New year brings a new prime minister

COMMUNAL leaders have welcomed Malcolm Turnbull’s appointment as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.

In a leadership spill on Monday night, the member for Wentworth – having resigned earlier in the day as communications minister – defeated the incumbent Liberal leader and PM Tony Abbott by 54 votes to 44.

Hailing Turnbull as a consistent and outspoken supporter of the Jewish community and Israel, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said, “Having represented, since 2004, the electorate of Wentworth which has the largest Jewish community in New South Wales, Malcolm Turnbull has been a regular and welcome visitor and speaker at Jewish community functions, generous with his time and deeply supportive of all aspects of Jewish communal life. He has a thorough understanding of the Jewish community and of Israel.”

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein likewise lauded Turnbull as an exceptional friend of the Jewish community and a staunch supporter of Israel.

“We are thrilled that he visited Israel and had AIJAC/Rambam organised meetings in 2005, was a keynote speaker at the Rambam 10-year anniversary celebration in Sydney in 2012 and regularly meets with AIJAC’s overseas guests,” Rubenstein said.

AIJAC chairman Mark Leibler added that his organisation has known and worked with Turnbull for many years, and has always found him to be understanding of, and sympathetic towards, AIJAC’s concerns.

“Under his leadership, we look forward to Australia developing our unique multicultural model and also seeing the relationship with Israel going from strength to strength, with collaboration in the areas of innovation, high-tech and entrepreneurship.”

Turnbull, who visited Israel in 2005, is a practising Catholic, but was he born Australia’s first halachically Jewish prime minister? According to his late mother, Coral Lansbury, that may well have been the case.

In 2013 during an interview with The AJN, Turnbull said, “My mother always used to say that her mother’s family was Jewish.”

However, he added, “I’ve never researched it. I honestly don’t know where or how I would do that.”

Speaking of his connection to the community, he said, “There is no doubt that the strong traditions of family and the whole heimishe atmosphere of the Jewish community, which I’m sure some people don’t like, for me – as someone who is a good friend, but not part of it – I find very admirable.”

Turnbull’s language is peppered with Yiddish terms – he has accused the Labor Party of exhibiting “chutzpah” and even corrected Kevin Rudd’s pronunciation of “Chanukah”.

Whether or not Turnbull is Jewish, there is no doubt that he has been a good friend of the Australian Jewish community for many years.

He attends Jewish communal events on a weekly basis in Sydney, including recently speaking at the Zionist Federation of Australia’s annual plenum, as well as opening the new LINC Building at Emanuel School and new classrooms at Kesser Torah College.

In 2013, he was the keynote speaker at Caulfield Hebrew Congregation’s Yom Ha’atzmaut breakfast.

He has also been an ambassador of the Sir Moses Montefiore Jewish Home since 2007, a JCA donor, a supporter of a host of Jewish communal organisations and is considered a personal friend by many communal leaders.

JOSHUA LEVI

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