Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne has backed his Liberal counterpart Tim Smith’s condemnation of alleged anti-Semitic attempts to undermine Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
Mr Smith last night accused Frydenberg challenger Oliver Yates of being a “nasty liar” who is behind an “anti-Semitic” citizenship challenge to the Treasurer’s ability to sit in federal parliament.
The Member for Kew, whose seat overlaps with Mr Frydenberg’s eastern suburbs seat of Kooyong, used an adjournment speech in state parliament to call for Premier Daniel Andrews to fund greater public awareness campaigns around the evils of anti-Semitism and publicly denounce “the anti-Semites who are attempting to remove Josh Frydenberg from the federal parliament”.
Responding on behalf of the Andrews government, Mr Wynne said Mr Smith had raised an important matter in relation to the question of anti-Semitic motivations by some people seeking to undermine the federal Treasurer.”.
“I say to the Member for Kew that we as a parliament absolutely repudiate any suggestion of anti-Semitism, as he knows,” Mr Wynne said.
“Indeed all of us have been deeply troubled, particularly by appalling activities surrounding Mr Frydenberg vis-a-vis graffitiing of his campaign billboards and so forth with swastikas.
“This is not the Victoria we know, and we as a parliament have always stood up in an absolutely bipartisan way and said that there is no tolerance whatsoever across this parliament for anti-Semitism.
Read the article by Rachel Baxendale in The Australian.