NSW Senator Andrew Bragg has attacked the “disgraceful challenge” against Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in parliament and said it was underpinned by “anti-semitism”.
Speaking in the Senate this afternoon under parliamentary privilege, Senator Bragg described the Section 44 legal challenge against the Treasurer as “illegitimate” and driven by “people who have an obsession with the Holocaust”.
Senator Bragg said Michael Staindl, who has launched a High Court challenge testing Mr Frydenberg’s re-election, failed Kooyong candidate Oliver Yates and lawyer Trevor Poulton — who has written a book called The Holocaust Denier — should “be ashamed of themselves for their appalling behaviour”.
“They are bandying together in the shadows to try and unseat the son of a Holocaust survivor,” Senator Bragg told parliament.
“They are pretending that they are not working together when they clearly are. The basis for this challenge is anti-semitism.”
Senator Bragg, who said he studied genocide at university, also warned of a “rising tide of anti-semitism in Australia”.
“I believe anti-semitism is a rising problem in NSW and across Australia. Anti-semitic incidents have increased by 60 per cent in the past year. There has been extraordinarily large increases on email threats, telephone based threats, and vandalism,” he said.
Senator Bragg accused Mr Staindl, Mr Poulton and Mr Yates of being involved with an “outrageous attempt” to challenge Mr Frydenberg’s citizenship.
Read the article by Geoff Chambers in The Australian.