On this day three years ago, October 7, 2023, Hamas committed a barbaric attack murdering 1200 innocent people in Israel including Sydney grandmother Galit Carbone and taking another 251 people hostage. The evil on display that day was not confined to foreign shores. Within hours, here in Australia, Islamic preachers and their followers celebrated the death and destruction and unleashed what would be an unprecedented wave of violent antisemitism that culminated in Australia’s deadliest ever terrorist attack at Bondi. What we have seen in Australia over the last three years has been nothing short of a disgrace. Proud Australians of Jewish faith have been targeted in their places of worship, sidelined in their professions and harassed on campus all while our leaders have been weak and ineffective. Yet now more than ever we need strong leaders, not bystanders, with the moral clarity and courage to take on the extremists and drive the hate which is now mainstream to the fringes of society where it belongs. The Prime Minister must join the dots. He must recognise as Paul Kelly points out in today’s Australian “the more the Israel-Palestinian conflict is driven into our culture and politics, the more conflict and violence will occur in Australia“. Chants that we see regularly on our streets like ‘Globalise the Intifada’, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, ‘zionists are terrorists’ and ‘death to the IDF’ are not just words they are explicit calls for violence and they have no place in our country. Standing in the Prime Minister’s courtyard, Anthony Albanese said on 18 December last year, four days after the Bondi attack: ‘Of course more always could have been done…anyone in this position would regret not doing more’. Well a truer word could not have been said. The Australian Government was warned every day after the attack of October 7 to do more and didn’t. Now it is being warned again to do more. Only weeks ago the Director General of ASIO, Mike Burgess made public that 16 serious terrorist incidents have been disrupted in Australia since Bondi last year. The national terrorist threat level is currently at probable. Unless we learn the lessons from what has taken place in Australia over the last three years, we will tragically see more violence and tragedy. We must urgently change course. There is no time to waste. Words of comfort on this solemn day are not enough.

In an interview with Neil Mitchell that aired today the Director General of ASIO Mike Burgess has made the extraordinary statement that "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Iran would want to kill prominent Jewish Australians".  When the head of Australia's leading Security and Intelligence Agency goes public with his "grave concern" that it is only a matter of time before Australian citizens are killed on Australian soil by a foreign power it must ring alarm bells across the nation.  What is more Mike Burgess's warning comes just days after he revealed that Australian authorities have thwarted 16 serious terrorist threats since  the Bondi massacre just last December. This is a most serious and dangerous time for our nation. After the unacceptable security failures that preceded the Bondi attack where 15 innocent souls lost their lost their lives the Government and its agencies must take urgent and stronger action than we have seen to date to protect not just Jewish Australians but all Australians. We must all call for and expect nothing less.