Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are moments in the life of a nation that divide time into before and after—moments that lodge themselves in our collective memory not just because we choose to remember them but because we cannot forget them. Tragically, 14 December 2025 will be one of those dates. In a place where so many millions of Australians and tourists have gathered so often without fear, violence arrived without warning. In an instant, that normality was shattered, families were torn apart and a community that had done nothing to invite harm was changed forever.

The Hebrew scriptures begin with a radical claim: that every human being is made in the image of God. That idea is a foundation of Jewish moral thought and of Western civilisation itself. Violence against the innocent is not merely a crime; it is an assault on that image, the denial of human dignity at its most basic level and an affront to God himself. That is what Australians felt when they watched the events of Bondi unfold: shock, grief, and the quiet, unmistakable realisation that something precious had been violated. Today this parliament gathers to mourn, to honour the lives that were lost, but also to speak with honesty about the evil that was done, because remembrance without truth is not remembrance at all.

Let me start by making this point: Jewish Australians are not guests in this country. They are part of its very foundation. There were Jewish Australians, of course, on the First Fleet. Jewish families helped build this nation from its earliest days. They worked, they served, they sacrificed and they contributed to Australia's civic, commercial, cultural and military life at every stage of our history. The greatest Australian this country has ever produced was a Jewish Australian. Sir John Monash was not only a brilliant general; he was a nation builder and a defender of our institutions who helped shape the Australia we inherit. In the course of the last parliamentary term, the member for Macnamara and I respectively chaired and co-chaired the inquiry by the human rights committee into antisemitism on campus, and one thing that I was shocked by was that the University of Melbourne, a university that John Monash attended and was the vice-chancellor of, is a place where Jewish students now feel harassed and feel unsafe. I think that 100 years have passed and we've gone backwards. It's a shame. It's a national shame.

To attack Jewish Australians is to attack Australia itself. What happened at Bondi was not random. It was not detached from ideas. These were not deaths from some natural disaster or a road accident. These killings carry a far darker moral responsibility. They were the product of belief, intention and choice. Violence like this does not come from nowhere. It grows where hatred is excused, where extremism is indulged and where antisemitism is tolerated rather than being recognised for what it is: a poison. Bondi is the terrible endpoint of that moral failure. We owe it to the victims not to sanitise this reality. Radical Islam is a real and present driver of extremist violence across the world. Naming it is not an attack on peaceful Muslim Australians, the overwhelming majority of whom live decent lives and reject violence. It is a necessary distinction, because an ideology that glorifies murder does not shrink when it is ignored; it grows.

To be antisemitic is to be anti-Australian. It must be removed deliberately, not tolerated quietly. It must be challenged in our institutions, confronted in our schools and universities and denied any refuge in our public life and in all our communities. This is not a new standard we are inventing. This is the oldest standard that we have. Australia is a country built on the belief that every human life has equal worth, that the innocent are not collateral, that disagreement never justifies violence and that faith is never an excuse for murder. Most Australians still hold these values quietly, instinctively and firmly. We saw that in the courage of bystanders, in the professionalism of police and emergency workers and in the collective grief of an outraged nation in the days and weeks that followed. That instinct must now be matched by resolve. May the victims rest in peace, may their families find comfort, and may this nation have the moral courage to learn, to act and to rededicate itself to the protection of the Australian people and Australian values.

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