source : the age
Melbourne’s social cohesion has “frayed” in the past two years amid protests and graffiti the Jewish community report being targeted by, according to the city’s lord mayor.
Addressing the Royal Commission into Antisemitism in Sydney, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece said about a third of the 3000 reports of graffiti in the city each year “could be described as antisemitic”.
“One of the things that has been most upsetting to me over the last 2½ years is people telling me they are afraid to come into the city, particularly people from the Jewish community, but also more broadly across the community,” Reece told Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell.
“That was particularly focused around some of the protest activity that we were seeing. But it also focused around some of the awful materials we were seeing around the city as well.”
Reece said the City of Melbourne aims to remove offensive graffiti within an hour of it being reported. The council can remove graffiti on public buildings at its discretion, and has cleaning agreements with major infrastructure operators – like VicRoads and Yarra Trams – in place to skip the “bureaucratic paperwork” and get it removed from their privately owned property as quickly as possible.
“We have removed close to 4000 square metres of antisemitic stickers and posters,” Reece said.
Examples included about 100 large posters posted around the CBD of alleged Bondi gunman Naveed Akram in January with the caption “Aussie” included in text, as well as “things like the Star of David with a red line put through it”.
Since October 2023, Reece said, social “cohesion [has] frayed, largely for the Jewish community but more broadly than that”.
“I have found that [to be] one of the most challenging elements as mayor,” he said.
Reece said the council implemented the one-hour removal policy in response to a proliferation of graffiti around the city, which he said applied to any material that is deemed hateful or racist.
Reece could not say how much graffiti was removed within the one-hour target.
The M9 group of inner-city mayors have agreed to work together to develop shared guidelines about graffiti removal timeframes, Reece told the royal commission, while urging it to recommend that the federal government provide funding to help with graffiti removal.
Reece also said he would “never forget” a five-hour meeting held in February 2024, in which councillors debated a motion to call for a ceasefire in Gaza amid an escalating humanitarian crisis.
About 1000 protesters gathered outside Town Hall during the debate. Reece said they were banging on the front doors.
“It was a very challenging thing. The debate went for five hours,” he said.
“I do think you’ve got to ask the question is that the best use of local government time, to spend five hours debating a complex geopolitical conflict.”
He urged the Department of Foreign Affairs to host forums to allow community members to take part in debate.
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