He was dressed in an old black or blue overcoat and wore finger mittens and a beanie or cap, I’m not sure.

He cut a sad and somewhat beleaguered figure; I watched for a while and didn’t see anyone pause to look and maybe talk, let alone buy a book and have it signed by a man who had once been Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.

BLEAK

Jim Cairns was born in 1914, so he was in his seventies when he sat there on that bleak morning selling the memories and opinions of an old and failed, but nonetheless, true socialist and a trenchant enemy of economic rationalism.

Cairns was a man of conviction. He marched in protest at the Vietnam war while in Opposition and after politics – and among many other things – he led protests against Australia’s last whaling station in Albany in Western Australia.

Until the Albanese-led Labor Party was elected nearly three years ago, Cains had been a member of the worst Labor Government Australia had ever seen; a Party led by Gough Whitlam and driven by Cairns and a rag tag bunch of Labor ideologues.

Ideologues who very nearly ruined Australia’s domestic economy and its reputation abroad.

Like Whitlam and Cairns, Albanese and Wong have tried to change Australia. They have tried to mold and massage it into their image of a socialist State.

Whitlam and Cairns failed and were kicked out. Albanese, Wong and their socialist cohorts have failed as only Labor knows how; in three short years they have shown they do not understand why they are not fit to govern our egalitarian Australia and to maintain its treasured egalitarianism.

Anthony Albanese has lost any vestige of respect he may have had from his “fellow Australians”.

He has shown that he is not a leader; his elevation by the Labor caucus calls into question their ability, their judgement, to choose a leader and with them, to govern this country. They have failed the Australian people.

I read once that British Field Marshall Montgomery (Monty) told the officer cadets at Sandhurst Military Academy that “respect” could not be ordered; that it was the duty of all leaders to earn the respect of those that they lead; and they could only do that by setting an example with their own actions and deeds, especially when faced with extreme challenge.

BUY VOTES

As Albanese scurries around Australia giving more and more of our money away in an effort to buy votes; and as he grovels obsequiously, grinning like a Cheshire cat when in the company of world leaders and being somewhat pompous when in Australia, he has shown us the lack of depth in his character; he wouldn’t have made the grade for Monty’s batman.

A few months away from a federal election Albanese has forgotten about government; the governing of Australia is now a poor second to his survival as Prime Minister and his manic and agitated quest of securing the re-election of the Labor Party of Australia, regardless of the cost.

It’s not Labor Party money, which he will spend. Albanese is a cynic, a Tory fighting cynic; he will spend as much money as he can get hold of from the Treasury coffers between now and when he visits the Governor General to call a general election. He is not called Airbus Albo for nothing.

It’s already started on TV; at the weekend, the saturation promotion of his latest empty thought bubble “Made in Australia” is just the beginning in what will be a series of empty tins rattling.

The prospect of leading a one-term government has revealed the true character of our socialist Prime Minister; he is starting to look frightened, nervous and at times uncertain.

The grandiloquence of three years ago has gone together, along with the new look and the youthfulness of “New Labor”.

Recently, when in front of the Press, he had the appearance of being caught like a rabbit in headlights; no idea where to go, he metaphorically sat and waited, his eyes squinting at the glare of the camera lights.

Then, at the last second, he looked annoyed, stopped the questions and scurried off into the backstage darkness; haven’t you noticed? Watch next time he is cornered by the press.

A perfect example of this happened last week.

Terrorists set fire to a synagogue in Melbourne in the early hours of Friday, December 6; on Saturday December 7, like Nero with Rome, Albanese socialised in Perth on Labor Party business and then went and knocked a ball around and had fun for a couple of hours at a swanky tennis club in Cottesloe, WA.

When asked by a reporter why he had been playing tennis on that morning he admonished the young lady who asked the question; told her had attended several functions during the day and then in the evening, played tennis.

