Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

What happened on 14 December was a targeted, evil, antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians, and my heart breaks for every person, every family, every community that has been made to suffer because of that senseless, hate fuelled violence. I've attended homes and synagogues, and had private meetings, both in their homes and in my Sydney home, for the moment, and in my Sydney office with those families. I haven't had TV cameras or radio reporters with me. What I've done is engage respectfully with those people. I've said I feel the weight of responsibility for an atrocity that happened whilst I'm Prime Minister. And, as I have said, I'm sorry that this occurred—sorry for the grief and pain that the Jewish community and our entire nation have experienced. Our responsibility is to channel that grief, that pain and that anger into meaningful action, making a difference, and that is what I have striven to do.

I've said that we would implement in full the recommendations of the antisemitism envoy's report. Unfortunately, some of those recommendations, the most serious ones—about vilification—did not receive the support of either the coalition or the Greens in the Senate and therefore were not able to be pursued. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, our priority was unashamedly about the safety of Australians. If you look at what is happening with terrorist attacks overseas, what often occurs is that one attack leads to another, coordinated attack somewhere else as part of planning. Our first priority, unashamedly, on the Sunday night, on the Monday, on the Tuesday, on the Wednesday, on the Thursday, was not to worry about politics. Our priority was: were these people part of a cell? Would there be another attack in another place in Sydney? Would there be a follow-up attack in Melbourne? Were Jewish Australians being kept safe? Were the leaders of those communities being kept safe? We upgraded the security measures around the track. Our priority was that. What were the gaps that were missed in security? Through the National Security Committee, which has met on almost a daily basis every day since 14 December, our priority was to get that right.

Our second priority was to make sure not that we did something in a year's time or two years time but that we did something immediately. The House of Representatives passed legislation—not as strong as we would have liked in tackling antisemitism, but what we could get through. That was our priority. We called a royal commission once we had the royal commissioner in place and once we had consulted the Jewish community about the terms of reference.

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