person. This is not what I do, but I feel very betrayed. I think Australia should feel very betrayed by the Wong, Albanese government.
Rita Panahi:
Tony Burke has responded to those accusations on Nine earlier today.
Channel 9 Host:
You would’ve just heard, of course, we spoke to Victoria. Her father was shot here on Sunday. The community is seething. The Jewish community has been warning the government about an imminent attack of the very nature that we saw. No one wanted it to happen, but they say they are not surprised. And they blame you. She accused you of treason. She accused you and the government of treason of not looking after the Jewish community and the Australian community as a whole. How do you respond to that? Because they feel as though they have been left out.
Tony Burke:
Look, if I start with this, that where things are so raw, the last thing I’m going to do is be in an argument with someone who’s gone through that with their parent. And I was listening to the interview while I was waiting to come on. So I’ve heard every word of it. Can I say the government has never flinched on the principle that people have a right to feel safe and to be safe in Australia and that antisemitism is an evil that needs to be stamped out?
Rita Panahi:
Michael, is he right? Has the government not flinched? Have they carried out every action they could carry out to keep the Jewish community safe?
Michael Danby:
No, he’s done too much. He’s the one who welcomed the ISIS bride, turned a blind eye to the telescope. He’s the one who admitted 3,000 Gazans with barely any security vetting. He’s the one who for years worked at ALP conferences for a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and he got his way within the government when they did that.
Now, all of this rhetoric is set and, as you know, the mindset for more simple people out in the Western suburbs, out in Tony’s electorate, who think that this is the will of the government and that there is a different atmosphere in Australia that empowers and enables them. I’m not saying, as that woman did, that he’s guilty of treason, but he’s made wrong policy steps, which have led to this change in the atmosphere and the ability of certain individuals to feel that they’re free to act for these terrible ends.
Rita Panahi:
Colleen, the anger towards politicians, particularly the Prime Minister, Penny Wong, Tony Burke, but also Greens MPs who visited the scene, the anger is palpable that, that community is absolutely fed up with the excuses and the meaningless motherhood statements that seem to come out every time someone …
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah, yeah.
Rita Panahi:
Anytime anything happens, but obviously what we saw on Sunday, one of the darkest days in Australia’s history.
Colleen Harkin:
And of course, the Jewish community are feeling at the hardest and the closest, but I think all Australians are sick to death of trying to step around in case of offending somebody about having the hard conversations that we have to have. This has been allowed to fester for years. From October 9th when there were the flames being thrown on the steps of the Opera House, ever since we’ve had restaurants attacked, we’ve had graffiti, we’ve had intimidation, we’ve had process every weekend, week in, week out, people have been really feeling intimidated over this and it’s all been allowed to happen. Israel Folau quoted the Bible and was run out of town and we’ve had this sort of scenario where the pro Palestinian movement has been allowed to say and do unfettered, extremely problematic things and nothing has happened.
Rita Panahi:
The intimidation, the acts of violence have been extreme. And we saw right here in Melbourne, the reaction from the police when people were peacefully protesting anti-lockdown measures. So we know they’re capable of tackling protestors, but Michael, they’ve just been completely reluctant. In fact, as we’ve shown on this station number of times, if someone waving an Israeli flag went past one of these protests, they were the ones who would be arrested and taken away so they didn’t cause the protestors to act violently. It was always about appeasing that group rather than controlling them or expecting them to abide by the law.
Michael Danby:
So they had the mindset of keeping the peace at any cost, not enforcing the law. And it was worse in Victoria, if you ask me, the New South Wales. New South Wales had that terrible scene at the beginning of the police standing around while the extremists yelled out, “Gas the Jews,” or whatever they were saying on the steps of the Opera House. But in Victoria, we let this go for two years in the city. People were intimidated, people were harassed, abuse was yelled out at people visiting. Victims of terrorism were chased to their hotels. Remember that?
Rita Panahi:
Yep.
Michael Danby:
And this all sets, as I said before, a mindset. So it’s not only the fault of the political leadership, but particularly in Victoria. I think the Victoria Police have changed with the new commissioner now and have become more active, but it will long lasts, better late than never. And I just hope that there aren’t any further incidents that these people have become so empowered that they think they can repeat this.
Rita Panahi:
And we talk about anger towards politicians. That was evident last night in Caulfield Shule, Premier Jacinta Allan was there and that she was booed and the community is understandably, you could say, irate with what is happening.
Now, in the wake of this attack, Australian Jews are increasingly considering leaving the country and heading to Israel for their own safety. Michael Ginsburg is an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a member of Melbourne’s Jewish community. He told Australian Financial Review. “It’s embarrassing to say that it’s probably more dangerous in Australia to be Jewish than most places in the world.”
And Colleen, that is a sentiment that is increasingly shared by Jewish Australians, even before what happened on Sunday. I hear it all the time. And I think, really, it’s shameful for the whole country that we’ve got a community that feels this way.
Colleen Harkin:
I think the average Australian is shaking their head and saying, “What has happened to our country? How did we get here and how are we going to fix it?” Because to have Jewish people feel that they’re safer in Israel than they are here is an absolute disgrace reflection on how we’ve allowed this to happen.
I mean, the universities have been complicit in this and allowing those sit-ins for such a long time and almost festering a scenario where young people have been … To be anti-Semitic is almost fashionable. All of this, all the attitude that Michael has just spoken about has been able to permeate. And to have a situation where people genuinely don’t feel safe in our own country is just shocking.
Rita Panahi:
How much has Australia’s foreign policy, Michael, contributed to that anti-Semitic sentiment? How much has it emboldened those who hold these views?
Michael Danby:
So you’ve seen the various rabbis at the commemorations in Bondi say that Jewish people, Israel is very much part of their persona. You can be a loyal Australian, you can disagree with the Netanyahu government as any normal person has a right to, but it’s very important. Our families live there, all of our prayers and all of our history are based there. King David’s Temple was there thousands of years ago.
And when you say death to the IDF, when you say from the river to the sea, all of these kinds of extremist slogans that these groups have been yelling out at passes by and at visiting tourists and at people, hostage victims, families in hotels, this all creates an atmosphere that bloke in the Financial Review is right, that some people are thinking that it’s safer to be over there, especially now the war is over than here in Australia.
Rita Panahi:
Well, we saw the exodus of Jews from countries like France and Belgium, and we followed. We’ve watched that happen and we didn’t do anything to fix it. Michael Danby, Colleen Harkin, thank you so much for your time tonight.
This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 16 December 2025 has been edited for clarity.
