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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, December sixteenth, twenty twenty five. Did authorities fail

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Speaker 1: to prevent the Bondai Beach massacre? That's the raging question

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Speaker 1: as Australia reels from the worst mass murder since Port Arthur.

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Speaker 1: Alleged gunment Sajid Akram fifty and his son Navid Akram

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Speaker 1: twenty four bear six apparently legal guns, their alleged links

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Speaker 1: to Islamic state, and their patterns of association and travel.

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Speaker 1: The flourishing of antisemitic rhetoric since October seven, twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 1: the rise of a new insult Zio or Zionist, and

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Speaker 1: the call by protesters from Mardi Gras to the Harbor

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Speaker 1: Bridge to globalize the interfada which antisemitism Envoy Gillian Siegel

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Speaker 1: says has now come true in the murder of civilians.

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Speaker 1: The thoughts and prayers now flooding out of activists and

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Speaker 1: social media warriors who until now have been invoking an

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Speaker 1: equivalence between Israel a liberal democracy and Hamas a Jahadist

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Speaker 1: death cult. The federal government's decision to agitate for recognition

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Speaker 1: of Palestinian statehood to criticize Israel and to simultaneously say

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Speaker 1: it was taking antisemitism seriously. And then the glimmers of

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Speaker 1: something beautiful. A forty three year old Syrian Australian Muslim

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Speaker 1: Man Ahmed al Ahmed, who is in hospital recovering from

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Speaker 1: gunshot wounds he suffered when he rose up wrestling Sajid

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Speaker 1: Akram to the ground and taking his rifle. The thousands

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Speaker 1: of Australians who stood in hours long queues to donate blood,

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Speaker 1: Families who responded to the Jewish communities plead to light

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Speaker 1: a candle the symbol of Hunneker the Festival of Light,

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Speaker 1: in their windows. At six forty seven to mark the

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Speaker 1: minute everything changed today, The Australian's Paul Kelly joins me

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Speaker 1: to discuss the significance of this moment and whether Anthony

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Speaker 1: Albanesi is up to it. Paul Kelly is The Australian's

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Speaker 1: editor at large. Paul. In the wake of the Bondai

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Speaker 1: Beach massacre, Anthony Albanesi is trying to project calm and hope.

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Speaker 1: He's asking Australians to light candles in their windows. What

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Speaker 1: do you make of his response?

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Speaker 2: So far.

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Speaker 3: I understand the Prime Minister calling for calm, calling for unity,

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Speaker 3: calling for hope, and I think all that's important and

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Speaker 3: it's necessary. However, what we need to do is we

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Speaker 3: need to address honestly and confront what this really means.

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Speaker 3: This is a singular and collective Australian failure. We have

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Speaker 3: failed the Australian Jewish community. We have failed the principles

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Speaker 3: of multiculturalism, human respect, decency, faith in religious belief. All

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Speaker 3: these things have been failed in terms of the Bondai massacre.

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Speaker 3: We've got to address this. We've got to be clear

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Speaker 3: eyed and honest about it. And I think one of

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Speaker 3: the problems the Prime Minister faces is his lack of

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Speaker 3: credibility on this issue. Words won't do anymore. The problem

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Speaker 3: with the Albaneser government for the past two years is

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Speaker 3: that it has singularly failed to address this issue in

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Speaker 3: terms of its seriousness. It's treated anti Semitism as a

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Speaker 3: political issue to be managed as an electoral test, to

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Speaker 3: be balanced in terms of various electoral factors. That's not

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Speaker 3: good enough, and the legacy of that is this country

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Speaker 3: is left with a very bitter and enduring harvest.

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Speaker 1: What we know about the shooters, prompts a series of

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Speaker 1: other questions. Navid Akram, twenty four, was on Azio's radar

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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen at the age of just eighteen, when

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Speaker 1: the intelligence agency swooped on another young Sydney sider, Isak Elmatari,

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Speaker 1: who was in his late teens when he planned a

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Speaker 1: terror attack for which he was later jailed.

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Speaker 2: Cowering in the back of a police van. The man

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Speaker 2: detectives alleged calls himself the leader of Islamic State in Australia.

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Speaker 2: Isaac Elmatari had been questioned since Tuesday after being arrested

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Speaker 2: in raids across Sydney. His lawyer made no application for bail.

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Speaker 2: Its alleged he swore allegiance to is vowing to sacrifice

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Speaker 2: himself for the cause, and had sent money offshore to

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Speaker 2: buy guns and TNT explosives.

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Speaker 1: But Navid Akram was not considered high risk. Here is

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Speaker 1: Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

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Speaker 3: The assessment of Asio was with respect to his associations

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Speaker 3: rather than at that point they're beg a personal motivation

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Speaker 3: from him.

