Dreyfus has let Australia down

May 12, 2025

Greg Barns is, perhaps, rather too gentle in his assessment of Mark Dreyfus. It is not often that I disagree with anything Paul Keating says, but on the Dreyfus affair, I feel he also has ascribed rather more honour to the man than he warrants.

I fail to understand how an attorney-general — no matter what his heritage may be — can blatantly ignore the messages coming from the ICJ and the ICC and still allow his government to claim that it “operates within the international rules-based order”, that chimerical being that appears every day (if our government is to be believed) to be comprised of values to be maintained according to whatever suits the mood of the time.

It is absolutely not the case that Australia marches in step with (most of) the rest of the world in the case of Israel – while claiming vociferously that it does so in the case of Ukraine. One right does negate another wrong: Dreyfus failed entirely to adhere to principles of justice in not declaiming Australia’s perfidy by appeasing Israeli genocide.

And by so doing, Dreyfus has joined the legion of agents who condemn the future Israel to pariah status indefinitely.