Let’s talk about Bondi. More specifically, the reaction to Bondi. The dust has settled and the politicking has begun.

Let’s start with the facts. The Bondi massacre occurred at a Hanukkah event. It was very clearly an antisemitic act of terror. It was also an act of Islamic fundamentalism.

That is not to say that Muslims agree with the attack.

The terrorists killed at least 15 people and wounded many more. They would have killed more still if a hero – named Ahmed al-Ahmed – had not intervened and helped to quell the attack. Al-Ahmed himself is Muslim. It is not clear whether he knew the nature of the attack at the time, but he clearly highlights that many Muslims are Aussies just like everyone else.

What then of the reaction?

Anthony Albanese’s first reaction was to blame guns and call for gun control. In my opinion, this was motivated by a desire to find a convenient scapegoat. After all, relatively few Australians own guns, so targeting gun owners seemed safe: a typical divide-and-conquer style of politics.

Conversely, he appeared to dodge the issue of antisemitism and especially avoided blaming Islamic extremism.

Josh Frydenberg – the former Treasurer – ripped Anthony Albanese for precisely this. He also ripped Anthony Albanese for presiding over a climate that acquiesced to antisemitism, thereby emboldening people to take more extreme measures.

The most direct way this manifested was by failures of the Labor government allowing an environment to develop where people felt virtuous attacking Israel or Jewish people. That is, the problem was that people started to believe that it was righteous to attack Jews. And, while the vast majority of protesters would decry the massacre, repeated calls for an intifada – which has come to mean a violent uprising – would clearly start to make some people feel righteous in attacking Jews.

The owner of Avner’s Bakery neatly observed that the Overton window has shifted. The repeated calls for intifada, intimidation, and security threats steadily expanded until people felt justified attacking not just Jewish buildings but Jewish people.

Anthony Albanese, to be clear, could not have directly prevented the massacre. However, his government he presided over a climate where such an event was more likely. Or, as Barnaby Joyce observed, Anthony Albanese is trying to stop the horse once it has bolted when he should have stopped it bolting to begin with.

And this leads me to the reaction to the massacre.

Anthony Albanese and the government have decided to move against anti-Jewish messaging. They are doing so in a knee-jerk, censorious, and ham-fisted manner. They have looked to clamp down on phrases and imagery, but by letting the problem fester for so long, they have now engaged in overreach.

The precise crackdown on ‘hate speech’ is still being developed. Some of it seemingly relates to speech that directly calls for violence. The details are murky.

A bigger issue is that censorship does not work. Censorship creates resentment and a Streisand effect. So, attempts to outlaw specific phrases, and imprison people for using them, can backfire. Rather, the right approach should be educational and is long-term. The educational approach should have started when October 7 occurred, at the least. By failing to combat ‘hate speech’ with contrary facts, it was allowed to fester until it got out of control.

The Prime Minister should have set the tone by resisting the calls for intifada, or resisting the more extreme rhetoric against Israel, or taking a stronger tone against protesters who displayed symbols – such as those of Hezbollah – that are clearly as extreme as Nazi symbols. That is, the government has now rushed to censorship without even trying the educational and messaging route. It is a knee-jerk reaction.

The move to toughen gun laws is another example of overreach. Australia already has extremely tough gun laws.

Australia’s existing information and gun laws should be sufficient, perhaps with some minor tweaks. Tweaks along the lines of … if someone is on an ASIO watch list or closely related to an individual who is … that should raise a red flag for owning a firearm.

It appears one of the alleged gunmen slipped through the cracks of gun control laws. Instead of mending that small crack, authorities have gone overboard. Whereas you should normally fix a crack in the wall by patching the hole, the government has decided to take a sledgehammer to the whole wall and rebuild it in the most austere manner possible. This seemingly includes additional licensing checks and ongoing obligations. It should have just involved a simple ASIO watch list flag.

The rationale is clear: the government wants to be seen to be doing something and so is redirecting attention. This itself is clearly because the government did not want to address the underlying problem: Islamic extremism. This appears to be because the government is deathly afraid of losing votes. And what does that assumption say about what the government thinks of their voter base?

The net result is a shemozzle. The government seemingly felt that it could ignore rising antisemitism. It seemingly assumed that the antisemitism would not metastasise into violence. And, upon being caught unawares, it has jumped into action.

Those actions miss the deeper problem: the root cause of the violence and why two gunmen felt that it was appropriate to murder innocent civilians.