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Speaker 1: The father, Sajid Akram, who's now dead, arrived in Australia

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, aged in his early twenties, on

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Speaker 1: a student visa. In two thousand and one, he transferred

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Speaker 1: to a partner visa and was an Australian resident. He

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Speaker 1: belonged to a gun club and had licenses for six firearms.

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Speaker 1: In February this year, Mike Burgess, the Director General of ASIO,

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Speaker 1: said in his annual Threat assessment that antisemitism was the

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Speaker 1: number one threat that was on asio's radar. It was

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Speaker 1: crystal clear to the government. And yet after that the

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Speaker 1: government recognized Palestinian statehood and criticized his rail on numerous occasions.

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Speaker 1: How do you connect that sequence of events, Paul.

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Speaker 3: It's one thing for the Head of Asia to deliver

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Speaker 3: that warning, and that warning in retrospect looks a particularly

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Speaker 3: prescient warning. However, there's a difference between asiab advice on

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Speaker 3: the one hand and government action on the other. The

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Speaker 3: problem we face is that there's been inadequate leadership on

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Speaker 3: this issue. And I'm talking now not just about the politicians.

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Speaker 3: I'm talking now across the board. I'm talking about the

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Speaker 3: leaders of institutions in this country, whether we're talking now

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Speaker 3: about the corporate sector, the university sector, the cultural sector.

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Speaker 3: What we've seen is We've seen Jewish students and staff,

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Speaker 3: We've seen Jewish artists, We've seen all sorts of people

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Speaker 3: from the Jewish community suffer. They've been the subject of harrissment,

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Speaker 3: they've been the subjective censorship. We've seen violent attacks on

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Speaker 3: Jewish daycare centers, on synagogues, and the response of the authorities,

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Speaker 3: the response of the police has not been sufficiently adequate.

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Speaker 3: The response of the politicians, state and federal has not

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Speaker 3: been sufficiently adequate, although those responses have varied quite a lot,

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Speaker 3: and there's been no sense of wider inspiration and a

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Speaker 3: message of the need for the country to be resolute

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Speaker 3: and address anti Semitism, no sense of that coming from

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Speaker 3: the Prime Minister himself, and that is really a major problem.

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Speaker 1: How do governments balance their goal for free speech And

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Speaker 1: what we've heard politicians say in the wake of say,

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Speaker 1: marches across the Sydney Harbor Bridge, or demonstrations at the

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Speaker 1: Opera House, or somebody riding a horse down Bondi Beach

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Speaker 1: flying a flag, is that it's okay for people to

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Speaker 1: express their concerns, that it's natural to be distressed by

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Speaker 1: the conflict in the Middle East, and that these are

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Speaker 1: good people, good men and women, expressing their concerns, but

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Speaker 1: there is a small radical element who can't be conflated

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Speaker 1: with the ordinary mums and dads who just care a lot.

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Speaker 1: What's your view about that and how other government should

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Speaker 1: have actually handled that.

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Speaker 3: One of the iron laws of human history is that

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Speaker 3: if you allow the rhetoric of antisemitism to continue on

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Speaker 3: and on and you don't address it, it ends in

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Speaker 3: murder and violence. Now we know that, we know that

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Speaker 3: that is the story of centuries and what we've seen

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Speaker 3: in this country in recent years, the last couple of years,

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Speaker 3: we've seen a prejudiced and complacent Australia pretending that that

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Speaker 3: iron law of history about antisemitism didn't apply anymore. So

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Speaker 3: that was a mistake. The related mistake was to think

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Speaker 3: that the prevailing norms should just continue. That's not the case.

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Speaker 3: If you've got a fundamental problem like antisemitism, it's got

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Speaker 3: to be addressed, and that means it's got to be

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Speaker 3: addressed with new laws, new approaches and new norms. The

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Speaker 3: idea that the status quo can simply continue has just

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Speaker 3: been absurd, and that's what we've learned from this massacre.

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Speaker 3: This massacre tells us the status quo for the last

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Speaker 3: two years was a failure and it's got to go now.

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Speaker 3: Josh Froeddenberger is right when he said everything has got

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Speaker 3: to be on the table. Everything has now got to

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Speaker 3: be considered. Whether we're now talking not just about gun laws,

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Speaker 3: whether we're talking now about racial hatred laws, whether we're

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Speaker 3: talking now about the interaction of the police with the community,

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Speaker 3: whether we're talking now about the role of Asia and

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Speaker 3: in particular the need for a coordinated, resolute response coming

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Speaker 3: from government. All these things have got to be on

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Speaker 3: the table. They've all got to be addressed. The status

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Speaker 3: quo for the last two years has failed. This must

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Speaker 3: be obvious to everybody now.

