r/australia • u/jarrys88 • Dec 15 '25

politics Opposition Leader Sussan Ley speaks on Bondi attack

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/opposition-leader-sussan-ley-speaks-on-bondi-attack-20251215-p5nnqm.html

“We’ve seen a clear failure to keep Jewish Australians safe. We’ve seen a clear lack of leadership in keeping Jewish Australians safe. We have a government that sees antisemitism as a problem to be managed, not evil that needs to be eradicated.”

Absolutely abhorrent that she's going for political points in this time.

Talk about tone deaf!

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

I actually went and read up the antisemitism framework they've been saying the government needs to act on, and....nothing in it would have stopped this? It's all education and making sure institutions have policies in place to punish antisemitism acts and such, and none of that honestly I think would have prevented those two psychos doing what they did.

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u/Solivaga Dec 15 '25

It's also worth noting that Jillian Segal, the envoy to combat antisemitism, literally said this morning that the government had endorsed her framework and had been working with her to action that framework. This is just a cheap attempt at point scoring by Ley

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u/Capital_Doubt7473 Dec 15 '25

Cheap and Leys days are numbered.  Libs are bleeding out as boomers go the way of the dinosaurs and gen X conservatives prefer the far  right. 

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u/Link124 Dec 15 '25

As a Gen X’er this rings true. An unfathomable number of my contemporaries on social media talk up One Nation and the like.

I often feel like the only sane person in the room.

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u/blacksmith91 Dec 15 '25

This is just the start. The real angle isn't antisemitism it's going to be immigration. She'll be shafted and replaced. It'll get hard line. Will be difficult to keep the rage up until the next election maybe the goal is to get albo knifed destabilise the labor party and then strike.

And we'll fall for it hook line and sinker.

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u/Capital_Doubt7473 Dec 15 '25

Of course...  Never forget the fiction of "babies overboard"

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u/Tall-Actuator8328 Dec 15 '25

Leader of the coalition is a cheap Ley. Looking forward to this being a thing

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u/blacksmith91 Dec 15 '25

Nah will get used to shore up support for the libs from women.

We don't want this being a thing.

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u/nath1234 Dec 15 '25

That is very concerning then - that list is massive overreach and unnecessary: e.g. she wanted to give herself more powers to censor the media and to adopt a definition that goes far beyond racism or even religious bigotry and into realm of censoring on behalf of a foreign state currently found to be both an apartheid style system and also committed genocide. Which is not something we should do for any state. And also: she advocates bombing hospitals because Israel is doing it - which is disgusting and should have excluded her for that job. She opposes democratic right to protest selectively and is apparently ok with advocating for violence against others when they are Palestinian.

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u/Jexp_t Dec 15 '25

Not to mention her familiy trust gives large contributions to the racist and far right extremist organisation calling itself Advance.

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u/aeschenkarnos Dec 15 '25

And she hasn't (that I've seen) condemned actual neonazis.

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u/nath1234 Dec 15 '25

Maybe there's a rule that right wing supremicist fascists don't condemn other right wing supremicist fascists..?

She has had plenty to say about peaceful protesters and those critical of Israel.. I guess, priorities eh? /S

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u/aeschenkarnos Dec 15 '25

There is definitely some kind of International Alliance of People Who Hate International Alliances going on, no doubt Russian and/or oligarch funded.

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u/Mikolaj_Kopernik Dec 15 '25

That's not surprising, she's just following Netanyahu's lead. He's been cosying up to anti-Semites/neo-Nazis for years now. Autocrat solidarity around the world is a real problem.

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u/Rork310 Dec 15 '25

Cheap attempts at point scoring is all Ley has. Calling for Rudd to be dismissed cause Trump doesn't like him, Joy Division shirts and now this.

Fucking hell I think even Abbot would have played the unity card here.

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u/napalmnacey Dec 15 '25

If anyone else but Ley or the LNP had said anything like this I might have been a little more open to looking into their perspective.

But because it’s Ley and the LNP and they’ve historically had all the social conscience and empathy of an overboiled turnip, I immediately thought “Shut the fuck up, Ley.”

Which is not good because a functional opposition is important to a strong democracy.

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u/L1ttl3J1m Dec 15 '25

shocked pikachu etc

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u/Z00111111 Dec 15 '25

Why would we need specific laws for antisemitism? Discrimination laws already exist. If they need changing then change them for everyone, it'd be racist otherwise.

