After 35 people were murdered at Port Arthur in 1996, the Labor Opposition Leader Kim Beazley offered unqualified bipartisan support to the Howard government for gun reform. After Bondi, the LNP and the Hansonites have engaged in vicious, self-serving politicking. Disgraceful.
Mike Carlton, X, 17 December 2025.
The horror of the hate that enabled the massacre at Bondi last weekend is written on every Australians’ heart. Things like this don’t happen in Australia; the Lindt siege eleven years ago was an aberration. Except it wasn’t. Nine years before, white thugs descended upon Cronulla, Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands attacking anyone who appeared non-European. Earlier this year, neo-Nazi’s attacked Indigenous people in King’s Park in Melbourne. The divisions that run through this country are clear for those with eyes to see, black versus white, European versus Australian, Christian versus non-Christian … it goes on. And we wail and cry each time some awful event happens, but we never stop to truly examine what is driving the divisions that are pulling us apart, rather than binding us together.
In the past five years, I’ve become acutely aware of a distinct lack of basic decency shown by people to each other, an apathy that underscores the attitudes of many until some disaster shakes them out of their mundanity and illusions. Common courtesy simply isn’t so common.
The events of this week have led me to ask – how do we recover from the terrorism that ripped a gaping hole in our communities? Politicians attend memorials and spaces that are now sacred with the intent of honouring the lost, but undermine the gesture by taking cheap political shots whilst standing on the very hallowed ground that is soaked with the blood of those who died. Other politicians attended memorial events and were booed. It seems that the last shreds of decorum died with those who lost their lives in Bondi.
There is a time to be born and a time to die, and when you or someone else makes the effort to visit ground that took back the soul of a person, politics should pause. There is a time for silence, for weeping, for remembering, for embracing and those times are sacred.
The lack of respect, the decline of community standards to treat others with simple courtesy and respect is how we wind up with a Cronulla, a Port Arthur, a Bondi. Retaliating with barbed words, with heckles with yet more division on hallowed ground disrespects the dead.
Comments made by Mike Carlton reflect my own feelings and opinions about the behaviour of so many of our politicians these past few days. This is not a time for political point scoring. The LNP and ALP leaderships should be shoulder-to-shoulder, working together to make sure that another Bondi never happens again.
The divisions that rake this country did not develop overnight; they are the legacy of multiple administrations. Albanese may be a less than stellar Labor Prime Minister, but it was the Howard, Turnbull, Abbott and Morrison Liberal-National Coalition governments that led this country for 20 of the past 30 years, with no small measure of support from partisans to the far right including One Nation. The older of the terrorists (I will not name them – their names should be scrubbed from eternity) immigrated during the Howard era and only gained a gun licence two years ago whilst Morrison was in office. No, the LNP has no cleaner hands in this mess than the Labor governments that established and maintain off-shore processing, allowing asylum seekers to wither and die in conditions that shame us.
Sussan Ley has the opportunity to support the incumbent leadership, to work toward stronger gun laws, better immigration controls and stronger security and intelligence bodies. And it’s what this country needs – bipartisan leadership, cohesion, reassurance that together we will find the way forward where everyone, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity or colour is protected and respected.
The risk from Bondi is the imbalance that may result from emotionally driven political responses that will do little more than paper over societal cracks, rather than addressing the fundamental issues that threaten to tear us all asunder. Individual racism, as with domestic violence, begins with insults. The curses, the belittling, the demeaning language. Preconceptions of people based upon historical accounts and opinions of those in a person’s circle of influence generate mental delineations regarding everything from physical and mental capability to honesty and trustworthiness. Our youth are most susceptible to these psychological traps. People acting upon racist perceptions will marginalise, covertly at first, but if not challenged, progressively becoming more bold until they take direct action. Like all bullies, racists are cowards best exposed to the scorn and light of day and held to account for their abuse. Most act in packs. The untold racists of World War II who disappeared into communities far and wide is ample evidence of the pusillanimity of those who thought themselves superior but found instead that they were far less.
Politicians, state and federal, conservative and liberal, have a responsibility as our elected leaders to act in unity, to work against those who would seek to exploit the divides in Australian society, be they local or international. And we in turn have a responsibility to hold our leaders to account. When representing their constituents are community events, we must pause the political rhetoric whilst those who are suffering and lost are honoured and cared for. The public debate can wait a few days. Heal the wounded, bury the dead, walk the poignant paths past the shoes left by those broken and lost hearts who cannot collect them. Reflect for a moment, say a prayer if you are inclined, but do put your politics to one side whilst you do.
There will be time enough for politics, after we mourn.