Bondi blame game continues as parliament returns for condolence motions for victims

Albanese was the first to speak, telling parliament: “Honouring Bondi’s heroes also means standing together against the evil that causes this destruction, standing together against hatred, standing together against division. And working together to eradicate antisemitism, wherever it hides, whatever form it takes and whatever weapons it uses.”

Albanese said members of parliament “must channel our anger into meaningful action to ensure atrocities like this never happen again”.

“That responsibility begins with me as Australia’s 31st Prime Minister,” he said. “This is also the right of each of us as MPs in this parliament,” he said.

Speaking later, Ley said the Bondi attack was not an isolated attack but was the result of years of growing hostility towards Australian Jews, linking the attack to the pro-Palestinian movement that rose during the war in Gaza.

“Anti-Semitic hatred fueled terrorists on December 14, but emerged from the shadows in October 2023,” he said. “It walked our streets, crossed our bridges, took over our landmarks, camped out in university courtyards… Like a slow-spreading disease, it festered before our eyes.”

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He said Australian Jews had warned of the “threatening storm” but felt those warnings were unheard. “The coalition heard you.”

Addressing the families in the gallery, Ley said they owed them an apology for how long it had taken Albanese to convene the royal commission. “You should never have had to balance mourning your lost loved ones with national advocacy for the royal commission you understandably wanted and deserved,” he said.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is Jewish, was even harsher. “The emotion that the Jewish community is feeling right now is very visceral,” he said. “It is a sense of frustration, anger and betrayal… Australian Jews are increasingly asking: Where are our leaders?”

As in Dreyfus’s speech, moments of anguish pierced through the acrimony. Labor minister Jason Clare broke down in tears as he read a statement from a survivor named Jessica, who fled the shootings with her daughter.

“We covered our children with our bodies, our bodies, and as the gunfire grew closer and flying pieces of flesh and bone splashed over us, there was no doubt about it. This was a massacre,” he read.

“I realized I wasn’t preparing to survive anymore. I was preparing for how I wanted my daughter and I to die. I leaned down into her ear and said the only words I could think of. ‘Get inside you, darling, go home to your lover. Stay there, baby, stay there.'”

Speaking in the Senate, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, a leading advocate of Palestinian rights, announced that one of her husband’s colleagues died in the massacre.

“In moments of deep grief, there are voices that seek to divide us, politicize loss, police pain, and sow more hatred,” he added, warning.

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“Many of my Jewish friends and comrades, who were shocked and devastated by the antisemitic terrorist attack in Bondi, also expressed to me their sadness and anger at the politicization of this horror and its exploitation by powerful forces to achieve narrow political goals,” he said.

While condolences continued behind the scenes, politicians and their staff were meeting to draft the legislation to be debated on Tuesday.

At a time when the government was poised 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 hate speech laws; although without the proposed new penalties for racial slurs.

Home Secretary Tony Burke lamented: “We must respond to hate with the violence of carefully targeted legislation, and in terms of hate speech I must say I wish we had been tougher so we could go tomorrow.” “But we are dealing with the parliament we have.”