Now, as the Albanese federal government and the Minns NSW government launch Australia’s largest gun buyback in decades, we are witnessing political theatre at its most cynical.

Proclaimed as a response to the horrific December 2025 antisemitic Islamic terror attack at Bondi Beach, this expensive scheme is a classic exercise in misdirection.

In my view, it is intended to obscure the fact that for electoral reasons, Labor has long tolerated a degree of antisemitism. Their own eminence, former minister Barry Cohen, openly lamented that.

I believe that is why, after the Hamas outrage against Israel, the Minns government tolerated not only the Opera House riot but also the weekly antisemitic demonstrations which clogged Sydney’s streets. It was not long after that the Bondi massacre occurred.

Despite legitimate fears that the Hanukkah event there would attract an antisemitic response, the NSW authorities refused both a police presence and the arming of the security guards.

As Pauline Hanson said:

‘It wasn’t the guns, it was the people behind the guns that are responsible for the Bondi massacre.’

She rightly accuses the government of crucifying law-abiding owners who already operate under some of the tightest licensing laws in the world.

The reason for the current level of antisemitism in Australia was never a lack of gun laws.

It is that the Albanese and Minns governments have applied Labor’s policy over the last few decades of tolerating extremism to the extent of deliberately not using existing police powers to protect Jewish Australians.