Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson says he backs Peter Dutton’s comparison of a Sydney protest to the Port Arthur massacre.

Speaking to ABC’s RN Breakfast, Paterson said Dutton distinguished the two events by “saying of course, there were no deaths at that protest in the Sydney Opera House, but he said it was comparable on its social impact on Australia.”

“And he also pointed out that after the Port Arthur massacre, John Howard as prime minister rallied the country in a decisive way for action against violence, and he worked out that our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has failed to do the same in response to a crisis of anti-semitism,” he said.

“If you talk to Jewish Australians, as they say, they have never felt less safe in Australia in our history than they do right now and that protest at the Sydney Opera House really crystallised that fear for them.”

Paterson also criticised Albanese condemning anti-semitism in the same breath as Islamophobia, arguing the former was “a far more prevalent problem in our community.”

“Thankfully, there have been no mosques shut during Friday prayers on police advice due to safety concerns,” he said.

Following backlash over Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s call for Palestinian statehood earlier this week, Paterson said the opposition also supported a two-state solution.

“We just don’t think it should be unilaterally imposed from the outside,” he told RN Breakfast.

“We think recognition of a Palestinian state should be the outcome of a successful peace negotiation between the parties on the ground in the region, and no external power can impose that on them if there isn’t a willingness to sit down and negotiate.

“And the reason for that is that Israel does not have a partner on the Palestinian side which is even willing to sit down and have those negotiations and that is an enormous stumbling block, let alone the events of seven October which obviously set it back many years.”