Opinion: Few standouts in political debate about Bondi tragedy

By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

Since December 14, Australia's public square has been dominated by big-talking know-alls who quickly shrink behind internal numbers when called on to act.

The cavilling over firearms is the most obvious failure. Indeed, the two ingredients most crucial to the massacre, guns and hatred, are the two areas conservative MPs seem most unwilling to frontally address.

Sadly, there have been few standouts in an unedifying debate although the independent member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, has been among those trying.

With Parliament reluctantly recalled more than a month after the worst terrorist act in modern Australian history, Spender called on Australia to be "strong and soft right now".

"Strong in confronting the hate that drove the attack ... and soft so that we do not lose our common humanity in our strength," she told Parliament.

"If we meet difference with suspicion rather than with curiosity, the terrorists will truly win."

Spender's words took courage in a binary atmosphere of intolerant absolutes, where the slightest concession to cultural complexity or other perspectives is seized on as weakness.

Australia has been shortchanged by its major party politicians who have failed to act in unison and who have ultimately breached their promise to serve nation and community first.

The people know it and the polls now show it. Labor's primary vote support in Newspoll has slumped to 32 per cent and Anthony Albanese's approval rating has turned sharply negative - by a solid 28 points - from plus-6 to minus-22.

Rebuffing calls for a royal commission was always wrong but it became also an invitation for a flailing opposition to go on the attack. In a low point, Penny Wong was even accused of being insufficiently teary.

Plainly, what Sussan Ley thought was her salvation, has not worked.

Far from hoovering up right-wing voters, the Coalition (21 per cent) has lost ground to Pauline Hanson's One Nation. At a record 22 per cent support, the newly occupied bedsit of Barnaby Joyce is now the most popular conservative force following the model of Nigel Farage's populist Reform which has overtaken the British Conservatives.

Belatedly, the dignifying role of formal condolences has produced moving speeches from MPs and shown why the community would have been better served had it happened earlier.

Former attorney-general and Jewish Labor MP, Mark Dreyfus spoke movingly of the reality for grieving families.

"Clothes still hanging in wardrobes, photos on walls that will never be updated, children asking when someone is coming home, a seat left empty at the dinner table, a laugh no longer heard."

But not all of it was as poignant.

"Bondi can either be the crescendo to a bad chapter in our history or the midpoint to a story that gets worse," said Jewish Sydney MP, Julian Leeser.

Leeser might have been speaking to members of his own Coalition who oppose new gun laws and Albanese's proposed powers to eliminate extremist groups which use hatred as a means to radicalisation.

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.