In an extraordinary personal censure, Australia’s Jewish community effectively denied Anthony Albanese the role of being the nation’s chief public mourner in this week of national tragedy.
In such circumstances, a prime minister would normally attend the funerals of the victims, especially those of a rabbi and a ten-year-old child. But Albanese knew he was not wanted, and indeed might receive a hostile reception. Contrast the warmth of feeling for New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, who was at both services.
The prime minister made much of his contact more privately. He visited the home of a rabbi, where there were direct relatives of two people who’d been killed and people with children who had been wounded. There was some frank discussion. He spoke to others, in long conversations, by phone.
The government struggled for days with its response to the massacre. Initially, the prime minister emphasised the need for tighter gun controls, and brought together national cabinet to put work in train (although Minns is out in front with state parliament returning next week to legislate).
But that only prompted more anger, with critics seeing it as a side issue to the main problem – that being the failure to have acted more strongly on the antisemitism that has plagued Australia in the past two years.
The cabinet’s national security committee broadened the response. On Thursday Albanese brought forward a package of measures to strengthen hate laws and existing powers to deny visas. The government is also examining what can be done about hate online, and it has established a taskforce under respected business figure David Gonski (who did the seminal inquiry into schools that reported to the Gillard government) to tackle the problem in the education sector.
Unlike NSW, there will be no pre-Christmas recall of the federal parliament. The new measures are very complicated to draw up, Albanese says. More to the point, the government doesn’t want to give the opposition another forum to attack it.
Regardless of the politics, it is a missed opportunity. Having parliament meet at such a time would have been appropriate. It would have given an occasion for an expression of national condolence. Even if legislation couldn’t be prepared in time, Albanese could have outlined his plans in that more formal setting.
While the new measures are welcome in their generality, the detail will be important in where they strike the balances between security and people’s rights. Having said that, action specifically to crack down on hate preachers is long overdue.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley spent much time this week at Bondi and attended funerals. There’s no doubt the Coalition has politicised the tragedy. While this partisanship is unfortunate, it can also be justified.
The opposition, better plugged into the Jewish community than Labor, has said for a long time that more should be done to fight antisemitism. Now the government has, under force of circumstances and with its new measures, accepted that point.
In a concession from one who hates making them, Albanese said on Thursday “I, of course, acknowledge that more could have been done, and I accept my responsibility for the part in that as prime minister of Australia”.
While it is wrong to seek to blame Albanese personally for what happened at Bondi, he is culpable for failing to more adequately respond to the antisemitism crisis. It is as though he did not comprehend or accept the extent and depth of it.
Although Ley has been hyper active these past days, the most powerful Liberal voice came not from the leader and her team, but from former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who delivered both a barrage of criticism against Albanese and a call for action, in a speech at Bondi.
Frydenberg said he was “deeply offended” when, in an ABC interview on Wednesday night, 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson cast a political lens over the “personal case” he was making against the prime minister. But there’s little doubt some Liberals, appalled at the parlous situation of their party, will have watched Frydenberg with the question in their minds: will he be part of the team after the 2028 election?
The government rejects Frydenberg’s call for a royal commission, arguing that would just delay action. This sounds like an excuse; a judicial inquiry into antisemitism could produce some insights into how this scourge came to become so entrenched in our community.
The Coalition, which set up a taskforce to draft its response to Bondi, on Thursday produced an outline for action that both attacked the government for past omissions and went further in its proposals than Albanese’s response.
The Bondi atrocity is a reminder of how the political landscape can change in moments. It’s hard to recall that just a week ago, the mega story was the overuse of parliamentarians’ travel allowances and we were expecting an imminent announcement on tighter rules.
Albanese spent last weekend, before everything transformed on Sunday night, in discussions about the altered rules before they were expected to be ticked off by Cabinet on Monday. Needless to say, there has been no sign of them. Even the budget update turned into the week’s footnote.
On the opposition side, they were getting ready to launch their immigration policy. Bondi will have some implications for that policy, which includes more emphasis in ensuring people coming to Australia share core Australian values. The terrorist attack will feed into the migration debate, which is already a fraught area.
What of Bondi’s longer term implications?
Kos Samaras, of RedBridge political consultancy, says, “It’s still unclear what the political wash-up will be. We’re in uncharted territory.
"But having looked closely at how communities respond to trauma on this scale, one thing is clear: politicians from every side will need to think very carefully about how they conduct themselves. If this moment is weaponised for partisan advantage, it will almost certainly trigger a backlash, much like the one we witnessed during the pandemic,” he says.
“Right now, we can say something else with confidence: Australians will give the widest moral licence to members of the Jewish community, across every background and political persuasion, to express anger, fear and frustration. Australians have rightly a huge amount of sympathy for them and the overall safety of the community,” Samaras says.
Some claim the massacre will change Australia forever. More realistically, it probably will act as an indelible marker of how modern Australia is a complicated multicultural society where the tensions of the wider world not only constantly test local harmony but can shatter our security in an instant.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