He told her it was just for exercise, and it is what people do. Locals say he was there racquet in hand at 2pm. He also forgot to say the functions he had attended were on behalf of the Labor Party and his re-election campaign and supporting the seats Labor must win to retain office.

BED

If the thought did enter his head, as Prime Minister he should have jumped into his private plane and attended the scene of the crime and given support and comfort to the Jewish community. Instead, he went to bed.

Our Prime Minister, our leader, couldn’t find the time to get to the burnt remains of the terrorist-attacked synagogue, until the Tuesday after the fire – four sleeps later.

It took our Prime Minister four days to attend the scene of a terrorist attack and see for himself the desecration, the torching of a synagogue on a scale never before seen in Australia.

This was an act reminiscent for so many Jews and Gentiles of what happened in Germany, Sudetenland and Austria; Kristallnacht was on November 9-10, 1938.

That was when Nazi forces destroyed more than two hundred synagogues and damaged more than seven thousand Jewish businesses, arrested more than thirty thousand Jews and murdered ninety one of them.

Yet it took our Prime Minister four days to get to the scene of this abhorrent crime and announce to the world the patently bleeding obvious; that it was an act of antisemitic terrorism which had burned down the synagogue. An act of Jew-hating terrorism in Melbourne, Australia in 2024.

Australian terrorists burned down a synagogue, which had been built by holocaust survivors and their families; refugees who had found sanctuary in Melbourne, after the atrocities inflicted on them in Europe. How sad is that?

Since October 7, 2023, when 1200 Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by Hamas in Israel, antisemitic violence has increased in Australia.

Unlike almost all national leaders our Prime Minister has not visited Israel and not only seen for himself the terrible destruction, but to bear witness on behalf of all Australians, of all ethnicities and beliefs, the evidence of the heinous atrocities that were inflicted on those Jews and the State of Israel by Hamas.

The Prime Minister of Australia and his Cabinet have failed to unequivocally condemn the continuous demonstrations and at times aggressive antisemitic marches and protests by the supporters of Islam, Palestine, Hamas and Hezbollah in Australia.

The demands by those people from the streets to the cloisters of our universities, for the extermination of Israel by chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” has been accepted by not only Labor politicians, but also passed for so long without comment or action, by the management of our universities and the majority of their academic staff.

The Attorney General of Australia, Mark Dreyfus KC MP, is of the Jewish faith; he too is mute on the troubles that stalk those of his faith and shame all Australia.

What is wrong with Dreyfus? He is the chief law officer of the nation with the responsibility for national and public security.

He has the necessary assets at his fingertips to stamp out public displays of antisemitic behaviour, yet, in the public arena he is silent on this tragedy.

RIFE

A tragedy that is creating a terrible false impression to the rest of the world that antisemitism is rife in Australia and not a safe country for Jews to visit.

The Australian newspaper reported that there are 50,000 Syrian Australians. When, last week, these migrants and their families celebrated the fall of Bashar al-Assad and his ruthless autocracy in their homeland, they waved the flags of the new regime in Syria.

They also waved the flags of Palestine and Lebanon; and were recorded chanting anti-Jewish slogans.

This is Australia today. Seemingly from nowhere the symbols of Hamas and Hezbollah and the flags of Palestine and the new regime in Syria appear on our Australian streets, in our suburbs and in the hands of crowds chanting for the elimination of Israel; chants demanding the genocide of all Jews. Is this the Australia we want?

Is this the Australia we want to leave to our children and grandchildren and those who come after them?

Perhaps our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, the lady who believes it is her right to make her personal views the foreign policy of Australia, approves support of terrorism by citizens of Australia. She certainly hasn’t publicly condemned it; she hasn’t appeared on national television professing support for the Jewish people.

Instead Senator Wong chose the Bob Hawke Lecture at the Hawke Centre at the University of Adelaide to voice her views and in so doing told the world what the views of all Australians are.

She told the world that, in Australia’s opinion, Israel is no different to Russia who invaded Ukraine, and China who have annexed the South China Sea.