IHRA, the Australian Public Service and Silencing Political Dissent

I. THE DIRECTIVE AND ITS DISCONTENTS

On 9 February 2026, the Australian Public Service Commission issued Circular 2026/01, titled ‘Working Together to Combat Antisemitism in the APS’. The circular directed all staff across the Commonwealth bureaucracy to familiarise themselves with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism – a definitional framework that has, since its adoption by the plenary of the IHRA in 2016, attracted sustained and serious criticism from scholars, jurists, civil society organisations, and even its own principal drafter. The circular sits within a broader governmental apparatus that has, since late 2024, accelerated the institutionalisation of the IHRA definition across Commonwealth agencies, universities, and public life generally, largely at the behest of Special Envoy Jillian Segal, a career pro-Israel advocate appointed to lead Australia’s antisemitism strategy.

The warnings that have followed – from within the public service itself, from civil liberties bodies, from Palestinian-Australian communities, from legal scholars, and from Jewish groups opposed to the Zionist conflation embedded in the definition – are not merely partisan objections. They go to the structural integrity of the Australian Public Service as an institution: to its independence, its capacity to produce frank and fearless policy advice on contested geopolitical matters, and to its capacity to serve all Australians equally. This essay examines those concerns across three dimensions: first, the definitional problems inherent in the IHRA framework; second, the specific dangers posed to the independence and effectiveness of the APS; and third, the broader democratic and national security implications of embedding a contested political definition into the regulatory architecture of the Commonwealth bureaucracy.

II. A DEFINITION BUILT ON CONTESTED GROUND

The Architecture of the IHRA Text

The IHRA working definition states, in its core formulation: ‘Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.’ This core text is, by the definition’s own admission, non-legally binding. Its drafter, Kenneth Stern – an American attorney who considers himself a Zionist – has since expressed serious alarm at the way the definition has been instrumentalised. Stern has said in public that the document was never intended as a hate speech code and that it is now being ‘weaponised’ by right-wing Jewish organisations to pursue political speech with which they disagree. His critique goes to the heart of what has gone wrong: a working tool for identifying antisemitism in research and monitoring contexts has been elevated into a quasi-regulatory standard, used to discipline institutional speech and constrain political expression.

The definitional core would, standing alone, generate little controversy. The problems arise from the eleven ‘illustrative examples’ appended to the text, of which seven relate specifically to the State of Israel. These examples – which the IHRA Plenary notably did not formally adopt as part of the definition, reaching consensus only on the core text – have done the political work that the core definition cannot. They include as potentially antisemitic: claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour; applying double standards by requiring of Israel behaviour not expected of other nations; and making comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis. Each of these examples is contested not by antisemites, but by serious historians, legal scholars, human rights investigators, and, crucially, by a significant cohort of Jewish thinkers and organisations who reject the conflation of Jewishness with the political project of Zionism.

The Critics and What They Say

The scholarly rejection of the IHRA definition is broad and cannot be dismissed as fringe opinion. Professor David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London, has described the definition as imprecise and as placing an unjust burden on critics of Israel to demonstrate that they are not racists. The late philosopher Brian Klug argued that the examples proscribed legitimate criticism of Israeli policy by drawing it into the ambit of racial hatred. Former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Sedley, writing in the London Review of Books, described the definition’s effect as endorsing the conflation of political speech about Israel and Zionism with antisemitism – a conflation he considered both analytically wrong and legally dangerous.

In Australia, the Jewish Council of Australia – representing a substantial constituency of Jewish Australians who do not identify with Zionism as a political programme – signed a November 2025 open letter urging the government not to adopt the IHRA definition precisely because it conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Amnesty International Australia has stated that the definition is ‘deeply flawed’ for the same reason. The organisation Anti-Zionism Australia, a Jewish-initiated collective, notes the structural paradox at the heart of the IHRA text: by treating Israel as synonymous with the Jewish people, the definition makes Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli state – which is itself identified as a form of antisemitism within the definition’s own examples. The definition, in other words, reproduces the very error it seeks to condemn.

Perhaps the most significant judicial development bearing on this question occurred in Australia in July 2025, when Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart ruled in Wertheim v Haddad that criticising Israel, Zionism, and the Israeli military is not antisemitic. Associate Professor Noam Peleg of the University of New South Wales commented that this ruling ‘essentially debunks’ the IHRA definition and that institutions considering adoption should think carefully before proceeding. The APSC circular was issued several months after this judgment – a remarkable decision to proceed in the face of its implications.

III. THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE

What Public Service Independence Requires

The independence of the Australian Public Service is not a bureaucratic vanity – it is a constitutional and functional necessity. Under the Public Service Act 1999, APS employees are required to be apolitical, impartial, and to provide frank and fearless advice to ministers of the day, regardless of the political sensitivities that advice may carry. The APS serves not any particular government, but the Australian people. It advises not on the basis of ideological preference, but on evidence, legal analysis, and policy expertise. The moment a definitional framework with contested political implications becomes embedded in the conduct standards applicable to public servants – shaping what they may say, what analyses they may produce, and what policy positions they may advocate – that independence is structurally compromised.

