‘Disappointment, anger, betrayal’: Amid condolences, the Bondi blame game continues

1 month ago 14

A blue-and-white kippah atop his head, Mark Dreyfus was speaking fluently until the words began catching in his throat. A month had passed since the massacre at Bondi, but emotion was still raw as the former attorney-general addressed parliament to pay tribute to the 15 victims of the attack.

“For every person murdered, there are families and friends left behind, a home left quieter, clothes still hanging in wardrobes, photos on walls that will never be updated,” Dreyfus said, choking back tears. “Children asking when someone is coming home, a seat left empty at the dinner table, a laugh no longer heard, a longing for one more word, one moment, one more chance to say what was left unsaid.”

The Labor MP, who is Jewish, then read the Kaddish, the hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services.

Parliament returned a fortnight early on Monday for a day of condolence speeches for those who were gunned down while gathering at a Hanukkah festival on December 14. The rancour of question time was suspended, and tears were shed. But the blame game went on. A parliament without politics was too much to ask for, even on a day suffused with grief.

From the start, the terror attack at Bondi Beach has upended assumptions about how a national tragedy affects politics.

Labor MP Josh Burns consoles Mark Dreyfus after he spoke during a condolence motion for the victims of the Bondi antisemitic terror attack.

A moment of coming together? The reaction to the worst terror attack in Australian history has been strikingly heated and partisan, with members of Sydney’s Jewish community heckling Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the memorial site and Opposition Sussan Ley berating Foreign Minister Penny Wong for not shedding a tear in public.

The rally-around-the-flag effect, which often sees leaders’ popularity levels rise during a crisis, has been glaringly absent. Albanese’s standing with voters has been diminished, reflected in polls showing voter satisfaction in him has plunged since the attack.

Some survivors and relatives of those who died came to Canberra to hear the condolences, but the area in the viewing gallery reserved for them was notably well below capacity.

Albanese, speaking first, told parliament that “honouring the heroes of Bondi also means standing together against that evil that inflicted this devastation, standing together against hatred, standing together against division. And working together to eradicate antisemitism, wherever it hides, whatever form it assumes and whatever weapons it wields.”

The members of parliament, Albanese said, “must channel our anger into meaningful action to ensure an atrocity such as this can never happen again”.

“That responsibility starts with me, as Australia’s 31st Prime Minister,” he said. “It also belongs to each of us here in this chamber as parliamentarians.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Members of the House of Representatives observe a minute’s silence.

Ley, speaking next, said the Bondi attack was not an isolated attack but a culmination of years of rising hostility towards Jewish Australians, as she linked the attack to the pro-Palestine movement that surged during the war in Gaza.

“Antisemitic hate fuelled the terrorists on December 14, but it came out of the shadows in October 2023,” she said. “It walked our streets, it marched over our bridges, it took over our landmarks, it camped in university quadrangles ... Like a slow creeping disease, it festered in plain sight.”

Jewish Australians, she said, had warned of the “menacing storm” but felt unheard. “The Coalition heard you.”

Addressing the families in the gallery, Ley said they were owed an apology for how long it took Albanese to call a royal commission. “You should never have had to juggle grieving your lost loved ones with national advocacy for the royal commission you so understandably wanted and deserved,” she said.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is Jewish, was even more scathing. “The feeling in the Jewish community right now is visceral,” he said. “It is a feeling of disappointment, anger, and betrayal ... Increasingly, Jewish Australians are asking the question: where are our leaders?”

Julian Leeser delivers a condolence motion in parliament.

As with Dreyfus’ speech, moments of anguish pierced the acrimony. Labor minister Jason Clare burst into tears as he read a statement from a survivor named Jessica who ran from the shooters with her daughter.

“We covered our children with our bodies, our bodies, and as the gunshots came closer and closer, as flying bits of flesh and bone sprayed over us, there was no mistaking it. This was a massacre,” he read.

“I realised I was no longer preparing to survive. I was preparing for how I wanted my daughter and I to die. I leaned into her ear and spoke the only words that came to me. ‘Go inside yourself, my darling, go to your beloved. Stay there, my baby, stay there’.”

Speaking in the Senate, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, a prominent champion of Palestinian rights, revealed a colleague of her husband died in the massacre.

She added a warning that “in moments of deep grief, there are voices that seek to divide us, to politicise loss, to police grief and to sow further hatred”.

“Many of my Jewish friends and comrades who have been shocked and devastated by the Bondi antisemitic terror attack have also expressed to me their distraught and their anger at the politicisation of these horrors and their grief being exploited by powerful forces to achieve narrow political ends,” she said.

Behind the scenes, as the condolence speeches continued, politicians and their staffers were meeting to craft legislation for debate on Tuesday.

With the government set to pass new firearms restrictions with the support of the Greens, Ley was preparing to work with the government on a watered-down version of its hate speech laws – albeit without the proposed new penalties for racial vilification.

“We need to respond to hatred with the ferocity of laws that are carefully targeted, and I must say in terms of hate speech, I wish we were going harder that we’re able to go tomorrow,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke lamented. “But we deal with the parliament we have.”