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December 15, 2025
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: The Bondi terror attack on the Jewish community is the worst ever terror attack Australia has suffered. It's the worst mass casualty event since Port Arthur. And like Port Arthur changed our country forever, the Bondi terror attack must change our country forever. The Jewish community is rightly angry today that their years of warnings to governments have not been heeded, that their worst fears have been realised. A 10-year-old child has been murdered. A rabbi has been murdered. Someone who survived the Holocaust, who survived Nazi Germany, who made their home here in Australia, has been murdered.
And the Jewish community is outraged that their warnings have not been heeded, that action has not followed the many platitudes that we've heard over the last two years. I thought the firebombing of a synagogue not far from here, which we now know was an act of state-sponsored terror by the Islamic Republic of Iran, would have been a sufficient wake up call for governments, state and federal, to act, to take this seriously, to recognise antisemitism for the corrosive cancer that it is for our society and to show determination and leadership to change. But it wasn't.
This must be that moment. Our Prime Minister, our Premiers, our governments must stand up and they must lead. They must implement the recommendations that they have been sitting on for months now to address this cancer, to root it out. Because if they don't, then Australia will be forever changed in a terrible way that we will all regret. And we will have to answer to our children and grandchildren and to the Jewish community of our inaction and the horrible things that that has caused.
ENDS