Labor MP Josh Burns has told the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion that his partner, Victorian MP Georgie Purcell, is subjected to antisemitic abuse because of her relationship with him, with the attacks compounded by misogyny. The inquiry heard that witnesses to the commission themselves face vile, threatening abuse online.
Abuse directed at partner and staff
Burns, who is Jewish, told the commission that while he and his office receive thousands of abusive messages, Purcell, who is not Jewish, is targeted because of her association with him. Examples of abuse directed at her included comments such as: “You root a Zionist. You can’t be trusted.”
“The language in the examples reveals how antisemitic abuse directed at Georgie is compounded by misogynistic, often violence and sexualised commentary – directed at her because she is a woman,” Burns wrote in his submission. He also noted that after Purcell gave birth to their daughter, she received messages including: “Shut the fuck up. You got knocked up by a Zionist, you Nazi cunt.”
Burns said his office had been vandalised, and that he had received more than 1,000 phone calls and 10,000 abusive social media messages. He described “probably one of the hardest things” as seeing a loved one abused. He called for better enforcement of the Online Safety Act and for social media platforms to improve their response, saying: “Instagram knows when I was looking for a new high chair for my six-month-old. They can do a better job of … making it a bit safer online.”
Witnesses targeted after giving evidence
Tahli Blicblau, chief executive officer of the Dor Foundation, told the inquiry that witnesses who gave evidence about their experiences of antisemitism were “subjected to more of it”. “They were targeted and abused online, at volume and across social media platforms,” she said. “And that was true both for witnesses who held positions within the Jewish community and also witnesses who chose to give evidence under a pseudonym.”
Blicblau provided 275 examples of such posts, describing them as just a fraction of “many, many hundreds more” that included explicit calls for violence and murder, dehumanising language, Holocaust glorification, and conspiracy theories about witnesses being crisis actors.
Data shows hate spikes after major events
Research presented to the commission by associate professor Dr Matteo Vergani from Deakin University’s Tackling Hate Lab found that before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, there was a “very low baseline rate of hateful content targeting Jews” on X (formerly Twitter). After that attack, there was an increase, and the level has stayed elevated. Both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate spikes after major events and remains high, the research found.
After the Bondi terror attack, there was a “small spike in the anti-Jewish hate”, Vergani told the inquiry, “but it represented a huge spike in volume of anti-Muslim hate.” His team also found that real incidents reported in the media are then circulated on social media, meaning “online hate is triggered by offline incidents”. Vergani suggested that tracking trends could provide a cost-effective way to intervene without “censorship and other hard and draconian interventions”.
The royal commission continues to hear evidence on the dissemination of antisemitic content and other forms of hateful speech online, as well as antisemitism in traditional media and broadcasting.
