Speaker 1: Today's biggest news from The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey with
Speaker 1: the Front's afternoon headlines. The true magnitude of the Bondai
Speaker 1: Beach anti Semitic massacre is becoming clear, with fifteen people
Speaker 1: now confirmed murdered, including a ten year old girl, an
Speaker 1: eighty seven year old Holocaust survivor and two rabbis. Anthony
Speaker 1: Alberinezi says Tougher gun laws are coming, with National Cabinet
Speaker 1: meeting on Monday afternoon to forge a national response to
Speaker 1: the worst mass murder since the nineteen ninety six port
Speaker 1: Arpa massacre.
Speaker 2: Tougher gun laws, including limits are on the number of
Speaker 2: guns that can be used or licensed by individuals, a
Speaker 2: review of licenses over a period of time. People's circumstances change,
Speaker 2: people can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses
Speaker 2: should not be in perpetuity and checks of course, making
Speaker 2: sure that those checks and balances are in place as well.
Speaker 2: We will task I'll take to National Cabinet this afternoon
Speaker 2: a proposal to empower agencies to examine what can be
Speaker 2: done in this area. One of the things that is
Speaker 2: coming through though, is that the community want to be
Speaker 2: able to express their support and solidarity, and I would
Speaker 2: urge and join with others who have urged the strains
Speaker 2: across the country to light a candle put it in
Speaker 2: their front window tonight at six forty seven pm to
Speaker 2: show that light will indeed defeat darkness, part of what
Speaker 2: Harnaka celebrates, of course.
Speaker 1: The alleged gunmen have been revealed as father and son,
Speaker 1: Sajed Akrim fifty and his son Navide Akram twenty four.
Speaker 1: Sajed a crime was shot dead by police at the
Speaker 1: scene after being dismed by a member of the public.
Speaker 3: Forty three year old.
Speaker 1: Shopkeeper Ahmed al Ahmed, who also suffered injuries during the massacre.
Speaker 1: A cousin of mister Alahmed, jose al khanj said he
Speaker 1: owned a tobacco shop and came to Australia from Idlib
Speaker 1: in Syria. Mister Alahmed is still in hospital recovering from
Speaker 1: injuries to his arm. Police say the dead man's son,
Speaker 1: alleged shooter Navid Akram, is in a serious but stable
Speaker 1: condition under police guard in hospital. Intelligence agencies are pursuing
Speaker 1: possible links between the men and terror group Islamic State
Speaker 1: and say that Navid Akram was on Azio's radar in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Here's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
Speaker 4: I've got full support, full support for our security agencies
Speaker 4: and part of making sure that they can do their
Speaker 4: job is making sure that information is brought out in
Speaker 4: the way in which we are doing it right now.
Speaker 1: Are there other family members being investigated? Do you have
Speaker 1: any concerns about the other family members?
Speaker 4: Links to the support social security agencies and unauthorizing you
Speaker 4: for the information which I have given you.
Speaker 1: Australia's anti Semitism on void. Gillian Siegel has told the
Speaker 1: Australian chance of globalized the INTERFATA heard everywhere from the
Speaker 1: Mardi Gras parade to university campuses and street protests, has
Speaker 1: come true in the mass murder of innocent Jewish people
Speaker 1: celebrating Harneker. Police say they believe the weapons used in
Speaker 1: the attack were legally obtained hunting rifles. Sajid Akram had
Speaker 1: licenses for six firearms, and police say they believe they
Speaker 1: have recovered all those weapons. This story's moving fast and
Speaker 1: we are updating live at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Israel is accusing Australia of having failed to properly fight antisemitism,
Speaker 1: and as new scrutiny today on how the federal government
Speaker 1: handled the aftermath of Hermas's October seven, twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: terror attack on Israel and the way pro Palestinian marches,
Speaker 1: encampments and protests have amplified anti Israel sentiment. The Australian's
Speaker 1: Political editor, Jeff Chambers asked Anthony Albanesi a question at
Speaker 1: his press conference on Sunday night that has since gone viral.
Speaker 1: So I asked Jeff to talk us through where the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister goes from here. First, let's hear Jeff Chambers
Speaker 1: and Anthony Albanesi at that press conference.
