Australian Senior Citizens Party Tries to Clear Anti-semitic Charges

A small, single-issue political party is trying to clear itself of charges it is anti-Semitic after a candidate it endorsed delivered a speech denying the Holocaust.

Greypower, a senior citizens advocacy party, now requires all speeches made on its behalf to be cleared before delivery.

The rule was imposed after a candidate, Elena Bulis, spoke in Adelaide recently on “The Enemy Within.” Bulis denied the Holocaust ever occurred and claimed “Jewish pressure” was responsible for the Nazi war crimes trials.

Greypower’s South Australia spokesperson, Betty Preston, told the Australian Jewish News in an interview that the party is investigating Bulis’ comments and certainly is not anti-Jewish.

But Greypower has a suspect record. The president of its New South Wales branch, Robert Clark, has been criticized by other elderly interest groups for advocating a “white Australia.”

Clark’s close ties with extreme right-wing racist groups has drawn criticism in Parliament and led to the resignation of the party’s state deputy president in 1989.

Participating in a public forum on immigration policy last year, Clark said, “We should limit our immigrants to the type of people who are traditionally small breeders. I do not want my grandchildren to struggle to feed their family.”

The comments of the Greypower candidate in Adelaide have added impetus to efforts by the Jewish community to have Holocaust denial specified as a form of racism in proposed new antiracist legislation before the national Parliament.

The International Christian Embassy’s Australian chapter has endorsed the call. Its leader, Pastor Gerald Rowlands, argued that “only people with ulterior, insidious motives would have the affront to deny so well-documented an event.”