Bondi shooting: Reuven Morrison’s family speak out over ‘zero contact’ with Albanese, Wong 'desperately sorry'

The family of a victim killed in the Bondi Beach terror attack has spoken out over receiving “zero contact” from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Reuven Morrison helped Ahmed Al Ahmed at the Bondi shooting, attempting to stop Sajid Akram as he targeted a Jewish event celebrating the start of Chanukkah.

As Morrison attempted to stop the horrific, anti-Semitic attack, he threw a brick at the 50-year-old gunman. In his heroic act, slowing the gunman and assisting Ahmed, he was killed.

Sheina Gutnick, Morrison’s daughter, has now spoken out, claiming to have had “zero contact” from Mr Albanese.

“No representative from Albanese has reached out to us whatsoever. We’ve been feeling so angry, and we feel like we’ve been forgotten in that sense,” she told the Australian.

She joined the growing calls for a Federal Royal Commission into the attack, which left 15 innocent people who were enjoying an evening at the beach dead.

“That responsibility needs to be taken and it needs to be exactly seen how each failing was able to occur, as we’ve been begging and calling for help and protection,” she said.

“We are feeling the immense responsibility of the government that has gone unchecked. We as a community felt that something like this was inevitable to occur.”

Her comments come as Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed sorrow over the Bondi terrorist attack and conceded more could have been done before Australia’s worst mass shooting in three decades.

Asked if she would apologise to the Jewish community, Senator Wong said she was “desperately sorry for what has occurred in our country and what the Jewish community have experienced”.

“Sorrow isn’t political, sorrow is felt when we go to our places of worship, when we light a candle for those lost and for those grieving, when we hold our children close,” she told her hometown newspaper The Advertiser in Adelaide.

“These are moments where I think all of us have grieved.”

She would visit Bondi “when it’s appropriate” and had not attended any victims’ funerals because “funerals are intensely personal, and generally family-led”.

“I respect what families want and I respect their grief, which is overwhelming,” she said.

Ten people remain in Sydney hospitals recovering from injuries sustained in the December 14 attack.

Four remain in a critical condition, while the other six are stable, NSW Health said on Saturday.

The firebombing of a rabbi’s car in Melbourne on Christmas Day was an “unspeakable attack”, and Senator Wong said she condemned it, “particularly when the Australian Jewish community is mourning after the horrific events of Bondi”.

Melbourne police continue to search for a person of interest over the attack on a car bearing a Hanukkah sign.

On Friday, they released a picture of 47-year-old John Argento, who also goes by John Seckold.

Antisemitism is “unacceptable and … the government has acted”, Senator Wong said.

“Of course, always in politics and in life you always regret what more could have been done. I think we’ve made that clear. We acted but we have to do more and we are.”

Asked if Australia should tighten immigration, Senator Wong said Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had announced the strengthening of visa cancellation and visa refusal powers.

“I think that’s the right thing to do,” she said.