Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sunday 14 December 2025 will forever be etched in infamy in this country—a day when the malignant effects of antisemitism collided with the equally malignant effects of Islamic radicalism. The sounds of song and surf were pierced by screams and gunshots as people either fell to the ground killed, cowered in terror or scattered in multiple directions. I pay my respects to the memories of 15 Australians, the majority of them Jewish, along with at least 40 injured people facing long roads to recovery ahead. The physical wounds heal faster than the psychological ones.

My sister lost a dear friend in Adam Smyth; my heartfelt condolences to his family and to the families of Boris and Sofia Gurman, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, Edith Brutman, Boris Tetleroyd, Marika Pogany, Peter Meagher, Dan Elkayam, Reuven Morrison, Tibor Weitzen, Alexander Kleytman, Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, Tania Tretiak and, of course, Matilda, only 10 years old. May their memories be a blessing. In Jewish tradition, repeating the names of the deceased ensures that their memories do not die. I pay tribute to the first responders, lifeguards, healthcare workers, police—including constables Jack Hibbert and Scott Dyson, who were injured—and emergency personnel who sprung into action on the day and have continued their work with professionalism in service to our community and country.

Amid the chaos and terror were extraordinary acts of courage, like Sofia and Boris Gurman, who had the presence of mind to disarm the terrorist as he was about to start his killing spree, only to be shot dead; 14-year-old Chaya Dadon, who, in the middle of the attack, left the safety of a shelter to shield two children who were stranded next to their wounded parents, getting shot in the process—a child herself shielding children, who said: 'I felt like Hashem'—or God—'was sitting right next to me. He was whispering into my ear, "This is your mission; go save those kids."'; Reuven Morrison, a Russian Australian grandfather who distracted the attacker by throwing bricks, buying time for others to flee to safety before he was fatally shot; and of course, Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian Muslim refugee, who crash-tackled the terrorist, wrenching away his gun as he was approaching people who were cowering on the ground, saving countless lives while being shot multiple times. He said, 'I am defending my people, defending innocent people, whatever their religion.' We saw on that day the worst and the best of Australia.

This atrocity did not happen in isolation; it happened in a permissive environment of antisemitism. We had been warned by Jewish Australians—including the special envoy for antisemitism, Jillian Segal—and the boss of ASIO, Mike Burgess, that words matter. Hateful antisemitic rhetoric, if left unchecked, opens the door to escalation. This is exactly what has occurred since 7 October 2023. Antisemitic language opened the door to graffiti; the targeting of Jewish businesses and academics; the doxxing of Jewish creatives; the rebooting of the BDS—that is, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement—targeting anything Jewish or Israel associated, including research partnerships; violent protests on the streets of Melbourne, where horse manure and acid were thrown at police; the vandalism of Labor MP officers; firebombing of a childcare centre; firebombing of cars in Jewish neighbourhoods; Australian Muslim healthcare workers emboldened to publicly announce that they would harm Jewish patients—they should never again be allowed to practice; and the torching of the Adass Israel Synagogue, in Elsternwick.

The weekly protests in Melbourne witnessed people carrying placards citing the death of Israel, chanting 'from the river to the sea' and reinforcing the abolition of Israel; calls to 'globalise the intifada', a subversive call to jihad; and people celebrating pictures of terror organisations or sponsors of terror like Iranian ayatollahs, Hezbollah or the colours of Hamas and Hezbollah. There were times when I felt that Melbourne had become a place I did not recognise. Our security agencies uncovered foreign interference from Iran, which had co-opted local criminals to do their bidding, resulting in our government ejecting the Iranian ambassador. It revealed that Iran was the head of this snake, a chaos machine funding terrorism throughout the world, and we were not immune. I said in my farewell speech as the member for Higgins that sectarian grievances should not be imported nor amplified here. Leave them at the door. We live and die under the Australian flag, not under the banners of our previous countries.

The inability of many Australians to manage their moral distress or to disagree agreeably has led to blame being sprayed in multiple directions, towards government, universities, businesses, arts and cultural institutions, but worst of all, towards Jewish Australians. They are not responsible for the problems in the Middle East. Free speech does not mean hate speech. Free speech does not mean a free-for-all. Australians value the right to free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religious expression, but those rights come with obligations—to treating each other with mutual respect and to equity and inclusion. It seems that this permissive environment of antisemitism has come with the departure of decency and forgetting our obligations to each other.

Antisemitism has taken root in our country, but so has extremist ideology, including Islamic radicalism and Neo-Nazi extremism. All are like terminal cancers. You can't protect the good cells of the body without excising the cancerous ones. The laws we are introducing will strengthen gun control and make it easier to proscribe hate groups, but the lack of support for the racial vilification provisions is a major loophole for terrorism. It was identified as a key recommendation by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in her report, but, unfortunately, it has been shelved—for now—due to insufficient political support.

I believe that, for the sake of the 15 lives lost, families shattered and a nation seeking enduring mitigations, we should progress these provisions via a parliamentary inquiry, but in the interim, via the royal commission. This is unfinished business of this moment. If the worst terrorist incident in Australia's history can't motivate us to tackle the hard stuff, then I don't know what will. Addressing racial vilification matters because, as the Prime Minister said, the terrorists had hate in their hearts but also had guns in their hands. That hate started with language—a poison that was dripped into their ears either in person, online or both. Language matters because it radicalises.

Extremist Islamic preachers and clerics who till the soil of hate, citing selective verses in the Koran to support their claims against the infidels, who are Christians, Jews and non-believers, are exploiting Australia's values of free speech against us. The crazy thing is that these extremists think that they've won when they lose. According to their rigid belief systems, their own death begets martyrdom. The literal interpretation of aspects of the Koran is not today compatible with the laws and values of Australia, nor any liberal democracy for that matter. I would urge the many decent Australian Islamic leaders of repute to moderate this kind of interpretation because it may be fuelling fanaticism and putting us all in danger.

Muslim Australians are overwhelmingly peaceful and decent people. Extremism by a hateful minority smears them all and fuels anti-Muslim sentiment. It also fuels anti-immigrant sentiment in a country where one in two Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. It emboldens Neo-Nazis to recruit, campaign against Australians of Jewish or Indian ancestry and entertain ambitions for political representation, which makes my blood run cold. Already, our introduction of prohibitions against hate groups has seen the National Socialist Network, a bunch of Neo-Nazis, disband. How we deoxygenate the bad and oxygenate all that is good and right in Australia will be the subject of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

I thank the Jewish community, including grieving families, Jewish organisations and civic groups, including many Labor members, both current and former, who advocated for it. I hope that, in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack Australia has ever seen, it delivers a blueprint that will not only help us outlaw the bad stuff but also address how we strengthen the bonds between each other and between disparate communities.

Australia is multicultural, but our social cohesion has fissures, with bridges between communities being pulled up, to our collective detriment. This is why social engineering measures will be just as important as the criminal justice ones. The royal commission will also afford Jewish Australians testimonial justice, preventing them, I hope, from feeling and becoming permanently marginalised in their own country. Living in a state of hypervigilance behind walls cannot be their future.

The first time I lit my menorah, which I purchased in Tel Aviv weeks after October 7, was after the Bondi terrorist attack. In a darkened room, I reflected on a Jewish truth first conveyed to me by the Chabad family in Malvern: that only light defeats darkness. The Jewish community have met this moment and so many past—in fact, too many—with vigils of song, prayer and candlelight. Such was also the case for those 15 lives lost. How they find the grace to sing rather than shout, to extend the outstretched hand rather than the clenched fist, is a mystery to me. I don't understand how they do this. It is something, though, that we can all learn from.