Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Sometime during the late seventh or early sixth century before Christ, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Jewish exiles who had been carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. This is what the Hebrew text says in chapter 29 in the Book of Jeremiah:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.

Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This passage of Scripture has inspired generations of Jewish people throughout history, living far from Jerusalem, to make homes, to be productive citizens and to build up the welfare of their local and national communities. Jewish Australians have done this since the arrival of the First Fleet, helping to build the welfare of our local communities and our great country.

And that is what Jewish Australians were doing on 14 December 2025 as they celebrated the first day of Hanukkah with family and friends down at Bondi Beach. By celebrating the Festival of Lights, they were seeking the welfare of our city and of our country, even though their welfare and security had been compromised by intimidation, as their homes and properties have been graffitied and firebombed over the last two years. Many might have taken the safer option and withdrawn from public displays of their faith and tradition, and who could have blamed them after the antisemitism that we have witnessed in this country? Instead, Jewish Australians persevered as a blessing to our community and proceeded with their Bondi Beach Hanukkah festival celebrations.

But, on that first day of Hanukkah, their welfare was shattered as militant Islamists armed with high-powered rifles cowardly gunned down and murdered 15 innocent people in cold blood. The elderly, parents and children were cut down. Many more innocents were grievously wounded by the long-range gunfire. Bondi Beach became a blood-soaked battlefield as tough and focused New South Wales police, along with the efforts of brave bystanders, closed the distance and overcame the jihadists with lethal force.

I acknowledge those who, on the day, acted from love and courage to overcome hate and cowardice: the police who returned fire and neutralised the threat; the civilians, like Ahmed al-Ahmed and the late Boris and Sofia Gurman, who disrupted the attack and created space and time for our police to get in shooting range of the terrorists; the family, friends and locals who stood between the gunfire and those they shielded with their bodies; the first responders on the scene who rendered first aid, staunched the bleeding and recovered order from the chaos so that the wounded had a chance; the doctors and nurses who shouldered the burden of a mass-casualty event and managed to save those who otherwise might have perished. I say thank you. You are the best of Australia, and we honour you in this House today.

But, even as we do this, the hard truth of the Bondi Beach attack remains. While our Jewish neighbours sought our welfare with a peaceful religious festival, our authorities were unable to uphold their welfare in return. This failure needs a close examination. I commend the Prime Minister for appointing a royal commission. We must have a full accounting, even if the truth is harsh and brutal. We must confront it.

One thing is clear, and I close on this reality. We now have people living in Australia who do not share our values, who despise our way of life, and they will use violence to make the point, as the father-son homegrown terror cell at Bondi Beach has shown us. Militant Islam is a cancer that must be cut from our communities before it kills more of us. So we must talk about immigration and citizenship and the kind of country we want Australia to become. To avoid this hard reality is to ignore the darker truth at the heart of the Bondi terror attacks.

See this speech in context