Australia changed this week for good. I never thought that a joyous religious celebration in Australia would be shattered with violence and cold-blooded murder as we saw at Bondi Beach this week.
The horror has shocked all Australians. Sadly, we are not as innocent as we used to be.
This was an attack on Jewish Australians who were peacefully celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. We mourn for the innocent lives lost in the Jewish community.
It was an attack on all Australians as well. Bondi Beach is a special place for Australians. An ad from the 1950s describes Bondi as the “Playground of the Pacific”. For all Australians, the thought of Bondi evokes fun, sun and sand. The carefree Australian life.
Not any more. Next time I visit Bondi I won’t be able to help but think of the fear, the panic and the murder of that terrible day in December 2025. The evil monsters that perpetrated this terrorist act have taken something from all Australians.
That makes me angry. Many Australians have expressed to me their anger since these events. Anger is an understandable response. To truly remember the 15 dead of the Bondi terror attacks, we must channel this frustration into practical actions that will prevent this from ever happening again.
At times like this, you hope that our leaders show courage to tackle the tough issues. To listen to the views of all Australians and to take action. I want our Prime Minister to succeed. I hope that he finds the courage to do what is right.
But hope alone will not save the day. We all should be honest about what we think needs to happen. We should not care what label people want to put on us, we just need to focus on doing our best.
So, I have to be honest that I have found the Prime Minister’s initial response underwhelming. The Prime Minister has immediately put the blame for the weekend’s events on the guns, and promised yet another crackdown on gun ownership. This is despite Australia already having some of the strictest gun control laws in the world.
Australians are not stupid. Most conclude that the cause of the weekend’s terrorism was not a firearm licence, it was the hateful and warped ideology that paints all Jewish people as enemies and therefore targets for violence.
It is the distorted ideology of radical Islam that we must confront and defeat. Most Muslims do not share these extremist views. The hero that tackled one of the shooters was himself a Muslim. But there is a skewed and violent interpretation of Islam that is poisoning the minds of many.
Since the attacks, the PM has barely mentioned the problem of radical Islam, but he has spoken endlessly of more gun laws. Even if we ban all guns, determined criminals and terrorists would find a way to get hold of a weapon.
The PM’s knee-jerk response to focus on guns is weak and cowardly because it plainly seeks to give him an out for the more confronting issue of tackling radical ideologies. In the past few years, the Labor Government has turned a blind eye to the hate speech spewed by some Islamic preachers, the violent chants at rallies and the veneration of overseas terrorist leaders.
This was a gross miscalculation. We must return to an orderly and respectful society. That means we must have no tolerance for those that spew hate and incite violence against fellow Australians. Our laws should be aggressively enforced.
Migrants to Australia must be better vetted. The Australian Government has let in too many migrants without proper vetting. We should drastically reduce our migration intake and subject everyone who comes to this country to due diligence.
Anyone that has espoused support for terrorism or violence should be denied entry to Australia.
If we want to return to peaceful and carefree Australia, we must strictly enforce that at our borders. Only those that will respect fellow Australians regardless of their faith should be allowed in.
