Bondi Beach shooting: Anthony Albanese fails to grasp national mood in weak response to a terror attack

Anthony Albanese’s weak and wooden response to the Bondi attack has failed to grasp the national mood and demonstrate the empathy and leadership the public expects in times of crisis.

Following the horrible spectacle of Jews being hunted and gunned down at one of Australia’s most famous destinations, the Prime Minister has been found wanting in both word and deed.

When tragedy and disaster strike a nation, they are defining moments.

Most leaders know instinctively what to do; these are the skills, after all, that propelled them to seek high office. Think of Jacinda Ardern hugging Muslim mourners after the Christchurch massacre and John Howard’s embrace of victims of the Bali bombings.

This week, a shocked and brutalised nation looked to the Prime Minister for that kind of empathy, strength and leadership — Mr Albanese had an extra obligation to get it right.

Because, unlike Port Arthur, the massacre was not random, it was an ideologically-driven attack on Jewish people, celebrating a Jewish event in one of the most Jewish suburbs in the country.

And it did not happen out of the blue. It followed a specific warning by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess, who voiced concerns that the normalisation of violent protests that had morphed into incitements and the direct targeting of Jewish sites and figures “had not yet plateaued.”

As Mr Burgess said in February, Australia’s Jewish community was seeing first-hand the increase in communal violence. That same community had urged Mr Albanese to do and say more to protect them — pleas they feel were ignored only to culminate in Sunday’s attack.

This is why Mr Albanese’s most immediate task in responding to the attack was to unequivocally draw a line in the sand and say “enough was enough.” That a Rubicon had been crossed, that something had to change, and that he, as Prime Minister, would lead this change right here, right now.

It should have been the message he delivered after pro-Palestine protestors went to another Sydney icon — the Opera House, immediately after the October 7 attacks, to hurl racial epithets against Jews and the state of Israel, which at that time had not begun its retaliation against Gazans.

Mr Albanese should have invited the then Opposition leader, Peter Dutton to hold a joint news conference in the Prime Minister’s courtyard, flanked by as many political, community and policing figures who could also attend, to say that these sentiments would never be tolerated in this country and that full force of the law would be shown to anyone who behaved in this way. Full stop. Case closed.

He had another opportunity this week to make this mark. He needed to provide an equivalent to Julia Gillard’s famous “Not now, not ever,” misogyny line in relation to Jew-hatred, which has metastasised in Australia since October 7.

But who can say, three days on from the shocking scenes that have horrified the world, that anyone can remember any clarion call Mr Albanese delivered?

His first press conference was abominably timed. He cut into a news conference being broadcast live of the NSW Premier Chris Minns and the NSW Police in Sydney, who were giving the first details of what had happened on Campbell Parade, as well as safety information.

Why the Prime Minister felt it was necessary to speak at the same time, from Canberra and overriding that vital news conference, has not been explained by his office, despite The Nightly’s inquiries.

He spoke as though he was going through the motions, speaking to “My fellow Australians,” as though he was calling an election.

He called for national unity and vowed to eradicate anti-semitism. But this is precisely what the public, and specifically the Jewish community, has been begging and pleading him to do ever since October 7, 2023.

Maybe he was in shock and unable to immediately grasp the needs of a nation? Subsequent days have shown this was not the case.

Mr Albanese has consistently sounded robotic and monotone, appearing stilted, cold, distant and aloof. This remoteness was underlined when he visited the Bondi Pavilion on Monday, accompanied by police.

He looked as apart from the reality on the ground as he sounded. He has kept a busy media schedule, flooding the airwaves with his voice.

But his words only continue to compound his tin-eared response.

His answer to a question about why he had not progressed fast enough, the recommendations of a report given to him by his antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, was a nauseating 403-word salad.

