how Australian politics descended into ugliness in attack’s aftermath

Australians set aside Thursday to mourn the victims of the Bondi shooting incident last month.

Those who lost loved ones in anti-Semitic attacks wanted this to be an opportunity to remember the dead and spread light and kindness in their honor.

Instead, it was a day dominated by political disagreement that led to the collapse of the opposition coalition.

Veteran political commentator Malcolm Farr told the BBC: “I mean you would have thought they could have delayed this by 24 hours.”

“It’s at least unfortunate timing and shows a certain amount of self-indulgence.”

The fight – centered around reforms sparked by the tragedy – looks set to sink two leaders, destroy their parties’ election chances, and end what many Australians say has been a disappointing month in politics.

When two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah party on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people – including a 10-year-old – the recriminations began almost immediately.

“The transformation was amazing in the way they went about it [politicians] “Politicizing it,” says Cass Hill, 52, a Bondi resident. “Pointing fingers doesn’t solve anything.”

As families waited to bury their loved ones, a group of politicians – including the opposition leader – visited the scene to apportion blame. Populist leaders came to protest immigration. Prominent businessmen came to pick flowers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was accused by many Australian Jews of ignoring their concerns before the attack, spent the following weeks rejecting calls from many in the community for a national inquiry into anti-Semitism.

He was repeatedly harassed in public, when he arrived at a memorial to a tidal wave of boos and shouts of “You’re not welcome.” “You’d better go to a jihadist country where you can integrate,” one person shouted. A large screen appeared above the crowd with the words “Night of Unity” written on it.

Albanese has been criticized as overly defensive and slow to listen, and in turn chided his parliamentary rivals for “playing politics” with the tragedy.

The Bondi attack on December 14 was Australia’s worst mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, when 35 people were killed, but reactions to the tragedies could not have been more different.

Prime Minister John Howard then visited the Tasmanian shooting scene to lay wreaths with opposition leaders, who united shortly afterwards to help him pass firearms laws that made Australia a world leader in gun control.

“Australian society and politics are very different than they were 30 years ago, and we’re just a much more divided society,” says John Warhurst, emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.

There are a number of reasons why this attack divided people in ways that Port Arthur did not — including the already charged debate raging in Australia over Israel, Gaza and anti-Semitism, according to Mark Kenny, a political columnist and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.

“Then this event puts pressure on that, [and] “I think that immediately politicized the matter.”

Since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the protests in Australia against the Israeli war on Gaza that followed, Albanians have been consistently accused of failing to do enough to stamp out anti-Semitism. The Executive Council of Australian Jews says anti-Semitic incidents have increased from an average of 342 before the October 7 attacks in 2023 to 1,654 last year.

Likewise, he has been accused of not doing enough to denounce Israeli actions in Gaza UN experts have called it a genocide Israel denies.

Hours after Bondi’s shooting, an anti-Semitism commissioner appointed by Albanese linked the incident to the pro-Palestinian protests that regularly take place in Sydney and against which Jewish leaders have lobbied.

“It begins on October 9, 2023 at the Sydney Opera House,” Gillian Segal said in a statement. “Now death has arrived at Bondi Beach.”

Investigators did not say there was any connection between the alleged militants and the pro-Palestinian movement, instead claiming that the two were inspired by the Islamic State jihadist group, with the younger son of the father-son duo being on intelligence agencies’ radars for a period in 2019.

As was the case after Port Arthur, gun reform was first on the legislative agenda after the Bondi attack.

“We know that one of these terrorists had a firearms license and six guns, even though he lived in the middle of suburban Sydney… There is no reason why someone in that position would need that many weapons,” Albanese said as he announced a raft of changes in the following days.

And unlike Port Arthur, when the measures gained widespread popularity, Albanians’ focus on gun laws came under immediate attack by the liberal opposition and parts of the Jewish community as a means of distracting from what they see as the real cause of the attack — anti-Semitism. Even Howard, the architect of the 1996 reforms, came out to suggest it was “an attempt to divert attention.”

“This kind of ‘either-or’ is a feature of politics these days probably everywhere in the West,” says Kenny. “Everything becomes fraught and divisive.”

