New South Wales Greens MP Jenny Leong will visit the Sydney Jewish Museum and has donated $4,000 after a complaint was lodged with the Australian Human Rights Commission over comments she made about Jewish lobby groups last year.
Leong apologised and said she did not intend to reference an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as an octopus after footage emerged of comments she made at a Palestine Justice Movement forum in Sydney in December 2023.
The comments were condemned by Jewish groups and prompted the premier, Chris Minns, to warn parliamentarians about sowing division in the community.
After the comments were made public in February, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said that Leong’s remarks were “offensive”.
Days after the story broke, a member of the community lodged a complaint of racial vilification against Jewish people with the human rights commission. The parties went through a conciliation process and reached a settlement earlier this week.
Leong agreed to attend a free guided tour of the Jewish museum and donate $2,000 to the museum – without admitting liability.
“I am pleased we have now resolved the complaint through a conciliation process,” she said on Friday.
“In addition … I have also made a $2,000 donation to the Sydney Jewish Museum and will visit the museum in the coming weeks as a way of deepening my understanding of racism, antisemitism and genocide.”
Once the complainant has been shown proof of Leong’s visit, the complaint will be dropped, according to the agreed terms.
Leong has separately donated $2,000 to the Jewish Council of Australia, which she said was a “diverse coalition of Jewish academics, lawyers, writers and teachers united in their opposition to Israel’s continued policies aimed at the destruction of Palestinian life”.
On Friday, Leong acknowledged her language in late 2023 “had unintended antisemitic implications and caused some members of the community hurt” for which she issued a public apology.
“I reaffirm my commitment to continual care and reflection in my ongoing work for human rights and advocacy for a free Palestine,” she said.
In December, Leong told the public forum that “the Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups”.
She said the lobby groups “offer solidarity” and “rock up to every community event and meeting to offer that connection because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power”.
A second world war-era Nazi German cartoon, by Austrian artist Josef Plank, depicted Jews as an octopus encircling the globe.
At the forum, Leong distinguished between lobby groups and the Jewish community more broadly, who she described as “wonderful humans”.
When the footage was made public in February this year, Leong acknowledged she had “used a word at one point that was an inappropriate descriptor”.
“As a committed human rights and anti-racism advocate, who has been outspoken about the rising threat of far-right extremism, I know that it is important to hold people to account for words that may cause harm,” Leong said at the time.
“But it is equally important to not stay silent and hold people to account for harmful actions, and this includes the occupation and military violence by the Israeli state in Palestine.”
