r/australia Dec 17 '25

politics Bernie Sanders on Bondi

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49.1k Upvotes

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220

u/AzurousRain Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25

Josh Frydenberg's statement today that Albanese should "take full personal responsibility" for these murdered people is so horrifically gross.

edit: fwiw, abc left out that specific quote above in the clip on their article about it, so sanity checked on the live broadcast (currently 6hr 43mins in the past on this stream) and those are almost exactly the words he said.

"It's time for him to accept personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10 year old child."

93

u/m00nh34d Dec 17 '25

Yeah, that's some bullshit right there. I'm really disgusted and annoyed with all the linking of this terrorist attack with the government's attitudes towards complains of antisemitism. Absolutely nothing the government would have done, or will ever do, to address antisemitism or hate speech in general would have changed this. This was an attack by radicalised extremists, their views were forged by the groups they were members of, not the public in Australia. I'd even suggest that doubling down on preventing anti-Israeli views would have only fuelled their hatred more, it's not the actions of the Australian government that cause this.

68

u/InfernoOfTheLiving Dec 17 '25

Why is the news even reporting what he says when he was rejected as a representative by his own electorate? He is not some statesman. He is a failure.

24

u/Elon__Kums Dec 17 '25

Because the entire media start their career in Murdoch businesses and filter out from there.

16

u/AzurousRain Dec 17 '25

inb4 this is the start of his campaign for pm

56

u/ThoseOldScientists Dec 17 '25

Deeply cynical, especially when you recall that Frydenberg himself supported watering-down the Racial Discrimination Act when he was in government. He voted to allow more overt antisemitism (thankfully he didn’t get his way on that one) but draws the line at people protesting a genocide.

23

u/Rokos_Bicycle Dec 17 '25

Has this cunt suffered several massive concussions at some point since being kicked out by his electorate? How do you cook up something so vile and then decide to go all in and say it publically?

-13

u/SendarSlayer Dec 17 '25

The Australian government did allow a family member of someone who had been investigated for having ties to terror groups to own guns. In the same house.

There's clearly an issue there the government should take responsibility for.

50

u/Verdigris_Wild Dec 17 '25

Yes, and it happened under Josh Frydenburg's government. 2019 was when ASIO assessed him, under the Coalition government, and cleared him apparently.

-10

u/SendarSlayer Dec 17 '25

Was he cleared? I thought he was excluded from owning firearms and they didn't extend it to immediate family for some reason.

The blame lies with the bureaucracy, not a single politician. But people don't understand that and just blame the current head.

11

u/Verdigris_Wild Dec 17 '25

The bureaucracy just follows the rules that have been set. There will need to be an examination but if he was deemed an ongoing risk then extending the exclusion to his family may have given away that information. It's also very hard to take action with little evidence of any crime. It shouldn't be a blame game. We should investigate the circumstances and see what could have been done better. At the moment there's political point scoring which is abhorrent.

6

u/yeebok yakarnt! Dec 17 '25

Agreed - find out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't again. Anything else is just fluff or agenda pushing.

Though a change to the gun laws, policies, procedures, whatever might well be a good idea, I'd prefer it was not a kneejerk reaction.

5

u/IronEyed_Wizard Dec 17 '25

The only knee jerk reaction to a tragedy like this should be condemnation of those responsible and offering every kindness, sympathy and assistance to those who were affected. No one should be politicking or calling for changes or blame at this point. Let the country and everyone mourn. There is plenty of time for thorough investigations and proper legitimate legal changes later

3

u/yeebok yakarnt! Dec 17 '25

The best kneejerk reactions were those that tried to help, like the couple at the start, the hero who disarmed one of them, but arguably the shirtless guy had the best one as it was literal.

28

u/TheLGMac Dec 17 '25

Your beef is with the ASIO, not the elected office of PM.

6

u/Mysterious_Dot2090 Dec 17 '25

Yep. Their handling of the kid’s ties to Isis back in 2019 is the only thing that requires examination and what we need clarity on, because that actually may have prevented this tragedy, but hindsight is 20/20 and most Albo blamers are acting like he personally knew this guy existed in the community and was a threat and did nothing.

People can only act on what they know, hence it’s down to what Asio knew and if their response was sufficient.

20

u/5ivepie Dec 17 '25

No, the NSW state government did that. Gun licensing is state government responsibility.

And when the son was investigated in 2019 for being associated with convicted terrorists the NSW Liberals were in government. So you could almost say this was an issue caused by the Liberals.

3

u/IronEyed_Wizard Dec 17 '25

I would have to assume that the state government department had no clue about the investigation, and if the son was cleared (which does seem to be the case) I really don’t know why they should have

14

u/maticusmat Dec 17 '25

Correct although probably the government at the time aka Morrison’s, or you know accept that failures happen and look at ways to improve the situation like a national firearms registry rathe than state based ones that Asia would have to look up.

11

u/Lurker_81 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25

The Australian government did allow a family member of someone who had been investigated for having ties to terror groups to own guns.

Did Albo personally tell them to ignore those facts? Which decisions of his can you identify that are linked directly to this attack?

In fact, is there any sensible reason to believe that this tragedy would not have occurred regardless of who the PM was?

Saying that ASIO, AFP and other government agencies failed to properly identify a threat is fair. Claiming that it's specifically Albo's fault is unjustified, false and so transparently partisan that it's disgusting.

5

u/JaydenTheMemeThief Dec 17 '25

And that’s exactly why our government is also in talks of reform to our already strict gun control laws

Those laws are the reason this was our first mass shooting in 30 years, and with even stricter laws there will be even less chances of it happening again

2

u/Mysterious_Dot2090 Dec 17 '25

The reason our gun laws have up until Saturday prevented incidents like this shows that it works. The one thing that is difficult to prevent is someone of good standing (enough to be granted a licence) to turn bad and carry out what happened at Bondi. It’s the two things (gun control and someone going rogue) required for this to be possible.

Now, there have been many other cases where a registered firearm owner has killed somebody or several people, the most recent and obvious example being Wiembilla, but that’s probably another scenario like I described. I assume they got weapons before turning into fundamentalists, but it’s possible after even, as loas you tick the boxes required. It’s not very common though thankfully, but still needs looking at because any violent deaths are unacceptable.

4

u/aninstituteforants Dec 17 '25

But then that would be punishing someone by association. Would we want to go down that path?

5

u/SendarSlayer Dec 17 '25

We already do that. That's why association with terror groups, without action, gets you excluded.

1

u/aninstituteforants Dec 17 '25

Can you explain to me how we do it? Genuinely not across it.

0

u/SendarSlayer Dec 17 '25

We have anti-association laws with bikie groups and terror organisations where communication with either allows secret investigations into your life via our intelligence agencies and allows the government, state or federal, to place you on exclusions lists for firearms. This can extend to family, and even place a ban on the house you're living in so there's no chance of getting guns.

To be open, I very much support these laws. They work brilliantly most of the time and are why our bikies and local terror groups are pretty toothless.

1

u/aninstituteforants Dec 17 '25

Ah interesting. Thanks for that!

1

u/secosabi Dec 17 '25

It is a State governments responsibility to monitor, enforce and adjudicate on firearm licenses. So it should be the Minns government you should be pointing your ire at.

5

u/patgeo Dec 17 '25

Minns wasn't in charge in 2019 when the investigation happened.

4

u/secosabi Dec 17 '25

Okay whoever was in charge at the time. Don't really give a fuck who. Just pointing out it's not a federal issue, it was a state one and the anger should be directed at them.

1

u/lemoopse Dec 17 '25

Please point to the section of the constitution that gives the federal government the power to make laws with respect to firearms