The APSC circular does not merely ask public servants to refrain from racial hatred. It asks them to familiarise themselves with a definition that classifies specific political positions – including opposition to Zionism, criticism of Israeli state policy, and support for Palestinian self-determination – as potentially antisemitic. For public servants working in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Office of National Intelligence, the Department of Home Affairs, the Attorney-General’s Department, and countless agencies whose remit touches on the Middle East, this creates a structural problem. The IHRA definition, once internalised as a professional standard, does not merely affect what one says in a workplace. It shapes what one thinks it is safe to write, to advise, to recommend, and to present as evidence-based analysis.

The Chilling Effect in Bureaucratic Context

The concept of the chilling effect is well established in free speech jurisprudence: it describes the phenomenon whereby legal or quasi-legal constraints on expression lead individuals to self-censor beyond what is actually prohibited, out of uncertainty about where the line falls. The IHRA definition, by design, depends on contextual assessment – the text itself notes that its examples ‘could, taking into account the overall context, amount to antisemitism.’ But this contextual ambiguity is precisely what generates the chilling effect in a bureaucratic setting. Where the consequence of an adverse finding could be a disciplinary matter under the Public Service Act, public servants will not test the boundaries of the permissible. They will retreat to safety. Safety, in the context of this definition, means avoiding any expression that could be read as critical of Israel.

In Austria, Amnesty International’s March 2026 report documented the concrete effects of IHRA adoption on public expression in a liberal democracy. Seven individuals interviewed – including Jewish activists – identified Austria’s institutionalisation of the IHRA definition as a direct cause of the suppression of pro-Palestinian expression. Police prohibited assemblies on the grounds that a chant might be used. A ministerial decree subjected the use of ‘From the river to the sea’ to criminal suspicion. These are not abstract possibilities: they are documented outcomes from a liberal European democracy that institutionalised exactly the framework Australia is now embedding in its public service.

The national security dimensions of this problem are not hypothetical. Australia’s foreign policy architecture depends upon the capacity of its analysts to assess, with clear eyes and without ideological constraint, the strategic interests at stake in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a central node in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Australia has strategic relationships with Arab states, with Turkey, with Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim democracy – and with a domestic Muslim population whose trust in government institutions is not incidental to social cohesion. A public service that cannot produce frank analysis of Israeli state behaviour because its definitional standards have been shaped by a pro-Zionist lobby group is not merely failing to protect free speech: it is failing its core national security function.

IV. THE POLITICAL PROVENANCE OF THE CIRCULAR

Jillian Segal and the Plan to Combat Antisemitism

The APSC circular did not emerge from a neutral process. It was issued, as the circular itself acknowledges, in response to Jillian Segal’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism, released in July 2025. Segal’s appointment as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism has itself drawn criticism: she is a prominent figure in pro-Israel advocacy networks, and her Plan reflects the institutional priorities of organisations such as the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, which welcomed the IHRA adoption while groups like the New Israel Fund Australia and the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network expressed deep concern. The Australian government’s adoption of Segal’s recommendations – including the embedding of the IHRA definition in APS workplaces – represents the direct translation of lobby group priorities into public service conduct standards.

This is constitutionally significant. The Public Service Act requires that the APS operate free from political direction in its internal conduct standards. When a conduct circular is issued that reflects the policy preferences of a particular ideological constituency – one with a declared interest in constraining criticism of a foreign state – the neutrality of the APS is not merely compromised in perception. It is compromised in substance. The circular does not protect the APS from politicisation; it is an instrument of politicisation, laundered through the language of anti-racism.

A Comparative Silence on Islamophobia

The political selectivity of the circular is underscored by what it does not do. Australia has simultaneously experienced, since October 2023, a documented rise in Islamophobic incidents, anti-Palestinian racism, and vilification of Arab-Australians. The APSC has not issued a comparable directive embedding an Islamophobia definition in APS workplace standards. There is no equivalent circular directing public servants to familiarise themselves with the emerging frameworks for identifying anti-Palestinian racism. The asymmetry is not incidental: it reflects the asymmetric political weight of the lobby organisations that shaped the government’s response to the events of October 2023 and their aftermath.

This asymmetry matters for the APS beyond the obvious equity concerns. A public service that is institutionally better equipped to identify antisemitism than Islamophobia – not because of any evidence-based assessment of comparative risk, but because of the political influence of particular lobby groups – is a public service whose operational decisions are being shaped by factors external to the public interest. For agencies working on counter-terrorism, social cohesion, community engagement, and migration, this asymmetry has direct operational consequences. Alienating Muslim communities through perceived institutional bias is not merely an equity problem: it is a counter-terrorism problem, a social cohesion problem, and a long-term national security problem.