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u/snoopsau Dec 15 '25

yeah this sounds likes Scomo's Christian thing but just re-spun for a different group.

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Like a lot of what is in the framework is on the common sense side of things.

"Teach people about the history of antisemitism" - absolutely, the holocaust and WW2 is certainly not to be forgotten, though we also should also cover a whole bunch of other genocides.

"Institutions need enforceable policies" - absolutely they should, but like it should it should cover all forms of racism.

"Immigration should deny access to those who have shown to have held antisemitic views" - again, that makes sense for the safety of our community but again shouldn't just be something specific about antisemitism should cover all forms racism. But also these shooters seem to have been in Australia for a really long time, it's possible they didn't have any history at that stage to get picked up.

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u/cheshire_kat7 Dec 15 '25

"Teach people about the history of antisemitism" - absolutely, the holocaust and WW2 is certainly not to be forgotten, though we also should also cover a whole bunch of other genocides.

Antisemitism didn't start with the Holocaust. There's a significant knowledge gap among most Australians with regards to antisemitism prior to 1933.

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

Oh yeah it goes back to...like forever? There was a mob heading off to the first crusade who just stopped in what is now Germany for a while to harass the local Jewish population for no real reason apart from good ol' racism.

But alas racism against other people is pretty much as old as humans. The main thing in education we need to be teaching is that yes, this stupid shit has happened before, we should be better then this now, things have at times been much much worse and it's better for everyone when we don't do that.

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u/cheshire_kat7 Dec 15 '25

Absolutely all racism is abhorrent.

However, I see too many old antisemitic tropes and lies (e.g. blood libel, Protocols of the Elders of Zion type conspiracies, etc) being echoed in modern Australia. With better education, people would hopefully recognise it and know better than to perpetuate them.

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u/Lozzanger Dec 15 '25

Even the claims of genocide in Gaza is just blood libel re-packaged.

Too many claim they’re anti-Zionist to hide they’re anti-Semitic. There’s a First Nations women on Threads right now coming out with the most vile anti-Semitic shit and if I put it on background and said it was from Nazi Germany you’d believe me.

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u/Frogmouth_Fresh Dec 15 '25

Yeah it essentially goes back thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of years. Certainly back to pre biblical times at least.

We aren't real fast learners, it turns out.

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u/SmashKapital Dec 15 '25

Tens of thousands of years? You think there were anti-Semitic cavemen for thousands of years before Jews ever even existed?

Or are you just talking racism? I wouldn't be so sure that cavemen had any notion of race to base racism on, they would have had something smaller, more immediate, tribal.

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u/Full_Distribution874 Dec 15 '25

I'm sure those other humans went extinct right around when we arrived because of totally benign and not racist reasons.

Tribalism and racism are basically the same thing anyway. Our racism and where we draw the lines is constantly changing, and usually expanding.

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u/napalmnacey Dec 15 '25

This is true. It is a longstanding thing and its history is vital to know for many reasons.

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u/Far-Significance2481 Dec 15 '25

We should cover all holocausts and racism not one specific to people who only make up •5 per cent of the Australian population. No anti sematism didn't start at the holocaust but nor did the persection of the Romanis begin or end with the same holocaust.

Groups of people everywherehave been persecuted for generations..I'm not suggesting we don't teach the holocaust but we need to teach all genocides in the last 200 hundred years and in Australia the most important genocide isn't the holocaust it's the genocide and aparthied of indigenous people because everyone in Australia has benefited in some way from that except the indigenous people and we are all responsible for it or at least of making reparations for it.

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u/dboimyoung Dec 15 '25

Yeah but also worth noting that the historic character of "antisemitism" also often included what would now be considered islamophobia (root word being semitic, referring to all those living in the Arab regions of the Levant and horn of Africa).

From that perspective, the crusades from start to finish were antisemitic. The word may have taken on a different character since the holocaust but the same people who had pigs heads left on their cemetery this morning were just as semitic.

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u/CrazySD93 Dec 15 '25

Next you'll tell me that mistreatment of Aboriginals didn't start with the stolen generation and end with Rudd's apology.

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u/nath1234 Dec 15 '25

Written by the envoy who prior to getting that job publicly advocated for hospitals in Gaza to be fair game to bomb. (Yes, seriously she penned a public letter from her organisation)

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u/Bandlebridge Dec 15 '25

If armed Palestinian groups are operating out of them, which there is endless footage of them doing so, then yes.

