Liberal senator Anne Ruston and Labor’s Malarndirri McCarthy clash over claims Labor “failed to act” over letter warning of anti-Semitism

Labor and the Coalition have clashed over assertions Labor “failed to act” on concerns from practitioners over rising pro-Hamas social media posts from fellow healthcare workers which were not passed onto Health Minister Mark Butler. However Labor minister Malarndirri McCarthy rejected claims the government has been soft on anti-Semitism and said the incident could not be related to a highly-condemned video of two NSW Health nurses allegedly threatening to kill and not treat Israeli patients. First reported in The Australian, the dossier detailing the posts was originally sent by Melbourne psychiatrist Jacqueline Rakov in October 2023, and signed by 235 other health professionals. A letter was re-sent on November 23, 2023 after it went unanswered by the department and Mr Butler. During senate estimates on Wednesday, the committee was told a junior department liaison officer received the letter and did not pass it onto Mr Butler. While Mr Butler has since referred the matter to the Department of Heath for a “thorough investigation”, the Coalition’s health spokeswoman Anne Ruston said the government had “failed to act” amid rising anti-Semitic sentiments in the community. “Nothing has happened about that particular letter … so we’ve ended up with a situation where we have had a nurse actually publicly stating (allegedly) that they kill Jewish patients,” she said. The nurses at the centre of the video, Ahmad ‘Rashad’ Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, have since been stood down. Ms Abu Lebdeh has also been charged with three commonwealth offences of threatening violence to a group, using a carriage service to threaten to kill and using a carriage service to menace/harass/offend. Representing Mr Butler, Senator McCarthy strongly rejected Senator Ruston’s claims linking the unanswered letter to the video. “I reject outright the assertions that Senator Ruston is making in terms of the minister, in particular, the minister’s moves in protecting Australians across the country, informing them of what events are occurring and absolutely going right against anti-Semitism across this country,” she said. “I’d urge the senator to not correlate an event that happened on February 12 when the minister gave his press conference to an event that happened a couple of years ago. “I think it’s disingenuous of the senator to fear monger and to put out to the Australian community that this is being enabled by our government. “It’s absolutely false and I reject it outright.” Earlier in the hearing, Department of Health secretary Blair Comley said staff should have been handled “differently,” and said he did not take the issue of anti-Semitism “lightly”. He added that both letters had been marked as “for information” which didn’t require immediate action to be taken. “There’s no place for anti-Semitism, racial discrimination or any other actions that prejudice the delivery of health care, the reception of health care by the community,” he said. “If we look at this instance, we would say that that piece of correspondence should have been trigged differently. “We would say that the department made an error in the way it dealt with that piece of correspondence at the time, and if we had our time again we wouldn’t have made that judgement as a department.”