Speaker 5: Our left up checked anti Semitism leads to terrorism and
Speaker 5: violence targeting the innocent. Your government has come under criticism
Speaker 5: in claiming that it has effectively responded to the rise
Speaker 5: of antisemitism in Australia since Oktober seven, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: In September, your government recognized a Palestinian state. Your ministers
Speaker 5: have attacked the Israeli government, SEGA ministers refused to visit
Speaker 5: the sites of the October seven massacres, and you created
Speaker 5: a special Islamophobia Envoy alongside an anti semitism some envoid
Speaker 5: Have you taken the threat of anti semitism seriously and
Speaker 5: can you guarantee the safety of Jewish Australians.
Speaker 6: Yes, we have taken it seriously and we've continued to act.
Speaker 6: We've continued to work with Jewish community leaders, We've continued
Speaker 6: to take all the advice from the security agencies to
Speaker 6: put in place special measures and will continue to do so.
Speaker 3: What did you make of his response?
Speaker 7: The reason I felt compelled to ask that question is
Speaker 7: he has described this massacre event in Bondi as an
Speaker 7: anti Semitic terror attack and to invoke that word is
Speaker 7: very triggering for the Jewish Australian community who have been
Speaker 7: distraught and felt that Anthony Obneasy in his government since
Speaker 7: October seven, twenty twenty three, have not done nearly enough
Speaker 7: to actually address the scourge, the poison that issue, and
Speaker 7: they are living their lives in fear. It would be
Speaker 7: remiss of any journalist to not ask the Prime Minister
Speaker 7: the question, why haven't you done more? And what are
Speaker 7: you going to do about it? And how do you
Speaker 7: guarantee their safety? And I've got a very very brief response.
Speaker 7: It's obviously a very big event. He has gone to
Speaker 7: Sydney immediately. He went to Sydney straight after the press conference.
Speaker 7: He was out with the police and Chris Min's first
Speaker 7: thing on Monday. And now we're going to see a
Speaker 7: flurry of meetings. Federal Cabinet meeting, an NSC meeting that
Speaker 7: he'll chair, and then a National Cabinet meeting, and hopefully
Speaker 7: by the end of today we will see some of
Speaker 7: these recommendations that Gillian Siegel, the government's own anti Semitism
Speaker 7: envoy who gave them her report in July this year,
Speaker 7: that they will finally action some of those today.
Speaker 3: One of the community concerns about the response.
Speaker 1: To Jillian Siegel's report is the fact that the government
Speaker 1: hadn't acted on many of those recommendations, suggested that the
Speaker 1: whole thing was a whitewash anyway. They're similarly annoyed about
Speaker 1: the fact that at the same time as appointing her,
Speaker 1: the government announced that they would appoint an void to
Speaker 1: tackle Islamophobia, when that had not raised its head as
Speaker 1: a serious issue on Australian soil in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: October seven. Do you think the Prime Minister gets that
Speaker 1: now and is going to change the way he handles
Speaker 1: his response to her recommendations.
Speaker 7: This is our biggest fatality since the Port Arthur massacre
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety six. It's happened in the heart of
Speaker 7: Sydney Bondai Beach. This is a big global story. We're
Speaker 7: hearing now from world leaders, a lot of our allies
Speaker 7: that we need to do more in anti Semitism. The
Speaker 7: message will be received loud and clearly. The question remains,
Speaker 7: why has it taken so long? Since October seven, we've
Speaker 7: seen a pretty soft response to what happened over there
Speaker 7: in Israel. We had that Sydney Opera House protest which
Speaker 7: should never have occurred, and then there's just been this
Speaker 7: run of you know, whether it's a protest across Sydney
Speaker 7: Harbor Bridge where they're holding up signs of terrorists, politicians
Speaker 7: lining up there, whether it was cabinet ministers and ministers
Speaker 7: in the Albanesi government accusing the Israeli government of war crimes.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a very big argument that Australia has
Speaker 7: no role to play in the Middle East. That is
Speaker 7: just not a sphere of influence that we have any
Speaker 7: impact on, which always brought everyone back to the political
Speaker 7: lens that the Albenese government saw things through. And before
Speaker 7: the May three election, we go back last year, things
Speaker 7: were looking pretty tight. They were behind in the polls,
Speaker 7: and Labor hold a lot of very large Muslim Australian
Speaker 7: seats in Sydney and Melbourne, and so much of what
Speaker 7: was being announced, or the equivocation or conflating one thing
Speaker 7: with another, it was all being seen through that political lens.
