How Australian politics turned ugly after the attacks

Thursday is a day set aside for Australians to mourn the victims of last month’s Bondi shooting.

Those who have lost loved ones in anti-Semitic attacks hope this is an opportunity to remember the dead and spread light and kindness to them.

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

“I mean, you’d think they could delay it for 24 hours,” veteran political commentator Malcolm Farr told the BBC.

“It was unfortunate timing to say the least and showed a degree of self-indulgence.”

The fight over reforms spurred by the tragedy looks set to trap the two leaders and ruin their parties’ electoral chances, capping what many Australians say is a disappointing month in politics.

When two gunmen opened fire on a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people, including a 10-year-old child, recriminations began almost immediately.

Bondi local Kass Hill, 52, said: “It’s amazing how they (politicians) have politicized it. Pointing fingers doesn’t solve anything.”

As families waited to bury their loved ones, politicians, including opposition leaders, arrived to apportion blame. Populist leaders began to condemn immigrants. Famous businessmen came to take photos with the flowers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been accused by many Jewish Australians of ignoring their concerns before the attacks, weeks after he dismissed calls from many in the community for a national inquiry into anti-Semitism.

He was repeatedly heckled in public, and when he arrived at the memorial, he was met with boos and chants of “you’re not welcome.” “You might as well go to a jihadist country where you can blend in,” one person shouted. Above the crowd, a large screen read “A Night of Unity.”

Albanese has been criticized for being overly defensive and slow to listen, but he has in turn scolded his parliamentary opponents for “playing politics” with the tragedy.

The Bundy attack on December 14 was Australia’s worst mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, when 35 people died, but the reactions to these tragedies have been very different.

Then-Prime Minister John Howard went to the site of the Tasmanian shootings to lay a wreath with opposition leaders, who soon rallied to help him pass gun laws that would make Australia a world leader in gun control.

John Warhurst, emeritus professor of politics at the Australian National University, said: “Australian society and politics are very different to what they were 30 years ago, and our society is more divided.”

Mark Kenny, political columnist and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast, said the attack divided people for a number of reasons, including Australia’s heated debates about Israel, Gaza and anti-Semitism.

He told the BBC: “Then this incident triggered this, which I think led to it being immediately politicized.”

Albanese has been accused of failing to do enough to stamp out anti-Semitism since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and subsequent Australian protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The Executive Council of Australian Jews said anti-Semitic incidents had increased from an average of 342 before the attack on October 7, 2023, to 1,654 last year.

Likewise, he has been accused of not doing enough to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, UN experts call it genocide Israel denies it.

Hours after the Bundy shooting, the anti-Semitism commissioner appointed by Albanese linked it to frequent pro-Palestinian protests in Sydney, which Jewish leaders have been lobbying against.

“The show begins on October 9, 2023 at the Sydney Opera House,” Jillian Segal said in a statement. “Death has now arrived at Bondi Beach.”

Investigators have not suggested any links between the alleged gunman and the pro-Palestinian movement, but claim the pair were inspired by the jihadist group Islamic State and that the younger brother of the father-son duo was under intelligence surveillance for a period in 2019.

Gun reform is at the top of the legislative agenda after the Bundy attack, just as it was after Port Arthur.

“We know that one of the terrorists had a firearms license and owned six guns, even though he lived in the middle of Sydney’s suburbs… There’s no reason anyone would need that many guns in this case,” Albanese said as he announced a series of changes in the coming days.

Unlike Port Arthur, when the measures were widely welcomed, Albanese’s focus on gun laws was immediately attacked by the Liberal opposition and parts of the Jewish community as a distraction from the real cause of the attacks – anti-Semitism. Even Howard, the architect of the 1996 reform, came out and said it was an “attempt to divert attention.”

“This ‘either-orism’ is a feature of Western politics today. Everything has become heated and divisive,” Kenney said.

“There’s a fundamental lack of trust, and it’s almost like we’re caught up in a toxic cynicism, which means the motivations of political leaders … are to question them and think they’re being dishonest.”

