Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To the families and loved ones of the people killed at Bondi on 14 December, I extend my profound condolences. I can only try to understand their grief and their loss. It has now been over a month since the Bondi Beach shootings. Time moves on so quickly, and, for most people, normal life resumes. But it doesn't for those killed at Bondi, nor for their families and close friends—15 people that were celebrating life, probably looking forward to the summer holidays and Christmas plans that never came to pass. For their families and close friends, and for those wounded, their lives were changed forever, left with heartache and memories that will never leave them.

On 14 December our nation was left shocked, angry, saddened and grieving in a way I have never seen before: angry at those who committed such a cowardly and heartless act; shocked that such an event could happen in Australia, where the principle of a fair go is ingrained in our identity and where we pride ourselves on multicultural success; saddened and grieving that 15 defenceless people—including 10-year-old Matilda—who had done no harm to their killers and were going about their lives as we all do could be mercilessly gunned down.

We cannot turn back time, we cannot bring back the lives of those killed and we cannot restore the lives of their loved ones. But we can, and we do, thank those who in any way assisted on the day—some risking or losing their own lives, as so many other speakers have noted.

Today there is too much hate throughout the world—too many innocent lives lost every day because of hate, bigotry, greed, and racial and religious intolerance. Hate and bigotry are used by evil people to indoctrinate others, who then commit vile atrocities even at the cost of their own lives. Jewish people know hate and bigotry only too well, having experienced antisemitism for centuries. The Bard, William Shakespeare, wrote about it over 400 years ago in his play The Merchant of Venice. In act 3, scene 1, Shylock, a hated Jewish moneylender and a victim of antisemitism, when questioning why Jewish people were so despised, exclaims:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer …

He goes on:

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

That passage reminds us all that we all have much more in common than that which divides us, yet, 400 years later, nothing has changed.

Every life is precious, every life is sacred and every life matters. Laws may constrain behaviour, but they will not restrain a crazed person who is prepared to die for their cause. It is only when people overcome hatred and bigotry that others will feel safe. And people are not born with hate in their mind. It is taught to them. And, just as hate is taught to them, so can love be.

We must not let the Bondi killings slowly fade into the past. We owe it to the Jewish community, who have already endured so much, and we owe it to the 15 people killed and to their families to do all that is possible to prevent another tragedy. May the loss of their lives not be in vain but become a time of reflection and a turning point for the better for our nation.

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