“There’s just this fundamental lack of trust that it feels as if we’ve fallen into the grip of a toxic cynicism that means the motives of political leaders…the first instinct is to doubt them, to see them as disingenuous.”

The recent decision by an Adelaide festival to disinvite a Palestinian-Australian author – ultimately led to… The entire book week collapse Kenney adds that part of the event — due to “sensitivities” after Bondi and her “past statements” — is also a sign of how tense current circumstances are.

Demands for immediate action on anti-Semitism were loud in the days following the attack, and Albanians quickly announced a crackdown on hate speech, with the support of the Anti-Semitism Commissioner.

But some critics said the measures would affect freedom of expression, including the right to criticize Israel, and to protest, while others said they did not go far enough in protecting other minorities.

“[It’s] “A can of worms,” says Warhurst, noting that there has been “never an easy agreement on finding where that balance lies” between freedom of expression and hate speech.

“I think now is the worst time to try to solve this type of problem because you do it so quickly and you do it in a heated environment.”

Hate speech laws had support from the Jewish community, but many felt they were not enough, with many victims’ families pressing Albanese to call a royal commission, the most powerful form of independent investigation in Australia.

For weeks, Albanese argued that the measures already announced were sufficient and that a royal commission would be the wrong tool to uncover what had happened. He said it could provide a platform for anti-Semites.

Albanese noted that royal commissions had not intervened in previous tragedies such as Port Arthur, comments that were widely rejected. Likewise, promised reviews of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have done nothing to dissuade those calling for an investigation.

Their appeals were reflected in a coordinated letter-writing campaign that appeared on the front pages of right-wing newspapers. “I don’t think it’s controversial to say that News Limited and other parts of the media have certainly been controversial,” says Warhurst.

Kenny says Albanese’s arguments against the royal commission were “really difficult to make in the circumstances”, and backfired on him when he was eventually forced to reverse course on the issue.

Analysts also suggested that his hesitation may be due to fears that the matter could become complicated, controversial and divisive. This might invite discussion of the war in Gaza, while ruling out consideration of Islamophobia – which exploded after Bondi, with Australia’s Islamophobia record recording a 740% rise in incidents by early January – when many Labor MPs have significant Muslim voters.

Farr believes there is also likely to be a “reluctance to capitulate to the opposition”: Opposition Leader Sussan Ley loudly demanded a royal commission, asking what Albanese was “hiding”, and amused by his back flip.

It is fair to say that, before the December attack, Lee was struggling to punch the government and assert her authority over her party. In the weeks before the shooting, some critics were predicting her imminent ouster.

“The Bondi attacks gave her the opportunity to make a very strong case against the government,” Kenney says.

But any momentum she gained on the royal commission collapsed this week when she failed to rally her coalition behind the very hate speech laws she had loudly called on Albanians to quickly implement.

By Thursday, the national day of mourning for the Bundy attacks, things had fallen apart.

The National Party announced it would leave the coalition, after refusing to vote for the legislation despite a shadow cabinet agreement. Despite previous calls for acceleration, they said they had not been given enough time to study proposals which they said could threaten freedom of expression.

On his way out the door, National Party Leader David Littleproud suggested the only way his party would consider returning to the fold was if Lee was sacked, leaving her already shaky leadership hanging by a thread.

“I’m pretty sure there are people… who are polishing their shoes and tightening the knots in their ties to step forward if or when this vacancy arises,” Farr says.

However, Littleproud’s bold ultimatum may be an overstep that could cost him his job, with mutterings that the Liberals would not accept him as leader in any future coalition either.

But then, it seems that all Australian politicians may be on shakier ground.

The positions of the major parties over the past month have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Australians. In a poll released earlier this week, Albanese’s net approval rating fell to minus 11 from his previous score of zero in November, while Lee’s approval rating – which had never risen – barely budged at minus 28.

Farr says repeated calls for unity by politicians who have simultaneously failed to heed their statements will not go unnoticed, and Thursday’s display of political infighting is unlikely to improve either party’s fortunes.

“This will reinforce the view of many Australians who already feel cynical about what politicians stand for, regardless of their party, and will reinforce the belief that politicians and members of Parliament are only defending themselves and not the national good,” he added.