Sydney has been rocked by another stabbing rampage – just days after six people were murdered in a knife attack in the city’s Bondi Junction. A bishop of the Assyrian Orthodox Church, Mar Mari Emmanuel, was knifed at the altar during the incident yesterday afternoon in the working-class suburb of Wakeley. Several other parishioners were also injured as they sought to disarm the attacker. Police have arrested a teenager and are treating it as a terrorist attack.

The horror was broadcast on the livestream of the Assyrian Christ The Good Shepherd Church, meaning that thousands of followers witnessed the attack. News of the stabbings spread fast among the local Assyrian community, and an angry mob descended on the church. Several hundred police officers were called in as the atmosphere rapidly became febrile; the alleged offender was given sanctuary in the church for his own safety. Even after the bishop was stabbed, remarkably he urged his congregation and followers to pray for his assailant.

The horror was broadcast on a livestream

An arch-conservative in a conservative church, Bishop Emmanuel is known for attracting controversy. His views on social issues, notably homosexuality, are biblically hardline and, while having been supportive of Palestinians in the war in Gaza, he is on the record as having questioned the validity of Islam as a faith. During the pandemic, the bishop expressed scepticism about vaccines and lockdown restrictions.

Whether any of these views motivated the still-unidentified 16-year-old boy to attack Bishop Emmanuel remains unclear. But a video of the alleged attacker appears to show him calling out, in Arabic, ‘if he (the bishop) didn’t swear at my prophet I wouldn’t be here.’

As with last Saturday’s knife rampage, the attacker is considered a lone assailant. Thankfully, unlike the horrors of Bondi Junction, the injuries sustained by the bishop and his parishioners are lacerations and not serious or life-threatening. But two very public stabbing outrages in a matter of days has rattled and angered Australians.

That’s because such incidents have become very rare in Australia, When a mentally-disturbed man killed 35 people and wounded 23 others at Tasmania’s Port Arthur historic site in 1996, then prime minister John Howard earned the gratitude of all Australians by pushing through tough new gun laws in the face of determined resistance from his own gun-owning conservative supporters. Since then, Australia has been relatively safe.

Angry locals gathered outside the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Sydney following the attack (Getty)

As a result, Australians have been accustomed to think that mass killings and attempted killings are things that are, tragically, commonplace elsewhere, but unlikely to happen Down Under. Our successes in criminal and anti-terror intelligence and, especially, gun control, have made us too complacent to address holes in our containment of violent risks. The view that these tragedies happen to other people, not us, has been the collective mindset. Now, that perspective has been shattered.

The Bondi Junction offender had a long history of mental illness, and he was long known to police in his home state of Queensland. It may well be the case that the boy in the Sydney church stabbing also has mental troubles. Yet whether or not that is the case, it’s already clear that Australia’s mental health services, and federal and state authorities’ ability to cooperate with each other to protect the wider community, are proving inadequate. A major inquiry is being established to learn the lessons of Bondi Junction, and should now include the Wakely church stabbing.

Lessons need to be learned quickly. Australia has ridden its luck as a relatively peaceful society for too long: we are simply unready and unprepared to deal with mass killings that we have foolishly considered unimaginable here.

Australians have been blessed for two generations to be free of mass murderous events like Bondi Junction and, potentially, Wakeley. But when the American embassy in Canberra now warns its citizens that travelling to Australia carries US-style safety risks of random violence, they are giving Australians a wake-up call that can’t be ignored. Our complacency must end.