The Bondi massacre, first a tragedy now a farce* (*apologies to KM)

Damn it all! Why is Newton’s third law always right? Barely a month after the Bondi massacre, Australia is witnessing a dispiriting inability to either politically or socially achieve an effective response to our worst ever terrorist attack.

As a result of the Prime Minister’s initial anaemic reaction to the massacre, we have now had the Newtonian equal and opposite reaction , if not an overreaction. Suddenly, a Royal Commission is called, a national day of mourning is declared, and the Federal Parliament is called back into session to pass ‘emergency’ legislation outlawing hate speech and further restricting gun ownership.

No matter how sententious and dripping with gravitas our Prime Minister tries to be, his motivation in all these decisions is base. It is to regain political ascendancy clearly lost in the aftermath of the massacre. The tragedy is that our response to the Bondi massacre should be entirely above politics. The farce is that Albanese has made it an entirely unedifying political issue.   

Putting aside the issue of whether anti-hate speech legislation is philosophically and/or practically effective, it is clear that such significant legislation must be considered carefully and extensively. Not for Albanese. He now wants to portray the critics of his legislation as standing in the way of the national interest and/or being hypocrites. This man can take disingenuous to new levels.

The perils of legislation proscribing behaviour and conduct and self-evident.

One of Australia’s state governments, Victoria, passed legislation in 2023 to ban the use of the Nazi salute in public and the display of Nazi symbols. The legislation has exemptions for teachers demonstrating the hateful gesture to students and for those who display Nazi symbols in “good faith and for a genuine cultural or religious purpose”, allowing the following specific exemptions:

-A person of Hindu faith displays a swastika in the front window of the person's shop as a symbol of good luck.

-A person of Jain faith draws a swastika on the person's new vehicle before using it as a symbol of good fortune.

-A person of Buddhist faith displays a sculpture of Buddha with a swastika on the chest, as a symbol of auspiciousness, at a Buddhist temple.

-The floor of a shop is patterned with swastikas in the hope of bringing prosperity.

Try policing and enforcing this law! Needless to say, an unintended consequence of the legislation has been to give neo-Nazi groups even greater publicity when prosecutions are commenced.

Last year the Victorian government passed laws banning the ownership of machetes. The offending instruments were defined as broad bladed instruments with a blade of 20 centimetres or more. Guess what? Foundries, ironmongers and knife suppliers were overrun with requests for knives with 19 centimetre blades.

Are we once again reminded that “governments cannot fix people, only people can fix people”?

The final major preliminary Australian tournament before the Australian Open, with due respect to the Hobart International where Venus Williams lost in the first round,  is the Adelaide International. This past week has seen Adelaide become a city where tennis and politics have been played out alongside each other with the racket about its Writers’ Festival far eclipsing the tennis in terms of national attention.

And what has been the outcome of the indignant withdrawal of 180 writers from the Festival, the resignation of the Festival’s CEO and the Festival’s Board? No-one has won. There is to be no festival.  In protesting for free speech, the result is that there is to be no speech! We are all cancelled!

Any future festival will now become highly scrutinised in terms of its speakers. Will the writers who have withdrawn be able to demonstrate equal outrage when writers who express views counter to theirs are invited to attend?

The furore about Randa Abdel-Fattah’s social media comments highlight the pitfalls of hate speech legislation. In whose eyes and to what extent could they be considered hateful?  In the court of public opinion, most probably would see her comments wishing for the destruction of Israeli people and culture as inciting hatred. Imagine the grandstanding that would take place if she were prosecuted for racial vilification?

Is there not a risk that in responding to the Bondi massacre, we can end up reinforcing the social divisions and stereotyping that provided its genesis?

The failure to respond to the Bondi massacre in a way that genuinely improves the national interest- why not table proposed legislation and let it be considered in the light of the findings of the Royal Commission?- has cast a pall over the forthcoming Australian Open, just as the massacre curdled Christmas celebrations.

Australia is not the open and robust society it once was.  What has happened to the signature self-deprecating, ironic manner of Australians that punctured pomposity? Replacing it is an ungracious shrill set of squabbles on all things. This will be exemplified during the Open when Australia Day will be once again debated, castigated, celebrated and criticised. It is an annual exercise in reflective torture, where a nation that has to display three flags, will again agonise over its national direction and destiny. There will be much “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

In the eyes of the world, many see the Australian Open as the exemplar for all Grand Slam tournaments.

Well, if this is so, is it too much to ask that adverbs be used properly when promoting its worth?

Who is “different” and why are they being hit?

And if this is not bad enough the first trays of hot cross buns have appeared in the supermarkets: “change and decay in all around I see."  I am not sure how even Cicero would describe these current times and our prevailing culture. "O tempora, O mores", seems barely adequate!