eSafety Commissioner Calls for Greater Powers to Tackle Online Anti-Semitism

Julie Inman-Grant told the Anti-Semitism Royal Commission that around 2 percent of complaints relate to anti-Semitism, but she lacks powers to deal with it.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant speaks to the media on Nov. 5, 2025 in Canberra, Australia. Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner says her office lacks adequate powers to combat much of the anti-Semitic content found online and wants them expanded.

“Many of these tweets or posts have terrible, insulting, ugly comments underneath them,” Julie Inman Grant told the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion.

She has requested a “notification power” to address pile-ons and avalanches of hate, shifting responsibility to platforms to protect Australian users and act against offenders.

“That would be very helpful and more representative of how online abuse manifests against members of the Jewish community here,” she said.

Inman Grant said the current legislation, based on the National Classification Scheme for books and movies, was not designed for user-generated internet content.

“Some of the standard morality and decency and obscenity [standards] don’t actually cover the much worse [material] we constantly see on the internet,” she said.

Complaints Surging

eSafety, which has an annual budget of $59.4 million, received 44,000 complaints in 2024, rising to 55,000 in 2025. In the 2025-26 financial year, that number rocketed to 108,000.

Fewer than 1 percent related to anti-Semitic material, with just 206 such reports in the year to June 2024. Inman Grant stressed these figures under-represented the problem, as many Australians were unaware of the service.

The agency noted two major spikes in anti-Semitic online content: after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and in February 2024 following the doxxing of identities of 600 Jewish creatives.

Challenges With Platforms

Just before the doxxing incident, an investigator with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry provided eSafety with intelligence on online anti-Semitic content.

Investigators faced difficulties with ephemeral content like 24-hour stories and unreportable formats on platforms such as Meta.

“They were using Bitly links, and we were able to block the links,” Inman Grant said. “They used barcodes, reels, stories, which only appear for 24 hours. And when we went to Meta, there was no way to report abuse on those. So it was only 24 hours, but it was still 24 hours of terrible content on a mainstream platform.”

eSafety could only issue formal removal notices in about 2 percent of adult cyber abuse cases, with a lower threshold for child-related material.

“The worst thing that happened to users who were the subject of complaints by eSafety was suspension,” Inman-Grant said.

She criticised some tech CEOs who position themselves as “free speech warriors” but quickly remove content they dislike.

Inman Grant also addressed the controversial practice of issuing informal notifications to platforms, which eSafety has argued, unsuccessfully, should not be subject to judicial review.

“We have a lot of content that we think is clearly in violation of that platform’s terms of service, and that’s why we have informal alerts,” she said.

Concerns Over Reach

Liberal Senator Alex Antic has expressed concerns about the extent of eSafety’s existing powers, particularly regarding overseas accounts.

He reacted to notices sent to X and Meta seeking removal of videos depicting killings, including those of Iryna Zarutska, Charlie Kirk, and a Dallas motel manager.

While supporting protections for children, Senator Antic questioned the “quasi-judicial” nature of the powers that the office has. Once a takedown notice is issued, platforms or individuals must appeal through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal or Federal Court.