Dreyfus's latest actions have vindicated the audience’s scorn.

Until recently I was convinced that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had no sense of humour. Zero, zip, zilch. How wrong I was.

In my defence, the priggish Dreyfus had given every impression he is devoid of humour. It was, I had thought, a perception reinforced beyond doubt in 2023 when he berated a female journalist at a press conference, reminding her he was a “Minister of the Crown” and raising his voice as he angrily told her “Do not interrupt”.

But it turns out he is an adroit piss-taker, albeit one with a dark sense of humour. Last week we learned that Dreyfus has, through Labor’s how-to-vote cards, urged his constituents of Isaacs to preference Greens candidate Matthew Kirwan at number two.

That’s right. Dreyfus, a prominent Jewish-Australian federal cabinet minister, has a done a vote-swapping deal with the party that abhors, irrespective of what its mouthpieces claim, the very existence of Israel.

Matthew Kirwan at a protest outside of Clare O'Neil's office calling for permanent protection for Palestinian refugees.Picture: Matthew Kirwan/Instagram

We look forward to Dreyfus’s next comedy act. Perhaps he will claim deadpan he had no choice but to make this deal, given he holds his seat by only by a 9.5 per cent margin and Isaacs has been continuously held by Labor for just the last 30 years?

This is the same bloke who in January, following international criticism of the Albanese government’s appallingly lax response to a massive increase in anti-Semitism in this country, was sent to Israel to “demonstrate Australia’s long-standing friendship with the Israeli people and our commitment to peace in the Middle East”.

It was seen as a cynical ploy. Shadow frontbencher Julian Leeser, who is also Jewish, denounced the trip as a “pre-election gimmick”.

At the time I thought Dreyfus should be given some slack. After all, he is the son of a Holocaust survivor. Who knows, I thought, maybe his is the only voice in cabinet lambasting those who downplay or outright ignore anti-Semitism, whether their motivation is to shore up Western Sydney and inner-city seats or to placate the growing number of party members – including those at ministerial level - who despise Israel.

I can think of many ways to demonstrate Australia’s longstanding friendship with the Israeli people. Favourably preferencing a candidate who has called for Israel to be held accountable for “genocide and apartheid” is not one of them, but that is exactly what Dreyfus has done.

You would think voters, particularly Jewish-Australians, are entitled to an explanation. Dreyfus finally broke his silence on Wednesday when asked but offered nothing substantive. The decision was a “matter for the party”, he insisted repeatedly.

That is a weasel excuse. To imply this outcome was out of his hands is a misrepresentation. For example, Dreyfus’s colleague and fellow religionist Josh Burns, who holds the Melbourne seat of Macnamara, is running an open ticket. His Labor predecessor Michael Danby, who is also of the same faith, told Sky News this week Dreyfus’s decision was “not justifiable” and “not ethical”.

Let’s take a quick selection of quotes from the Greens’ federal representatives to remind the Attorney-General how entrenched hatred of Israel is within the Greens. We begin with Western Australian senator Dorinda Cox. “I stand in solidarity with Palestinian people in their struggle against settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing,” she declared last year.

That same year Queensland senator Penny Allman-Payne said that military exports to Israel further the “genocidal ambitions of an apartheid state”.

Australian Greens Senator Dorinda Cox. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman Penny Allman-Payne. Picture: Adam Head

The three Brisbane-based Greens MPs are equally condemnatory. Stephen Bates (Brisbane) said last year that parliament “must not continue to support Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza,” a phrase repeated verbatim the next month by Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan). Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith) claimed in 2024 that Israel was conducting “a manufactured and engineered famine” in the region.

Tasmanian senator Peter Whish-Wilson resorted to false equivalence to smear Israel in 2023 when he demanded an investigation into “war crimes committed by both parties in this horrific conflict”. That’s the same Whish-Wilson who in 2014 took umbrage at the practice of referring to Islamic State medievalists as “terrorists”. It “demonises people,” he complained.

As for Queensland senator Larissa Waters, she inadvertently revealed much about the Greens’ attitudes towards those who would destroy Israel, when she wrote in March that Gaza has “endured an invasion that … should have never occurred”.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Likewise, South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young said in 2023 that “the invasion in Gaza … cannot be justified”. And less than a fortnight after the horrific October 7 atrocities, Western Australian senator Jordon Steele-John called for parliament “to condemn the war crimes of the State of Israel” and “to oppose its impending invasion” of Gaza. In other words, Israel has no right to defend itself.

In 2023, Tasmanian senator Nick McKim claimed, “The Zionist lobby’s playbook is to use the media to attack and undermine pro-Palestine figures here in Australia in a bid to cloud … the destruction of Gaza and the slaughter of the people who live there”.

South Australian senator Barbara Pocock said in 2024 described the situation in Gaza as “unfolding genocide”. In that same speech she called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Australia and the sanctioning of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet. She did not mention Hamas.

David Shoebridge pictured speaking at the pro Palestine rally in Hyde Park Sydney. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

In 2024, NSW senator David Shoebridge speciously claimed that “military equipment trade” between Australia and Israel was used to “literally fuel the genocide”. In a provocative insinuation, he also asserted that Israeli companies were producing weapons that were “literally being tested on the Palestinian people as we speak”. Tested?

Newbie Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May was, at least for a Greens politician, unusually tempered when last year she referred to the Israeli government’s “bloody assault” in Gaza. No doubt she is still smarting from much-deserved backlash in 2016 when, as Greens candidate for Melbourne Ports, she insulted her would-be constituents when she withdrew from a debate with her Labor and Liberal contenders after learning it would be co-hosted by The Australian Jewish News and Zionism Victoria.

Greens senator Mahreen Faruqi pictured at a press conference at the Teachers & School Staff for Palestine rally in Bankstown. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

One could write an entire column and then some on Greens deputy leader and senator Mehreen Faruqi’s diatribes against Israel. But nothing better sums up her contempt for that country than her concluding a speech in 2021 by declaring “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Then there is Greens leader Adam Bandt, who has a well-earned reputation for obtuseness and dissembling when Hamas is mentioned. When its members last month tortured and slaughtered brave Palestinians who protested the terrorist group’s stranglehold, who was to blame in Bandt’s opinion? Why, Israel of course.

As for Dreyfus, small wonder he was heckled in February when he told the Sky News Anti-Semitism Summit: “The Australian government stands with Jewish-Australians in the fight against anti-Semitism”. His latest actions have vindicated the audience’s scorn.

It is simple as this, Mark Dreyfus. When it comes to anti-Semitism, your conscience cannot be a matter for the party.