The Sydney Morning Herald headlined with: "Jewish community asked for stronger police presence at Hanukkah festival". The article is attributed to THREE writers ("reporters"), which makes the LACK OF JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS worse. This article is deeply troubling - not for what it reports, but for how it frames responsibility. First - let’s be absolutely clear, before the usual dishonest crowd tries anything cute: 👉 The attack was horrific. It is unequivocally condemned. 👉 Responsibility lies solely with the perpetrators. Nothing below weakens that. Nothing below excuses it. Now, to the journalism. 1. “A source with knowledge of the arrangements told this masthead” That phrase does a lot of heavy lifting for something carrying zero accountability. No name. No position. No documentary corroboration. Yet it’s used to establish a crucial claim about police deployment - a claim that conveniently shifts scrutiny in one direction only. Anonymous sourcing has its place, but when it’s doing the entire framing job, readers deserve to be told that plainly. Note: "A spokeswoman for NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley said the minister was unaware of CSG’s request being made." is left to the very bottom of the article, IF you made it that far. 2. The framing gap no one wants to touch The article states, as fact: The Community Security Group deemed the event high-risk. That is a serious assessment. And yet the next logical question is… quietly sidestepped. If any other community group: -was formally advised an event was high-risk -in a large, open, public space -with known symbolic and political visibility …and still proceeded at that venue, the framing would not be: “Why didn’t police do more?” It would be: “Why did organisers proceed despite the known risk?” That is not blaming victims. That is interrogating decision-making, which journalism does every day - just not here. Instead, the article subtly relocates all scrutiny onto police, while treating the decision to proceed as unquestionable, inevitable, and beyond examination. That asymmetry matters. Why this matters Good reporting can: condemn violence respect victims and still ask hard, neutral questions about risk, process, and accountability What’s disturbing here is not that police actions are scrutinised - they should be. It’s that one set of actors is placed entirely outside the frame, while another absorbs it all. That isn’t balance. That’s narrative protection. You can honour the dead, condemn the attackers, and still expect consistent standards of scrutiny. Journalism should be capable of all three.

Bondi Beach Attack Royal Commission may uncover stuff the LNP wanted hidden. ---Get a coffee, it's 434 words you NEED to read if you like to be properly informed. 🧵1/2 Sussan Ley is out there auditioning for PM, clutching her pearls and demanding a Royal Commission after #bondiattack . Big emotions. Big statements. Very selective memory. Because here’s the bit the LNP is hoping everyone forgets: They didn’t just fail to act after Christchurch. They very deliberately staged action — then walked away from it. March 2019: Christchurch happens. Scott Morrison convenes a national summit. 📢🤡📰Big talk about online extremism, livestreamed violence, radicalisation. 📸📹🎆A Taskforce is announced with fanfare . June 2019: The Taskforce delivers a detailed report. Clear recommendations. Five streams: prevention, detection, transparency, deterrence, capacity building. Explicit focus on extremist material online. Clear warning that voluntary measures may not be enough. It looked like action. It photographed well. It bought headlines. And who was the “tough on security” enforcer front and centre at the time? Peter Dutton. Home Affairs Minister. Permanent scowl. Endless press conferences about being “strong” and “unapologetic”. Then came the quiet part. The Taskforce met just three times. By May 2021 — still under the Coalition, still under #PeterDutton’s Home Affairs architecture — it was quietly disbanded. -No announcement. -No follow-up. -No public accountability. -No final assessment of whether the recommendations worked. At the same time — again, on Peter Dutton’s watch: • A parliamentary inquiry into extremism was watered down • “Far-right extremism” was scrubbed from the language • The scope was deliberately blurred • Hearings were minimised • The inquiry was never finished This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t oversight. This was a political decision. They set it up to look like they were doing something — then shut it down once the cameras moved on and the questions got uncomfortable. Now, after #Bondi, the same people want a Royal Commission not to prevent the next attack, but to: Rewrite the accountability timeline Shift blame onto Labor Create the appearance of toughness Avoid discussing what they dismantled while in power A Royal Commission is very handy when you don’t want anyone asking: Why did Peter Dutton’s Home Affairs kill the prevention work? Why was the inquiry buried? Why was the ideology stripped out of the language? Why was online extremism left to “voluntary commitments” and a feel-good podcast nobody watches? You don’t get to gut the fire prevention system, walk away for years, then scream at the next occupants when the building burns. That’s not leadership. That’s political arson followed by performative outrage. And Sussan Ley’s audition doesn’t change the facts. The LNP built this system. Peter Dutton presided over it. They hollowed it out. Now they want a Royal Commission to pretend they weren’t holding the matches. That’s not accountability. That’s industrial-grade wankfuckery. Ref: Links below in thread.