An Adelaide festival recently decided to disinvite a Palestinian-Australian writer – culminating in The whole writers week debacle Kenney added that it was also indicative of how tense the situation was due to the “sensitivities” following Bundy’s incident and her “past comments.”

Calls for immediate action against anti-Semitism were high in the days after the attack, and Albanese was quick to announce a crackdown on hate speech with the support of an anti-Semitism commissioner.

But some critics say the measures will infringe on free speech, including the right to criticize Israel and protest, while others believe they do not go far enough to protect other minority groups.

“(It’s) a can of worms,” ​​Warhurst said, noting that there is never a “balance” between free speech and hate speech.

“I think now is the worst time to try to solve these types of problems because you’re doing it pretty quickly and you’re doing it in a hot environment.”

The hate speech law has the support of the Jewish community, but many believe it does not go far enough – with some victims’ families urging Albanese to convene a royal commission, Australia’s most powerful form of independent inquiry.

Albanese has argued for weeks that the measures already announced were sufficient and that the royal commission was not the wrong vehicle to shed light on what had happened. He said this could provide a platform for anti-Semites.

Albanese noted that the royal commission had not been involved in tragedies like Port Arthur’s, a comment that was widely dismissed. Likewise, promises of scrutiny of intelligence agencies and law enforcement have failed to deter those calling for investigations.

Their pleas were echoed by a coordinated letter-writing campaign on the front pages of right-wing newspapers. “I don’t think it’s controversial to say that News Limited and other media outlets are definitely stirring up trouble,” Warhurst said.

Mr Kenny said Albanese’s arguments against the royal commission were “really difficult to make in this context” and it backfired for him when he was eventually forced to change his position on the issue.

Analysts also said his reluctance may be due to concerns that things could become complicated, contentious and divisive. It could spark discussion of the war in Gaza while potentially precluding scrutiny of Islamophobia – which exploded in the wake of Bundy, with the Australian Islamophobia Register recording a 740 per cent increase in incidents by early January – when many Labor MPs have large Muslim voters.

Farr thinks there may also be an “unwillingness to give in” to the opposition: Opposition leader Susan Ley has clamored for a royal commission, asked Albanese what he was “hiding” and reveled in his backflips.

To be fair, Ley had been working hard to undermine the government and assert authority over his own party before December’s attack. In the weeks before the shooting, some experts even predicted her imminent deportation.

“The Bundy attack provides her with an opportunity to pursue a strong case against the government,” Kenney said.

But any momentum she gained at the royal commission collapsed this week as she failed to unite her coalition behind the hate speech laws she had loudly demanded Albanese implement quickly.

By Thursday — a national day of mourning for the Bundy attack — things were already falling apart.

Despite the shadow cabinet agreement, National refused to vote for the bill and announced it was withdrawing from the coalition government. Despite earlier calls for time, they said they did not have enough time to review the proposals, which could threaten free speech.

National leader David Littleproud said as he left that the only way his party would consider a return to the party was if Lye was ditched, putting her already shaky leadership position in jeopardy.

“I’m pretty sure there are people … polishing their shoes and tightening their ties to step up if there’s an opening or if they’re pushed,” Farr said.

However, Littleproud’s bold ultimatum may have crossed the line, costing him his job and complaining that the Liberals would not accept him as leader of any future coalition.

But then the position of all Australian politicians seemed to become more unstable.

The posturing of the major parties over the past month has left many Australians feeling bitter. In a poll released earlier this week, Albanese’s net approval rating had plummeted from zero points in November to minus 11, while Ley’s approval rating (never high) was little changed at minus 28.

Fall said politicians’ repeated calls for unity while brushing aside their own rhetoric would not go unnoticed and that Thursday’s political infighting was unlikely to improve the fortunes of any party.

“This will reinforce the views of many Australians who are already cynical about what politicians, regardless of their party, actually stand for, and will reinforce the belief that politicians, MPs, only represent themselves and not the interests of the country.”