Speaker 7: So we had a lot of money being allocated for
Speaker 7: Palestinian causes, a lot of visas, and then they win
Speaker 7: that election. I guess there was this feeling, which is
Speaker 7: just insane, that the issue had gone away, and they
Speaker 7: march on to recognize Palestine with no conditions, one of
Speaker 7: the first movers to do that at the UN this year.
Speaker 7: But this issue never went away. And when you contrast
Speaker 7: anti Semitic incidents in this country to Islamophobic incidents, that
Speaker 7: doesn't even come close.
Speaker 1: There were two ways that the government could have interpreted
Speaker 1: that May election result, particularly in those western Sydney seats.
Speaker 3: One was well, we've done all the right things.
Speaker 1: Those voters have not punished us for being too close
Speaker 1: to Israel because we've done all this talking about recognizing Palestine.
Speaker 1: The other way to interpret it was that Australian voters
Speaker 1: did not believe that Islamophobia and antisemitism were equal. Australian
Speaker 1: voters actually supported Israel more than perhaps the labor government
Speaker 1: might have thought that they did. What was the interpretation
Speaker 1: the government put on it, and how did that feed
Speaker 1: into their subsequent decision to do that recognition of Palestine.
Speaker 7: The election, at the end of the day wasn't one
Speaker 7: on these issues. Different types of labor people might say
Speaker 7: depending on the area that they're in, that had an influence,
Speaker 7: but at the end of the day it didn't, And
Speaker 7: it was a misread to think that they could then
Speaker 7: press ahead and allow these hate preachers or his book
Speaker 7: Toreers of the World to continue to not go after
Speaker 7: these people, to put Neo Nazis up there with Sunni
Speaker 7: Islamic terrorists who have a track record of conducting these
Speaker 7: types of mass casualty events. So I think it was
Speaker 7: a complete misread. But then even at a more granular
Speaker 7: level in society, whether it was on our university campuses,
Speaker 7: these mass protests that still occurred even after we recognized
Speaker 7: Palestine from the river to the Sea, which means the
Speaker 7: abolishment of a Jewish state, so it was hot rehtoric.
Speaker 7: The security chiefs were consistently warning that the issue had
Speaker 7: not gone away, and maybe they thought that something like
Speaker 7: we saw on Sunday couldn't happen in Australia or that
Speaker 7: it would happen somewhere else. And the big issue here
Speaker 7: now for Anthony Aberanzi is that this is a public
Speaker 7: safety issue, a very frightening one, and it doesn't just
Speaker 7: affect Jewish Australians who are living their lives in fear
Speaker 7: having to have security guards at their schools, which they've
Speaker 7: always had to do, but they've now got security guards
Speaker 7: at their places of worship, some family homes and the
Speaker 7: issues getting worse and worse. So this is now a
Speaker 7: national crisis and it's going to require some really sharp
Speaker 7: and strong leadership.
Speaker 1: The darkest possible interpretation of the conduct of Anthony Albanesi
Speaker 1: and Penny Wong, who angered many people in the Jewish
Speaker 1: community by not visiting the massacre science when she went
Speaker 1: to Israel, is that you know, they actually believe that
Speaker 1: Israel is bad. Certainly, this is something that their faction,
Speaker 1: the Labor Left, has talked about in conferences and back
Speaker 1: rooms for decades. Now, what is your sense of what
Speaker 1: Anthony Albanezi actually believes. Do you believe in his soul
Speaker 1: that he supports Israel and supports Israel's right to exist
Speaker 1: or not?
Speaker 7: I think he certainly does. Obviously there is an evolution
Speaker 7: for a politician or someone in public life. He's now
Speaker 7: heading into his mid sixties, so the more sort of
Speaker 7: probably radical left side of the Prime Minister has morphed
Speaker 7: into a guy that wants to be a very pragmatic leader.
Speaker 7: He wants to lead for the middle Australia and bring
Speaker 7: the masses with him. And this is what would have
Speaker 7: really shocked him is that he now is under immense
Speaker 7: pressure to unite the country. And one of the great
Speaker 7: criticisms of him in his first term was that on
Speaker 7: a bunch of level he always struggled to unite the
Speaker 7: country and bring people together. He gets that big election result,
Speaker 7: he now has that big mandate and that big responsibility.
Speaker 3: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's Political editor.
Speaker 1: Check out those stories live right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au and come back to the front
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning for more on this unfolding
Speaker 1: story