Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion. I do so, with a heavy heart, both personally and on behalf of Western Australians, to honour the innocent Australians murdered at Bondi Beach. It was there, at a celebration of light overcoming darkness on the first night of Hanukkah, that evil reared its ugly head in our country.

Bondi is not just a beach; it's an Australian icon. It represents freedom, openness, community and joy. That is why it was chosen. This was not random violence; it was targeted terrorism—an antisemitic attack on Australia's Jewish community and an attack on the Australian way of life and the freedoms that bind us together as a nation.

Today, as on every day during the past month, we mourn the victims, we mourn the families whose lives have been shattered and we mourn a loss that will echo through this country for generations. From Cottesloe to Scarborough, from Cable Beach to Esperance, Western Australians grieve alongside Sydney because, when one part of Australia is attacked, all of Australia is attacked.

Only weeks before this atrocity, Britain's Chief of the Defence Staff, Richard Knighton, delivered a stark warning to his nation. He said the world is now 'more dangerous than I have known during my career' and that nations must prepare not only their armed forces but their entire societies for a far more unstable era. He warned that democracies would need to build national resilience and that more people would need to be ready to fight for their country as extremism and authoritarian threats grow.

At the same time, the new head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, told the world that we are no longer operating in a time of clear peace or war but in what she called 'a space between peace and war'. She warned that hostile actors and extremist movements are operating in the grey zone, using cyberattacks, disinformation, intimidation, radicalisation and terrorism to weaken open societies from within. And she said something especially chilling that has stayed with me:

… the front line is everywhere.

The front line on 14 December was Bondi Beach, and it is now potentially every Australian suburb, every community and every public place. Bondi has shown us that Australia was not exempt from this reality. The Albanese government was not operating in a vacuum. The same forces destabilising Europe and other regions of the world—radicalisation, grievance politics, online extremism and imported conflicts—were also operating here.

After 7 October 2023, the terrorist massacre in Israel and the worst mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust, this government failed to draw a clear moral line. Instead of confronting extremism, it equivocated. Instead of protecting social cohesion, it tolerated intimidation. Instead of stopping radicalisation, it minimised it, and extremists noticed. When MI6 warns we are operating between peace and war, when defence chiefs warn that the front line is everywhere and when security agencies warn that radicalisation is accelerating, no government has the right to claim shock. Complacency was a choice and inaction was a choice. For too long, Australians were told everything was under control; it was not, and Bondi Beach was the tragic consequence.

In my home state of Western Australia, our Jewish community has felt this tragedy deeply, not only in grief but in fear. As someone who's worked closely with WA's Jewish community for many years, I know very well how shaken many families now feel about their safety, their children and their place in a country they love. No Australian should ever feel targeted, threatened or unsafe because of who they are or what they believe.

The Australians murdered at Bondi Beach never chose to carry the weight of a national tragedy. They were parents, they were workers, they were surfers, they were tourists and they were families celebrating light and the hope and peace of Hanukkah. Some were called upon to, and did, act as heroes, and the remarkable actions of the first responders will never be forgotten. All of those people trusted the Australian government to keep them safe. That trust was broken.

To honour those who died, Australia must now do what our allies are already doing. We must fight antisemitism wherever and whenever it arises, we must strengthen intelligence, we must disrupt radical networks, we must restore zero tolerance for terror, and we must build the national resilience that Richard Knighton spoke of so that free societies are not left defenceless against those who seek to destroy them.

I'm confident I speak for west Australians in particular when I say to the families of the victims and to the Australian Jewish community that you are not alone, your grief is our grief, and your loss is our loss. We cannot bring your loved ones back, no matter how dearly we want to, but we must ensure their deaths mark the moment when Australia chose clarity over complacency and security over silence.

Bondi Beach should never have become a target, and the fact it did is a tragedy. What we do now will define us. We deserve to have a country that is safe, united and strong; a country that confronts hatred, not excuses it; a country that protects its people, not its political comfort. That is how we honour the dead, that is how we protect the living and that is how Australia moves forward.