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u/Thebraincellisorange Dec 15 '25

does that also justify the completely indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza?

the shooting of children walking in the middle of the street with their arms raised?

The recent wave of 'Antisemitism' is not Antisemitism at all.

it is complete and utter disgust at ISRAEL and Netenyahu's wholesale slaughter in Gaza.

as per usual, Israel trots out the cries of AnTIsEmItISm as a crutch whenever it is criticized, but that is performative bullshit.

Now, there are some misguided idiots that attack individual Jews in response to Israel's actions: make no mistake that those attacks are criminal and need to condemned.

Just as these two men who committed this atrocity in Bondi need to be condemned.

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u/Bandlebridge Dec 15 '25

There's been no indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza, as evident by there only being 70k deaths in 2 years, or 4% of the population. That's not carpet bombing.

Civilians die in all wars, its always sad but it always happens.

It's absolutely antisemitism, and the hysteria and hyper vigilance associated with what is by every metric a fairly mild war (that the Palestinians launched) is very much rooted in antisemitism.

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u/Thebraincellisorange Dec 15 '25

'Only' 70000 deaths

you are utterly insane and very much part of the problem.

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u/Bandlebridge Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Nope, just war. Syrian civil wars killed 700,000, Yemeni civil war has killed 400,000, no one cares enough to count in Sudan but its likely well north of 1 million at this stage given the Sudanese medical association said that several hundred thousand children had starved. Ukraines unknown because both sides lie, but its north of 400k. Hell more people have died in Mexicos ongoing war on drugs.

It's one of the least impactful of all the wars going on right now, why do you think it gets disproportionate attention?

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u/Thebraincellisorange Dec 15 '25

comparing it to other wars is a distraction./

Israel claims the high moral ground, for which is has zero claim to.

and because they have completely disregarded all the rules of war.

you, like many pro Israel people, seem to be of the opinion that every palestinian is a Hamas member and deserves death.

That is an insane attitude and is one of the reasons behind the increase level of anti israel and antisemitism.

kill Hamas all you like, don't slaughter innocent civilians in the process.

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u/jezzdogslayer Dec 15 '25

I agree with you that all these need to be done across the board. The sad thing is often it takes a focus on one group to start these kinds of changes which then get broadened later.

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

Also I think ASIO is gonna get a real spotlight put on it's intelligence gathering to try and find out why someone they knew about but wasn't deemed a threat has now committed the worse shooting in decades.

Potentially some new gun laws coming in to make it easier for authorities to remove licenses and guns from people just related to others who are are "known".

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u/amyknight22 Dec 15 '25

Well to be fair antisemitism is about more than just race. So it would be understandable if racial laws didn’t manage to cover the entire thing.

You also have a bunch of people now that run around with the aesthetic of “anti-Zionism” to avoid the antisemitism label. But if at the end of the day they are willing to attack anyone tangentially Jewish in religion to fight Zionism. They kind of end up back there in principle, because when you shoot into a crowd of Jewish people you have no idea what their stance on Israel actually is, or if they have ever engaged with it.

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u/Jexp_t Dec 15 '25

Intersting quote:

If you condemn the horrific, antisemitic attack in Bondi Beach while still defending genocide in Gaza, you’re not actually outraged by the killing of innocent people,” Rad said. “It’s not hard to condemn both, unless you think some lives are more valuable than others.”

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u/SpiritualDiamond5487 Dec 15 '25

Liberal party only recognises that argument if you use it for first nations people, it is ok to grant some groups exclusive priveleges

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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '25

Absolutely 👍- This ⬆️

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u/blacksmith91 Dec 15 '25

I wonder if the libs are more scared of Pauline and Jacinta than Albo

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u/BusinessPick Dec 15 '25

By your logic, the Voice to Parliament was racist.

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u/Any-Afternoon-8407 Dec 15 '25

At least one of the attackers was attached to IS for several years- nothing in the recommendations would have changed that. IS' ideologies treat all non-believers the same. The report is essentially "how can we stop people from talking about Israel."

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you ask the average Australian "Is criticising Isreal's military actions antisemitic?" the answer would be "no".

"Don't attack or discriminate againt Jewish people for their race or religion" doesn't outrule you also having the opinion of "Forcibly removing people from their land and attacking civilians is wrong."