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Speaker 1: The political consideration that I think has weighed on Anthony

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Speaker 1: alban Easley certainly in the lead up to the May election,

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Speaker 1: was there's a huge number of Muslim Australian voters now

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Speaker 1: who care deeply about the Middle East. Maybe they have

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Speaker 1: family connections. He was concerned that I think Labor would

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Speaker 1: be punished, particularly in some Western Sydney electorates, for having

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Speaker 1: been seen to be not critical enough of Israel or

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Speaker 1: not neutral enough. What's the advice do you think to

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Speaker 1: him now, Paul, in the wake of this massacre, does

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Speaker 1: this change the perception of other Australians to give Albanzi

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Speaker 1: the cover he needs or the justification he needs to

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Speaker 1: take actions that will probably be very unpopular in those communities.

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Speaker 3: This is a very difficult position Australia is now in,

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Speaker 3: and that mister Albanesi's Prime Minister is now in. There's

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Speaker 3: no getting away from that because essentially what's got to

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Speaker 3: happen is there's got to be a change of approach

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Speaker 3: and the government can't be guided anymore by these calculations

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Speaker 3: of pure electoral balance. That's not going to work. That's

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Speaker 3: not going to solve Australia's problem. This problem of vandy

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Speaker 3: Semitism has got to be addressed now that means has

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Speaker 3: got to be addressed in a whole series of ways.

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Speaker 3: We do need a bipartisan approach coming from both Labor

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Speaker 3: and the Coalition if that's going to be possible. We

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Speaker 3: do need a sense of reason. We've got to be

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Speaker 3: careful of extremes coming from the right and the left,

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Speaker 3: but we do need to consider things such as migrants

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Speaker 3: come into this country, the reliability of migrants, their commitment

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Speaker 3: to Australian values. That's got to be addressed. Gun laws

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Speaker 3: have got to be addressed, Government support for organizations that

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Speaker 3: practice antisemitis has got to be identified and addressed. All

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Speaker 3: these things have got to be on the table now.

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Speaker 3: This is going to be very difficult politically, there's no

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Speaker 3: question about that. But the government's got itself in this position.

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Speaker 3: It tried to soft pedal these issues and perhaps that

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Speaker 3: worked in terms of the scale of its election victory

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Speaker 3: last May, but that has bequeathed this incredible dilemma coming

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Speaker 3: after the Bondai massacre, and there is no escaping this.

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Speaker 3: The Prime Minister now has got to focus on the

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Speaker 3: national interest and social cohesion and I think that won't

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Speaker 3: be an easy job given the electoral basis of the

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Speaker 3: Labor Party.

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Speaker 1: Coming up. Port Arthur was the moment John Howard rose

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Speaker 1: above the muck of politics and changed Australia. Will Anthony

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Speaker 1: Albanesi responded this crisis with similar fortitude. The nineteen ninety

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Speaker 1: six Port Alpha massacre gave John Howard an opportunity to

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Speaker 1: be courageous in ways that his critics would never have

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Speaker 1: anticipated he could. It also gave him a legacy that

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Speaker 1: no one can doubt. Do you think that Anthony Alberenzi

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Speaker 1: is capable of stepping up to this moment in a

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Speaker 1: similar sort of way.

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Speaker 3: I think that the parallels with port Arthur are very misleading.

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Speaker 3: They are really misleading. I know that John Howard did

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Speaker 3: stand up and John Howard responded very effectively in one

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Speaker 3: a lot of cutos from the strong position he took

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Speaker 3: on gun laws, and that involved taking a series of

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Speaker 3: political risks for Howard with his own constituency. This situation

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Speaker 3: is very, very different. This situation goes to the heart

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Speaker 3: of relationships in the Australian community. It goes to the

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Speaker 3: heart of tensions in this country inherited from communities coming

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Speaker 3: from the Middle East. It goes to the changing nature

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Speaker 3: of labor policy in relation to Israel and Palestine. These

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Speaker 3: are now very very difficult issues that have become far

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Speaker 3: more difficult for Anthony Albanezi. But the post of Prime Minister,

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Speaker 3: the whole job of Prime Minister, is coming to groups

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Speaker 3: with crisis. It involves coming to groups with events like this,

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Speaker 3: and in some ways this will be the making or

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Speaker 3: breaking of Anthony Alberisi.

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Speaker 1: Paul Kelly is the Australian's editor at Large, Thanks Paul,

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Speaker 1: thank you. You can read all our coverage of this

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Speaker 1: rolling story right now at the Australian dot com dot

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Speaker 1: au