To comfort a nation. We have the tools, do we have the will?

They came to Bondi to kill as many Jews as possible, but they also shattered the political consensus and often unacknowledged sense of national coherence. How will we cope? Julie Mackin asking?

The two gunmen who unleashed such terror on the Jewish community on December 14, 2025 could never have imagined that they would be this successful. Their goal was clearly to kill as many people as possible and turn the happiest day on the Jewish calendar into one that would be remembered with heartache and fear for years to come.

They may have succeeded in this.

But they also left us scrambling to understand this attack, the reasons behind it, and how it became so quickly weaponized in the hands of Australia’s most divisive people in politics and media.

Australia is suffering

A gloom hangs over Sydney as fireworks and rifles are hoisted, skies remain grey, and NSW Premier Chris Minns successfully reframes New Year’s Eve celebrations as an act of defiance as he draws a direct line between two murderous gunmen and hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders marching in support of Palestine. Dividing society has become his joke.

Political leadership has failed us at a moment when we need clear and calm leadership to help us stay together. This is more than a political, security or social crisis; It is a psychological moment that needs to be investigated and understood. Because the unseen engine that drives this moment feels no remorse.

Some may challenge the legitimacy of psychoanalytically analyzing a nation in the same way that an individual can be understood psychologically. Like Judith Butler suggests,

“Nations are not the same as the souls of individuals, but both can be described as ‘subjects’, albeit at different levels.” We need new tools to help us right now.

When the nation is read as a psychological subject and the thought of one of the world’s most influential psychoanalysts is applied, a picture begins to emerge. This is of a nation that is confused, anxious, and somehow reacting. Melanie Klein investigated in his study on the paranoid/schizoid position.

This is the oldest and most primitive psychological state for us. Klein describes infants as incapable of managing complexity, terrorized by the fear of extinction. To protect itself from terror, the baby divides the mother into a completely good mother and a completely bad mother. The good mother protects and preserves the welfare of her baby; The completely bad mother carries all the anger and hatred that the baby reflects on her.

As a baby, and perhaps as a nation, this psychological divide protects us, but not for very long.

I believe this is where we are today. We divide in many and varied ways along lines of identity, belief, politics, and national identity to manage our meaning-making, anxiety, and growing fear of the (m)Other.

As a result, our perception of “us” is shattered.

Warnings about ISIS connections were ignored. Anatomy of the Bondi attacks

What should be done?

Nations have tools that little babies don’t have. There are ways to escape this divide if we have the courage to use them, but no one should think that it will be easy.

Simply the first step is to withdraw from communities and individuals the projection of who is all good and who is all bad. We do this by slowing down and discovering the facts, gradually overcoming complexity.

Therefore, from a psychological perspective, a federal Royal Commission makes sense.

The Royal Commission gives the Prime Minister the opportunity to be what Donald Winnicott called a “good enough mother”. This is the leader who doesn’t have all the answers but is willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing with the child and metabolize the challenges along the way.

Secondly, setting up a Royal Commission, collecting evidence and reporting will take time and we all need time to let the pain, fear and anger subside. Division is done with fearful speed, but healing occurs when the nation slows down and begins to think with a different part of the soul.

Third, Klein argued that the infant moves beyond the paranoid/schizoid position when he experiences a moment of recognition. When the baby (mother) sees the other completely. At this point, the baby’s anxiety about himself begins to turn into anxiety about the (m)Other. It is a moment when the baby/nation begins to see the truth and resist it.

It is a moment of deep sadness and deepening love in which the baby/nation realizes the harm he has done and/or inflicted on the (m)Other. It is the beginning of both love and psychological maturity.

Finally, NSW Premier Chris Minns is distrusted by all parties for trying to use this horror to achieve his ambition of shutting down pro-Palestinian rallies.

Anthony Albanese is the only political leader who refuses to weaponize this crisis for his own gain.

Trust is more important than being liked right now.

Learning from recent history

We have seen before what it is like to go through this embarrassing and distressing process. An example of this awareness and regret was in 2019 when an Australian gunman shot and killed fifty Muslims as they prayed in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In a moment of shame, Australians watched as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the world that the white supremacist who carried out this atrocity was not one of “them”.

Australian novelist Richard Flanagan concluded his remarks at the Palm Sunday Refugee Rally held in Canberra, Australia:

“He is one of us. And the terrible truth is that we are him. We are our media, which often supports neo-Nazis. We are our parliament that voted for a neo-Nazi slogan and decided ‘it’s okay to be white.’ We are our Senators.” [Fraser Anning]calling for a ‘final solution’ to the so-called migration problem… Christchurch proves one thing; National security does not lie in the tale of border security; does not submit to the continued torture of free men; It exists in tolerance and human decency. (Flanagan, 2019)”

We can do this.

via Port Arthur to Bondi via Oslo. History repeats itself, lessons are ignored and we take risks