Coalition Demands PM Implement Anti-Semitism Report After Bondi Beach Massacre
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Opposition Leader Sussan Ley called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to immediately implement all recommendations from his anti-Semitism envoy’s report, declaring that “everything must change from today” following the terrorist attack that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.
“We have a government that sees anti-Semitism as a problem to be managed, not evil that needs to be eradicated,” Ley told reporters in Sydney. “It is incumbent on them to enact these recommendations to give our Jewish Australian community security and safety.”
The Coalition offered bipartisan support for government action while sharply criticising what it described as two years of inaction on rising anti-Semitism warnings. Ley said she had spoken with the Prime Minister on the night of the attack and secured an assurance she would receive security briefings from agencies and police.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in a separate interview with skynews, said Australia had witnessed “an evil unleashed in this country which has not been checked” since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“A vacuum emerged and it has been filled with evil,” Morrison said. “The response here has to put aside all of the ambivalence that I think we’ve seen.”
‘Darkest Day Since Port Arthur’
The attack, which killed victims aged 10 to 87, has been declared a terrorist incident by authorities. Two gunmen armed with six licensed firearms opened fire on families gathered for the annual Hanukkah by the Sea celebration, a community event Ley compared to “carols by candlelight” celebrations held across suburban Australia.
“It was the darkest day since the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996,” Ley said. “And Australians will remember where they were on the day of the Bondi massacre and they will remember the feelings of overwhelming disbelief and shock.”
Among the dead were a Holocaust survivor and an October 7 survivor who had fled Israel for Australia just weeks earlier, Morrison confirmed.
“To suffer in Israel and then suffer it here in my hometown here in Sydney, which it wasn’t always like this year,” Morrison said. “It wasn’t always like this year, but it is now.”
Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is Jewish and grew up in Bondi, described the attack as striking at the heart of Jewish communal life in Australia.
“Last night, there were families much like my own who were celebrating the festival of Hanukkah,” Leeser said. “There were children on rides, there were people eating too much sugary food, there was dancing, there was music, there were prayers.”
Warnings Went Unheeded
Ley pointed to a February warning from ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess that anti-Semitism posed “the biggest threat to loss of life in Australia” as evidence the government had been comprehensively warned about the danger facing the Jewish community.
She also referenced her recent conversations with Gillian Siegel, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism, whose report containing recommendations for government action remains unimplemented months after being delivered.
“I remember that conversation from a few months ago and the sense I had as I walked out of the room that it’s not about if but when this would happen,” Ley said. “And now it has.”
Ley said she had been present when the Prime Minister received Siegel’s report but noted he did not refer to any of its recommendations at the time.
“We’re still waiting,” she said. “This rising tide of anti-Semitism has happened in front of this government and have not responded.”
Morrison said the attack demonstrated the limits of security agencies when anti-Semitism is allowed to flourish unchecked.
“Our security agencies, they can protect us so far, but they can’t be everywhere and in everybody’s head and knowing what they’re about to do at any given time,” Morrison said. “The ability to protect against events like this is extremely difficult.”
Two Years of Escalation
Both Ley and Morrison catalogued incidents of anti-Semitism that have occurred since October 7, 2023, arguing the attack was the culmination of a pattern of hatred that went unchallenged.
Ley cited synagogues being firebombed “orchestrated by foreign terrorist states,” Jewish childcare centres being targeted, university campuses being occupied, and Jewish students being subjected to chants calling for “the explicit destruction of the Jewish state.”
“Armed guards greeting four-year-olds on their way into kindergarten,” Ley said. “Mothers who’ve read something hateful online and decided, just today, I’m not going to send my child to school.”
She said Jewish Australians had told her they were returning to Israel because they felt safer there than in Australia.
“If you are talking to Jewish Australians who say they will return to Israel because they feel safer in Israel than they do in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, then surely that must have been a wake-up call to this Prime Minister and to this government,” Ley said.
Morrison described the attack as “the worst attack, terrorist attack on a religious and ethnic group in this country ever” and said it represented a “desecration” of both Bondi Beach as an Australian landmark and the nation’s values.
“Holocaust survivors came to our country to live in peace and escape that horror, and now they have visited on them in the worst way we have ever seen in this country,” Morrison said. “Our country has changed.”
Coalition Pledges Support
Despite the criticism, Ley emphasised the Coalition stood ready to support meaningful government action.
“We stand ready to support any meaningful action that the Albanese government can take,” she said. “To properly fund the security that Jewish Australians have been asking for at their schools, their places of worship and in their community.”
If new laws were required, Ley said parliament should be recalled to pass them. The commitment to implement Siegel’s recommendations in full was a position the Coalition adopted when the report was first released, she confirmed.
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Jonathan Duniam, who also addressed reporters, said the opposition would back whatever measures the government proposed.
“Whatever needs to happen, the opposition will back in the government to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Duniam said. “It is unacceptable that it has come to this and leadership needs to be shown now. We can’t wait another day.”
Gun Laws Question Deferred
Ley declined to discuss potential changes to gun laws, noting families were waiting by hospital bedsides for news about loved ones.
“This is not a subject I’m going to discuss today,” she said when asked about vulnerabilities in the existing firearms licensing system.
Questions have emerged about how one of the gunmen’s father held a licence for six firearms while his son was reportedly on a low-level terror watch list. NSW Premier Chris Minns has indicated he is considering changes to gun laws.
Morrison said he did not believe guns were “the major issue here,” noting the weapons had been licensed for approximately 10 years.
“In terms of how we ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, you’ve got to go to the root cause of why this did happen on this occasion,” Morrison said.
Community in Mourning
Morrison praised the response of emergency services and civilians who intervened during the attack, including a man who confronted and subdued one of the gunmen.
“Greater than the brave man who took on that terrorist and took him to ground,” Morrison said. “Hal’s here from the Shire, very proud of him.”
He also expressed confidence in NSW Police Commissioner and Premier Minns as they manage the operational response.
The former Prime Minister, who grew up in Bronte near Bondi and attended school with members of the Jewish community, made a direct appeal to Jewish Australians.
“For my Jewish friends who are out there, we love you and we stand with you,” Morrison said. “You have a resilience and a depth of community which you know, and you will hold each other tight. And I just pray Australians will hold them tight as well.”
Ley echoed the sentiment, describing the attack as “a desecration against us all” that would “profoundly test and change our nation.”
“I stand with all Australians in this moment of shared grief,” Ley said. “We will do whatever it takes to force the strongest possible action from governments to keep Australians safe, to keep Jewish Australians safe, and to secure justice.”
The massacre represents the deadliest terrorist attack on Australian soil since the Port Arthur shooting in 1996, which killed 35 people and prompted sweeping gun law reforms under then-Prime Minister John Howard.
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