After three shark attacks in less than 24 hours, the government called an emergency session of Parliament and has now passed urgent new measures to restore public safety. Australians are being assured that action will be swift, fair, and guided by evidence.

To prevent future shark attacks, the government has voted to ban all sharks from having teeth.

Not just some sharks. Not just the known dangerous sharks. All sharks… Universally.

If you have shark teeth, you are the problem!

Under the plan, existing teeth are to be voluntarily surrendered as part of a national Shark Teeth Buyback Scheme. As usual, the logic from the government is elegant in its simplicity: no teeth equals no bites.

Sharks, despite their charming smiles, are predators, and they have been predators for several hundred million years. There are more than 500 species of sharks in the world, all equipped with teeth designed exclusively to hunt other fish. Yet despite this incredible diversity, serious attacks on humans overwhelmingly involve just three known species.

Disclaimer: if I mention their names, I may be done for Inter-species Hate Speech.

This is not controversial information. It is not fringe science. You don’t live in Australia and not know about saltwater crocodiles hiding in shallow riverbanks, red-bellied black snakes under logs, Drop Bears in eucalyptus trees and shark attacks happening at surf beaches around sunrise and sunset. You go outside as an Aussie, you know the risks.

However, let’s be perfectly clear, no surfer is afraid of nurse sharks. No one is afraid to swim at the beach because of Wobbegongs. And yet, our government insists on treating every shark as an identical threat despite decades of evidence to inform us of which ones are known to bite humans.

If the objective is genuinely about public safety, why would the solution be aimed primarily at sharks that have never attacked anyone?

Does anyone actually believe that most maritime-law-abiding sharks were the problem all along?

Are we seriously expected to believe that the sharks responsible for attacking humans, upon hearing about this buyback scheme, will be the first in line to surrender their teeth?

History suggests predators aren’t too concerned if their prey ‘feels safe’ when they’re hungry and on the hunt for a feed.

The government has also decided it needs to manage the discussion surrounding shark behaviour

Earlier this week, the Minister for Shark Migratory Patterns exercised emergency powers to revoke the visas of three Great White sharks, citing concerns about ‘harmful narratives’ regarding human-shark relations. Officials stressed this was not about targeting a particular species, but about maintaining public confidence. Notably and despite public backlash, Whale Show performer Novak Orcavic was also denied a visa for this year’s event.

Am I the only one asking when we voted to live in a country where talking about known risks is considered more dangerous than the risks themselves?

Back in my day, advising people to be cautious in waters known to contain Great White sharks was called common sense. Now it’s hate speech… Apparently, if we all stop acknowledging the very real danger of shark attacks, the sharks will simply stop biting humans.

Hopefully, the next election will show that Australians are no longer buying this floating pile of steaming ocean garbage. The ocean does not care about political theatrics and vote-buying stunts. It does not read press releases, nor respond to shared values statements delivered by crying politicians. It responds to cold, uncaring biology and survival.

Australians are growing tired of governments that confuse symbolism for safety. We want action. We want marine biologists to track, capture, and relocate any sharks that refuse to follow the ocean’s current.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being lectured to by politicians who appear to have no idea how sharks, oceans, or human behaviour actually work.

If a small number of sharks pose a disproportionate threat, policy should focus there, and only there.

If certain behaviours correlate with harm, then the public should be allowed to discuss it and ask their government to do what they are paid to do.

If reality is too uncomfortable for them, then it’s time they step aside for those who are strong enough to make the hard choices.

Banning teeth does not stop sharks from being sharks. And banning plain speech does not make the public safer.

Leadership requires action that is not always nice, or polite, or perfectly equal to all, and it damn sure needs more than just carefully worded moral theatre. It requires the courage to say what everyone already knows, and the strength to act on what is needed most to protect all Australians.

Pretending the sharks aren’t in the water has never, and will never work.

Parody. Obviously. We shouldn’t have to point it out, but we do.