Oz PM regrets Goebbels remark

Australia’s gaffe-prone prime minister took back his second Nazi-related comment in a month after he compared the opposition party leader to German World War II-era propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Tony Abbott told parliament that Labor Party leader Bill Shorten was “the Dr Goebbels of economic policy”.

Abbott immediately said he withdrew the comment, as opposition politicians yelled in protest.

Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ordered Labor politician Mark Dreyfus, one of only three Jewish politicians in parliament, out of the House of Representatives for rising from his seat to angrily berate the prime minister.

Fellow Labor politician Michael Danby, also Jewish, left the chamber with Dreyfus in solidarity.

“There are no Nazis here and we shouldn’t be making comparisons with the paradigm of the ultimate evil in politics to heighten political differences,” Danby said later.

“It’s beneath him, and it goes to the question of his judgment. I think a lot of his backbench will be groaning and tearing their hair out,” Danby added.

Dreyfus, who in 2011 described an Abbott political campaign in a newspaper opinion piece as “Goebbellian,” described Abbott’s reference to the Nazi as inappropriate for a prime minister.

Abbott last month apologised to parliament for describing a 10% reduction in defence industry jobs under a former Labor government as a “holocaust of jobs”.

Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an organisation representing Jewish community organisations, declined to comment because of his council’s apolitical stance.

However, he referred to the council’s longstanding policy statement that it: “Deplores the inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazi genocide in Australian public debate.”

Abbott received an unexpected rebuke from Taoiseach Enda Kenny this week for a St Patrick’s Day video message broadcast online by his Liberal Party.

Wearing a green tie, Abbott apologised to Ireland because: “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three.”

Mr Kenny said he advocated responsible celebrations and rejected “a stage Irish perception.”

Some of Abbott’s government colleagues openly questioned his political judgment in January when he announced on Australia’s national day that he had granted Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip an Australian knighthood.