Virtuous Appointments An Excuse For Poor Leadership

There’s nothing that Labor won’t try to fix by creating new offices, departments and bureaucracies at ever-increasing expense to the Australian taxpayer.

The Albanese Labor government has put on at least 30,000 new public servants since coming to power. Of the 625,000 new jobs created in Australia since Labor’s election, about two-thirds are government-funded. Half of these are just in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

This week we’ve learned about the appointee to another new job: the ‘Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia in Australia’, Aftab Malik. This follows the appointment in July this year of Jillian Segal as the ‘Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism’. It’s not clear how much these new offices will cost taxpayers, but based on the bills being racked up by our so-called ‘first nations ambassador’, they’re not going to be cheap.

They’re not only expensive, but completely unnecessary. Labor has created these positions to try and show they’re getting tough on extremism and discrimination, but if they had any capacity for real leadership, these appointments would never have been considered.

It’s hard to believe, but Labor has spent more than $90 million of our money on addressing the “impacts of the Israel-Hamas war on Australian communities” since 7 October last year. The real question that needs to be answered is why Labor allowed a conflict taking place 14,000 km from Canberra to have any impact on communities in Australia.

The extremists cheering for terrorists in our streets or on university campuses, or invading Jewish neighbourhoods and intimidating Jewish school students, have been mostly coddled and excused by Labor (and strongly encouraged and supported by the toxic Greens) instead of being made to face the full force of the law. The extremists know that Labor is fundamentally weak and has no leadership worth any respect, so they can get away with their extremism.

A real leader wouldn’t let it happen. A real leader would have shut down the university protests and evicted them from campuses immediately. A real leader would have police arrest extremists displaying terrorist symbols against the law. A real leader would have stood up and told these extremists in no uncertain terms they’re completely wrong.

Labor’s leader just spends more of our money.