Howard’s criticism shows the moment is slipping away from Albanese |
In the 48 hours since the Bondi massacre, Australia’s social cohesion has been tested as never before.
Rather than coming together in a bipartisan response, like NSW Premier Chris Minns and his opposition counterpart Kellie Sloane, the federal opposition has chipped away at the Albanese government’s handling of the rise of antisemitism in Australia and its initial response to the tragedy.
John Howard has criticised Anthony Albanese’s leadership on antisemitism.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Sussan Ley’s Coalition, spurred on by the understandable anger and grief of the Jewish community, has been carefully calibrated in its criticism, asking necessary questions about the series of failures that led to this moment without descending to politicking.
But on Tuesday, less than 48 hours after the shooting began, former prime minister John Howard took a sledgehammer to the federal government, and particularly to Anthony Albanese, and made it much harder to find a genuinely bipartisan federal response to the tragedy.
“His [Albanese] greatest failure is not to provide the moral leadership that a prime minister can in denouncing antisemitism,” Howard said at a press conference he called to ram the point home.
“What you can say is that governments and........