Frank Lowy calls for a new game plan against antisemitism
Sir Frank Lowy has urged Australia to launch a major national campaign against antisemitism, saying the country can learn from the way ethnic conflict was removed from Australian soccer.
In a submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, extracts of which have been reported by The Australian and The Australian Financial Review, the Holocaust survivor and Westfield co-founder said the “social licence” that had allowed anti-Jewish hostility to be expressed openly must be withdrawn.
Frank Lowy in his study
“The social licence that has allowed for the open expression of anti-Jewish sentiment needs to be reworked. If this helps to curb antisemitism, it will likely be useful in curbing other forms of racism in Australia,” Lowy wrote.
Lowy said he was shocked by the protest outside the Sydney Opera House on 9 October 2023, two days after the Hamas attacks in Israel.
“Australians were openly celebrating a massacre. Amplified by the powerful engine of social media, a new entitlement had emerged,” he said.
“People seemed not to have understood the privilege of free speech and freely abused it.”
Lowy said his own childhood in Europe had shown him how quickly anti-Jewish words could lead to violence.
“As a boy, I saw how quickly verbal violence in Europe mutated into the physical violence that took the life of my father and the lives of my mother’s entire family, leaving her the sole survivor,” he wrote.
“Now in my 90s, I heard the slogans shouted at the Opera House, and then I heard the bullets find their target at Bondi Beach.”
Lowy drew on his experience in Australian soccer, which was once divided by ethnic loyalties and dismissed by some as “wogball”. In 2003, then prime minister John Howard asked him to help professionalise the sport.
He said soccer’s ethnic roots had given migrants a connection to their past, but the rivalries also held the game back.
“We adopted a constitution that brought in new names. The clubs had to be called, not Croatia or Budapest, but Perth, Sydney, or a suburb of a city to identify the game and the club with its environment,” he said.
The creation of the A-League, with clubs such as Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory, helped replace ethnic factionalism with a broader Australian identity.
“In soccer, we didn’t try to take people’s ethnic identity away. We worked to stop the expression of ethnic conflict in public,” Lowy said.
He said the same principle could be applied to antisemitism.
“It is probably not possible to eradicate a dislike of Jews, but it is possible to help people understand why, in Australian society, the public outpouring of this aversion is not right,” he wrote.
Lowy said government leadership was essential.
“To bring back Australian decency, we need cultural confidence. This can only be demonstrated by powerful and inspiring leadership from government,” he wrote.
His submission calls for a well-funded national program involving political leaders, businesses, schools, sporting bodies and faith groups, backed by stronger laws against antisemitism.
He also argued that migrants should be taught Australian civic values more clearly, including English language skills and respect for democratic norms. In serious cases, he said, those who reject those values should face consequences, including possible deportation.
The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was established on 9 January 2026 after the Bondi Beach terrorist attack on 14 December 2025. It is led by former High Court justice Virginia Bell, with submissions accepted until 14 June 2026 and a final report due by 14 December 2026.
