Can Australia rebuild social cohesion? Inquiry hears calls for change

Experts, advocates and community leaders are calling for stronger social cohesion and action on antisemitism, telling an inquiry "we need to break the cycle".

Over four days of hearings this week, commissioner Virginia Bell heard concerns about declining satisfaction with democracy, social media polarisation, racism, self-censorship and the breakdown of relationships between religious and cultural communities.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion also heard proposals for stronger education about Jewish Australians, better recognition of migrants’ qualifications and more effective approaches to tackling prejudice.

But the hearings also exposed difficult questions about what social cohesion should mean, including how Australia can combat discrimination without silencing debate.

The royal commission, launched in response to the December 2025 Bondi terror attack, is in its ninth and final block of hearings, with its final report due in December.

Here are the key takeaways from the week.

Questions about democracy

Professors Nicholas Biddle and Matthew Gray, both from the Australian National University, fronted the royal commission on Monday, speaking to reporters about democratic attitudes in Australia and responses about declining satisfaction with democracy.

Their June report found that satisfaction with democracy fell to its lowest level since January 2023, while principled support for democracy increased. Professor Gray said multiple factors could be at play, including social media undermining support for democracy.

"We conclude that efforts to counter antisemitism will be limited unless they also address the platforms through which distrust, polarisation and extremist narratives circulate," Gray told the commission.

He argued targeted interventions, particularly for young Australians with low educational attainment and low levels of principled democratic support, would be more effective than universal attempts to counter antisemitism.

"Because trust in core institutions is closely associated with democratic commitment, consideration should be given to how government agencies, education systems and public communications practices could be made more transparent, accountable and credible, particularly in communities experiencing disadvantage," Gray said.

Ahmed Hegazi, a strategic adviser, and his friend Joel Lazar, the chief executive of the Jewish Climate Network, also expressed concern about polarisation and emphasised the importance of cross-cultural communication.

"Humans who know their neighbours don't feel they are threats and they don't fear them, they feel connected to them," Hegazi said. "We need to break the cycle."

"There's basically no alternative to trying new things even if they're hard … as fathers of young children, we know important things are always hard," Lazar said.

Skills recognition proposed to ease tensions

Australian businessman, David Gonski told the inquiry his 24-member Antisemitism Education Taskforce was considering a proposal to improve recognition of migrants' skills and address community tensions.

Many skilled migrants were underemployed because their previous qualifications were not recognised.

"This, (a member) put to us, creates some tension and concern both within them and the people that they live with, and so on," he said on Tuesday.

"He felt that we could find a twofold solution: a solution that allowed us to have more skilled workers, and ... that would take away some of the aggravation that comes for these people."

Gonski said "there was merit" in considering the proposal but the task force had not reached a final decision. He stressed he was not suggesting further migration, but broader permissions for migrants to practice in their fields.

Gonski was appointed to lead the antisemitism education task force in December 2025 and previously filed the Gonski report on Australian education funding.

He also recommended broader education about Jewish contributions to Australia.

"We are hopeful that (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) will now look more broadly at not just Holocaust studies, but also more generally the contribution of the Jews and indeed the Jewish faith," he said.

"There's a lot of contribution by Jews to Australia, to the history of Australia."

Orthodox Rabbi Zalman Kastel suggested educators address specific prejudices in youth's education.

"Telling people a general message of don't be racist, doesn't cut it," he said.

Monash University lecturers Farid Zaid and Daniel Heller said students and staff had become afraid to address difficult topics, with many students struggling to hear different views.

"We both saw conversations in the classroom play out along really rigid lines," Zaid said.

"I was deeply surprised by my students' inability to distinguish discomfort in the classroom ... and distressed."

Most students and academics adopted self-censorship for fear of social media censure or official complaints. Others were inclined to, in Said and Heller's terms, "perform certainty"; project a sense of virtue over others.

"We know what's virtuous, what's moral, what's right; and anyone who disagrees is, in one way or another, morally reprehensible," Heller said.

The pair run Brave Conversations Project workshops teaching students and teachers how to stay in the room when discussions become difficult.

Terror attacks deepen Jewish-Muslim division

Faith Communities Council of Victoria's Sandy Kouroupidis said interaction between Jewish and Muslim communities had stopped altogether following the Bondi massacre on 14 December 2025, and the attack on Israel by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023.

The October 7 attacks by Hamas killed 1,200 people and resulted in 250 people being taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 70,000 people and been labeled a genocide by a United Nations commission, which the Israeli government disputes.

"We have two vice chairs; one of them is the chair of the Islamic Council of Victoria and the other one is the chair of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria," he said.

"It has been very, very challenging to get those two communities in the same room."

Jewish people had stopped attending interfaith events, while schools stopped visiting Muslim and Christian institutes.

"A lot of the Jewish schools simply don't feel safe," he said.

Social cohesion must not hide racism

Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman warned that social cohesion can camouflage racial discrimination.

"Stop talking about racism because you're disrupting the social cohesion," Sivaraman said he was told by a senior government official.

He said social cohesion policies could resemble those used to justify racial assimilation and cause distrust.

"If it's obscuring, then it's not actually solving the systemic or structural problem that you need to fix," he told the inquiry.

"If your experience of policies or laws or programs under the term social cohesion are ones where you're excluded ... or you have to assimilate ... you won't trust the institutions you're engaging with."

Sivaraman also said reports of antisemitism, particularly in workplaces, had risen sharply since the October 7 attacks on Israel.

"Workplaces ended up being a really consistent theme that came up as an area where people felt disadvantaged," Sivaraman said.

"(They felt) they couldn't express their identity, felt they were in danger of losing their job, felt the inquiry also heard conflicting views over where legitimate criticism of Zionism ends and antisemitism begins."

Separately, Rita Jabri Markwell, principal policy adviser to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, argued Zionism should be treated as a political ideology rather than a protected characteristic.

"It's not a race or religion," she said.

Jewish witnesses had described Zionism as inseparable from their religious and cultural identity. Markwell argued courts had increasingly taken her view and warned that treating Zionism as protected risked excluding Jewish Australians who rejected the ideology.

"The mere fact that there is a portion of Jewish people who do not accept that it is central to their identity indicates that it is an ideology," she said.

— With additional reporting from AAP

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