Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Australian Jew Wins Office Anti-Semitism Fight

A Jewish Australian man who claimed he was the victim of anti-Semitic abuse at work at a government agency won a compensation claim after a two-year battle.

Stephen Strelecky was an employee at the Australian Taxation Office in 2009 when he claimed he was racially vilified by a colleague.

“The causes of my illness were the initial racism, then victimization, the subsequent flawed investigations and processes, the lack of management support and management hostility,” he said.

The Australian Taxation Office initially found no evidence to support his claim the comments had been made, according to a report in the Herald Sun newspaper on Sept 21.
But in August 2010 a second investigation found it “most likely” the comments had in fact been made.

Strelecky claimed compensation for stress leave, but was initially rejected. But an appeal, which described the Australian Taxation Office’s investigation as “flawed, found it “likely” he had been subjected to anti-Semitism and he was awarded compensation for his “psychological condition.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.