At times, finding the ‘centre’ in the AJA’s ‘centre-right’ philosophy can be challenging. In 2019, Adler lambasted “leftist activist doctors” who dared to attribute the bushfires to climate change. In the Marriage Equality postal vote, one of its leaders defended a controversial Bill Leak cartoon that compared queer activists to the SS. The AJA has regularly advocated for the abolition of “gender fluidity education”, which it describes as “child abuse for a Marxist social engineering agenda”.
Liam Getreu, Executive Director of NIF Australia, told me: “Jewish organisations shouldn’t platform prominent political figures who are openly racist, homophobic, misogynistic or who traffic in bizarre conspiracy theories … We won’t want their hateful, toxic views rippling through our community.”