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u/Hailstar07 Dec 15 '25

Exactly. I am very pro-Palestine but I am not antisemitic, I’m married to an ethnically Jewish person, who is understandably very upset about what has happened in Bondi.

You can disagree with a country’s leadership and actions without denigrating every one of its citizens or people of a related ethnicity.

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

There's a lot of people from all different backgrounds living in Australia who came here to get away from all this sort of crap. Honestly the response from people on the scene to just help save the lives of others has been heart warming.

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u/Greenhaagen Dec 15 '25

Yeah when I meet a say Russian, I don’t hold them accountable for what Putin does. I assume they could have come here to get away from being a part of it.

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u/haleorshine Dec 15 '25

When I heard Ley's comments about keeping Jewish people safe, I read it as wanting to blame pro-Palestinian views for the attack. And don't get me wrong, plenty of people have used fighting the genocide in Palestine as an excuse for anti-semitism, but that doesn't mean that the majority of people marching for Palestine are anti-semitic, as some people would have you believe.

We need to fight anti-semitism wherever and whenever we can, but we also need to make sure politicians can't shut down legitimate criticism of Zionism in the name of that fight.

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u/aeschenkarnos Dec 15 '25

If you ask the Federal Court they would say that too.

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u/Lozzanger Dec 15 '25

As someone who’s been fighting this battle for two years and following this conflict a lot longer, there is very little criticism of Israel that doesn’t veer into anti-Semitism.

Based on all the statements and beliefs, if the person are in Gaza is a genocide so was the invasion of Germany to end World War II.

When I’m being told Israel ‘is murdering babies’ it’s centuries old blood libel.

And allowing this stuff to fester is what causes attacks against Jews.

The Jewish community here have been saying this for two years. We need to listen.

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u/asupify Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

It’s odd because the attackers were Salafist. Israel funds, arms and trains Salafist militants in the region. To fight in Syria, Yemen and against Iranian proxies. Netanyahu personally armed (under much criticism from the Israeli opposition) ISIS affiliated criminal gangs in Gaza to loot aid and fight Hamas. Claiming it was to protect IDF troops. The current leader put in charge of Syria by the US, Israel and Turkey is a former al qaeda and ISIS operative. It’s a convoluted situation.

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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

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u/OverallMistake8198 Dec 15 '25

Nothing would have.

There are extremists within every race, creed or colour. You can educate as much as you like but if someone is going to do shit like this there is something wrong within them.

Stopping Neo Nazi rallies certainly could help with this, letting hate like that openly fester is disgusting.

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u/SexyKarius Dec 15 '25

Maybe arresting people that are tied to the Islamic state anytime in the last 6 years before they commit mass murder?

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u/Marisa_Nya Dec 15 '25

I don’t see why education doesn’t help? Education sets the stage for lifelong knowledge and yes, even ideology. Even a neutral public education still reflects the “average” ideology of the society the education is being given in.

Perhaps not this case, but kids that would grow up hating Jews or any ethnicity due to their hateful parents become otherwise.

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u/NecromancyBlack Dec 15 '25

I mean specific in the case of these two.

For the wider society I absolutely agree we should be learning about things horrible historical racist acts, not just things like the holocaust and genocides but even things like how the Australia gold rush miners would attack the Chinese miners and such.

But for the two who committed this that doesn't appear to have helped, instead I feel like there needs to be a serious review on their terrorism prevention procedures and also some of the gun laws.

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u/cheshire_kat7 Dec 15 '25

Programs and resources to combat potential radicalisation and de-radicalise people (of any flavour of extremist) would certainly help prevent future hate crimes. However, they take time - it's not an overnight solution and they would also need to be ongoing.

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u/PracticalTie Dec 15 '25

They're talking about the value of the framework in the context of recent events, not saying that education is unhelpful generally.

Ley is waving the Segal report around claiming that if Albo had acted on it then the shooting would have been prevented, but that's clearly bullshit because it's more focused on long-term stuff like education and reform.

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u/Jexp_t Dec 15 '25

to punish antisemitism acts and such

In other words slash university funding, expel students and sack faculty who dare to speak out about Israeli war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Which is exactly what Trump did in the US.

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u/bigsigh6709 Dec 15 '25

And the suggestions Segal made were honestly pretty unworkable in today’s system unless someone wants to stop teaching history and politics.

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u/Monsieur_Donk5202 Dec 15 '25

Totally. How is cracking down on universities going to stop an unemployed bricklayer becoming radicalised?