The following is an abridged version:

“She recommended that legislation be strengthened to appropriately address antisemitism and hateful conduct vilification, Action 3.2 …. Recommendation 3.3 was on …. We’ve allocated $4 million to expand the social cohesion work of Together for Humanity in schools …. Recommendation 3.5 was …. Recommendation 3.9 … the Department of Home Affairs is undertaking a review of relevant training packages to strengthen modules … Recommendation 3.12 was …”

And so it went on. It was a retreat to process, and it meant nothing to anyone listening, worried sick about what Jews being mowed down on a beach in Australia says about our country.

Then there was defensive tin-ear, nothing’s-my-fault, back on display.

Asked by the ABC’s Chris Taylor why the alleged gunman Naveed Akram was not monitored despite being investigated by ASIO in 2019 for links to Islamic State, Mr Albanese said: “Well, I obviously wasn’t Prime Minister in 2019.”

Taylor then continued to the nub of the tense political debate around the attack, that the Jewish community was shocked, but not surprised by the attack.

“Do you feel you’ve done enough to counteract antisemitism in this country?” he asked.

“We’re doing what we can,” the Prime Minister said. Maybe that’s what he really believes.

When Taylor asked if he had any regrets in not progressing with the recommendations made by Jillian Segal, Mr Albanese’s antisemitism envoy, and if doing so might have prevented the attack, Mr Albanese said: “Antisemitism didn’t begin in 2022. And the fact that, as you’ve just said to me, these people were investigated — the younger man was, the son was investigated in 2019 is one of the indications of that.”

So Mr Albanese wants to, on one hand, eradicate an ancient ideology but on the other insist that all his actions have been sufficient until now?

He contradicted himself and showed that just like after the Voice referendum, when he blamed the public for its defeat, he is incapable of showing contrition.

“A degree of humility isn’t the natural posture of most politicians,” former UK Labour prime minister Tony Blair wrote in his book On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century.

“But if you don’t have it, you will soon learn it, or you will go under.”

It was one of the many differences that distinguished the response by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, which has left Mr Albanese looking so diminished.

Premier Minns strongly defended the actions of the NSW Police, amid questions about how long they took to take down the two alleged shooters, but has also said: “If we had our time again, we would of course do things differently.”

Mr Minns, and not Mr Albanese, has also led the charge in condemning all forms of anti-semitism and, crucially, sounding like he meant it.

When he visited Ahmed Al Ahmed, the heroic Syrian grocer from Sutherland who disarmed one of the alleged gunmen and got shot in the process, he sat comfortably on Al Ahmed’s hospital bed.

Mr Albanese copied Mr Minns and went to visit the likely next Australian of the Year the next day. Footage shot and distributed by his media team showed him standing over Mr Al Ahmed and holding his hand in his. It had a whiff of Scott Morrison forcing a bushfire survivor to shake his hand and had none of the ease and authenticity of Mr Minns’ visit.

And it only underlined that the greatest moral courage and leadership came from ordinary Australians like Mr Ahmed and Boris and Sofia, who were killed trying to stop the attack.

Mr Albanese has long yearned to be a Labor version of John Howard, who dominated Australian politics, governing for four terms.

But it was the 86-year-old Mr Howard who brutally exposed Mr Albanese’s deficiencies this week, excoriating the prime minister’s “Mr Yes, but, maybe,” approach to antisemitism.

“If he’d have a shown a little more determination from the beginning and sounded like he felt it, perhaps some of the antisemitism that has spread over the last couple of years would not have occurred,” Mr Howard told Sky News.

“We don’t applaud political equivocation, and we’ve had that in spades from Mr Albanese and Senator (Penny) Wong.”

When Howard proposed gun law reform after Port Arthur, he had to stare down his side of politics and face critics (wearing a bulletproof vest) to make his case.

By contrast, Mr Albanese has never relished a fight with his own side on antisemitism. Instead, he proposed doing a Howard in response by tightening up the gun laws, but again misjudged how this would be viewed as Mr Howard put it, “a diversion” from the root problem of antisemitism.

The Prime Minister is a shrunken figure.

When the shock and disbelief of the attack recedes, he risks being met with a cold fury from the public who looked to him in the darkest hour but were met with excuses wrapped up in meaningless politics-speak and ultimately saw a man incapable of rising to leadership’s call.