I got home from a party and flicked the television on, I could not believe what I was seeing playing out. The gunmen were still shooting at people from the bridge at that point, it was awful, there was loss of life everywhere, we all knew the death count would rise. There were also about forty people wounded in the attack. This was the worst terrorist attack in Australia since Port Arthur, this is what caused the federal government to implement sweeping firearm changes and these need to be tightened again.

A Jewish Hanukkah celebration was the target of the Islamic extremists. I must confess I did not know a great deal about Hanukkah, so I needed to search for the history of Hanukkah, sometimes written as Chanukah. I know it is a celebration that lasts for about a week just before Christmas. It turned out to be eight days I learned, and commemorates the recovery of Jerusalem, in the second century the Seleucids ruled the holy lands and forced Greek culture and beliefs on the population. The Chanukah by the Sea festival is held at Bondi Beach to bring the festival to a wider audience with the lighting of candles. Given the recent threats against Jews in Australia, the security for the event should have been way stronger and way more prominent, now we have this disaster.

Among the dead are a ten year old girl, a holocaust survivor, a rabbi, and a whole lot more families devastated. These people have moved to Australia and expected to live a life free of terrorism and attacks. What we know is the terrorists are a father and son team, the father is not an Australian citizen, but the son was born in Australia. There are now concerns that both father and son were in the Philippines in November, so the enquiries will be ongoing there. There are signs the son had Islamic State links and was under some surveillance of ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation], the domestic security organisation. We will be learning more about this in the coming weeks, there were a lot of leads missed, there will be so much soul searching in Australian society and intelligence agencies. But none more than the Albanese Government and their failure to shut down the antisemitism that was allowed to grow in Australia.