Overview
- Federal MP Josh Burns told the Royal Commission in late June 2026 that social media companies routinely ignore reports of antisemitic abuse and that those failures have real-world consequences.
- He presented evidence that his St Kilda electorate office was attacked in June 2024 and that abusive posts blaming him appeared online within hours of the incident.
- Burns said he reported about 40 to 44 posts to Facebook and Instagram since 2021 but only a handful were removed and most complaints received no response.
- He described the abuse suffered by his partner, Victorian MP Georgie Purcell, as ferocious and layered with misogyny and sexualised threats because of her relationship to him.
- Burns and former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus urged the commission to close a gap in the Online Safety Act that stops the eSafety commissioner from removing content that vilifies groups, and asked for strengthened hate-speech or vilification laws.