V. THE BONDI CONTEXT AND THE ROYAL COMMISSION

The political backdrop to the APSC circular cannot be understood without reference to the Bondi Beach massacre of December 2025, in which fifteen people were killed in an attack that the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is now investigating. The commission, whose interim report is due by 30 April 2026, has itself adopted the IHRA definition as its operational framework – a decision that Commissioner Virginia Bell described as uncontroversial in her opening remarks, while acknowledging that at least two of the definition’s eleven examples are contested. The adoption of the IHRA definition by the commission, immediately before the APSC circular embedding it in APS conduct standards, creates the appearance of an institutional fait accompli: the definition is being embedded across government before the commission has completed its examination of the facts.

The timing is troubling. A royal commission proceeding is not merely an investigation of past events: it shapes the regulatory and definitional landscape for the future. By adopting the IHRA definition as its analytical frame before hearing submissions and evidence, the commission risks prejudging a question – the appropriate definition of antisemitism – that is directly relevant to the policy recommendations it will make. Critics, including the organisation Green Left Weekly, have noted that this sequencing places the cart before the horse: the government has implemented the definitional framework that the commission was presumably intended to validate, rather than investigate.

There is, moreover, a cruel irony in the deployment of the Bondi massacre as a justification for a framework that many critics argue will suppress the very community engagement and frank policy analysis that might have identified the conditions for radicalisation earlier. A public service unable to analyse, with clarity and without ideological constraint, the relationship between Australia’s foreign policy posture, its domestic Muslim communities, and the global political dynamics surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict is less equipped, not more, to detect and respond to the drivers of politically motivated violence.

VI. ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORKS AND THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The adoption of the IHRA definition is not the only available instrument for combating antisemitism in Australian public institutions. The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 already prohibits racial vilification. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, developed by over 200 scholars of Antisemitism, Holocaust history, and the Middle East, offers a definition that is both more analytically precise and more protective of political speech. The Nexus Document provides a framework that explicitly distinguishes between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli state policy, without requiring institutions to treat the two as necessarily related. In February 2025, thirty-nine Australian universities adopted a definition of antisemitism described by its authors as ‘clearer than, but closely aligned with’ the IHRA working definition – demonstrating that it is possible to combat antisemitism in institutional settings without importing the definitional conflations that have made the IHRA text so controversial.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s submission to Parliament on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 explicitly cautions that any legislative response to antisemitism must remain ‘proportionate, clearly defined and consistent with Australia’s human rights obligations.’ The Commission’s call for amendments reflects a broader institutional recognition that the government’s current trajectory – embedding the IHRA definition across public institutions, royal commissions, and now the APS – risks producing legislation and administrative frameworks that are neither operationally effective nor rights-protective.

The alternative is not complacency about antisemitism. Antisemitism is a real and dangerous social pathology, and the grief of Jewish Australians following the Bondi massacre – and following years of harassment, vandalism, and escalating intimidation – is genuine, serious, and deserving of robust institutional response. The argument of this essay is not that antisemitism should go unchallenged in the APS or anywhere else. It is that the IHRA definition is a poor instrument for meeting that challenge, that its adoption in APS conduct standards creates structural problems for public service independence and national security analysis, and that better alternatives exist and have been identified by serious scholars and practitioners.

VII. CONCLUSION: THE COSTS OF INSTITUTIONAL CAPTURE

The APSC circular of 9 February 2026 is not a simple administrative communication. It is a moment in the longer process by which a contested political definition – one that its own drafter has since criticised, that Australian courts have partially invalidated, and that a substantial constituency of Jewish Australians has rejected – is being woven into the fabric of Commonwealth governance. The costs of this process are multiple and compounding.

For individual public servants, the circular creates the conditions for self-censorship on some of the most consequential policy questions of the current era. For agencies whose remit touches on the Middle East, on counter-terrorism, on social cohesion, or on community engagement with Muslim Australians, the circular’s adoption of an ideologically inflected definitional framework shapes operational culture in ways that will prove difficult to reverse. For Australian democracy more broadly, the spectacle of a government embedding the policy preferences of a foreign policy lobby group into the conduct standards of its bureaucracy raises questions that the Royal Commission has not been asked to examine but probably should be.

A public service that cannot speak frankly about the actions of any foreign state – including an ally – is not merely a less effective bureaucracy. It is a more dangerous one. The independence of the APS, like the independence of the judiciary, rests on the confidence that its judgements and its advice are not pre-shaped by political patronage or ideological constraint. That confidence, once lost, is difficult to rebuild. The February 2026 circular has done measurable damage to it. The question is whether the government, the Parliament, and the institutions of civil society will act to repair that damage before it becomes structural – or whether Australia will follow the Austrian path, documenting the chilling effect years after the fact, in a report that comes too late to prevent it.