Australian Jewish community leaders were largely disappointed after left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won a second term in elections Saturday, but expressed hope that the ruling party would do more to fight rising antisemitism in the country during the coming administration.

Albanese’s Labor Party defeated Peter Dutton and his conservative Liberal Party in a landslide in Saturday’s vote, strengthening the incumbent party, which Jewish organizations accuse of allowing anti-Jewish hate crimes to proliferate throughout the country.

“The relationship between the Jewish community and the Albanese Government has been under strain,” Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), said in a statement following the election results.

“There are real issues: foreign policy decisions and responses to antisemitism that have challenged a sense of trust. But renewing that trust is in the national interest, and we believe it is both necessary and possible.”

Australia’s Jewish community of some 120,000 has been frustrated by Albanese’s policies regarding Israel and the government’s failures to rein in skyrocketing antisemitism. The country experienced more than 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadruple the number from the year before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault that sparked the Gaza war, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

In recent months, several antisemitic incidents in Australia have sent shockwaves throughout the Jewish world, starting with the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December.

In January, the former home of ECAJ Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, and two cars were set on fire in an attack many believe targeted him. In February, a........

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