From Ette Media

Victorian Labor Premier Jacinta Allen addressed the Parliamentary Reception for Israel’s 78th anniversary

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen gave a pretty revealing speech at a birthday bash for Israel’s 78th anniversary, and not a single mainstream Australian media outlet reported on it.

In her filmed speech, Allen expressed her dismay that young people are conflating the actions of the Israeli government with its people and have a negative opinion of Israel. 

Allen also praised Israel as “a modern miracle”, “a new frontier of science” and “a land that rose forests from the desert and a city from the sand.” Palestinians didn’t exist before 1948, it seems. Straight out of the Terra Nullius playbook.

She also announced new, formal partnerships between Victorian and Israeli hospitals — in the same 24 hours that the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) adopted The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s controversial antisemitism definition. She also reaffirmed her commitment to Israel as a “multilingual” and “multiracial” democracy (it is an ethnostate that Amnesty International describes as apartheid).

AHPRA taking on the controversial antisemitism definition is a story that should have been better interrogated given it’s a decision that will impact hundreds of thousands of practitioners (and the fact is our inboxes have blown up with concerns from doctors, nurses, dentists and psychologists that we have no doubt also reached other newsrooms).

It’s also worth noting that last year, The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) urged AHPRA to fast-track assessments of complaints made against GPs who publicly express views criticising Israel’s treatment of civilians in Gaza to help protect the doctors’ mental health. The complaints were taking months to be resolved, even when the vast majority of doctors were cleared of wrongdoing, or the complaints were “vexatious or deemed frivolous”.