SafeWork NSW’s report on antisemitism at Sydney University is fake news

The internet adage “pics or it didn’t happen” refers to the fact that, since about 2010, almost nothing important has happened in a public space without someone pulling out their phone and taking a photo or video of it.

And yet, if we are to believe a SafeWork NSW report, details of which were published by the Australian, pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University managed to burst into lecture halls chanting antisemitic slogans and carrying banners that read “Jews not allowed”, without a single photo or video of these alleged incidents in existence.

Similarly, no-one thought to snap a pic and post about the time when, according to the report, Sydney University student activists “put up a billboard with all the names of Hamas terrorists on it” at a protest.

The report also claims that the eight-week Gaza solidarity encampment, which began last May, created “a workplace of fear, anxiousness and a fear of retribution towards Jewish workers and students because they were Jewish people”. Multiple reports and investigations into the encampment, including this one, have failed to provide any evidence of this. But if you repeat something often enough, it can start to seem true.

The SafeWork NSW report is the result of an investigation instigated by a complaint from 23 staff and students claiming that Sydney University had breached its responsibility to provide a safe working environment for Jewish employees. SafeWork, the government agency tasked with regulating workplace health and safety, concluded based on interviews with the complainants and two site visits that the university “failed to take reasonable actions to manage, reduce, and eliminate active antisemitic conduct on campus”.

But the report contains no credible evidence of antisemitic activism linked to the Palestine solidarity campaign. The main examples from the report, which the media have used to try to slander pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University, fail to provide this. Some are clearly fabricated, as in the above examples, which have not been corroborated with any evidence. Others are stock standard features of the campaign to support Palestine: posters and flyers advertising rallies and campus meetings, “Gaza will be free” tagged in the campus graffiti tunnel and the slogan “Palestine will be free” being chanted at a campus protest. There is not a shred of antisemitism in any of this.

That these gestures of staff and student support for the Palestinians form the basis for “psychosocial harm” to employees at Sydney University is a politically charged false assertion.

In putting together this report, SafeWork makes a mockery of the idea of workplace health and safety. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the agency is known for taking a soft touch approach to bosses who endanger their employees’ lives at work. In 2022, SafeWork NSW was investigated over allegations that workers had experienced injury and even death on sites where inspectors failed to follow up complaints adequately due to political interference.

While serious infringements of workplace health and safety have gone unpunished, and the number of workers fatally injured at work continues to rise, the government agency tasked with regulating this is instead being misused as a weapon to come after pro-Palestine activism on university campuses.

On this front, SafeWork is only following the lead of many other institutions that have tried to stifle Palestine solidarity under the guise of combating antisemitism.

State Labor Premier Chris Minns spent months linking a “great tsunami of high-profile antisemitic attacks“ to weekly pro-Palestine street marches in Sydney, passing repressive anti-protest laws on the back of these claims. The NSW Police later revealed that these incidents had been almost entirely the work of petty criminals, linked to the same common source as the Dural caravan hoax.

Universities have also used “concern for antisemitism” as justification to introduce anti-protest policies and procedures. Indeed, despite what the SafeWork report alleges, Sydney University has been leading the charge on quashing pro-Palestine activism. Over the last year, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has pushed through multiple policies designed to crack down on student and staff rights to protest and express political dissent. The new Campus Access Policy bans forms of protest that have been part of university life since the campaign against the Vietnam War, while policies introduced just this month impose punitive rules regarding posters on campus and total bans on students making lecture announcements before their classes.

As Israel intensifies the genocide in Gaza and the war crimes pile up, the pro-Israel camp continues to find new ways to slander and silence the activists standing up for justice. But we won’t stop campaigning for Palestine.

Shovan Bhattarai is the vice-president of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council and a coordinator of the campus Students for Palestine collective