Albanese,speaking first,told parliament that “honouring the heroes of Bondi also means standing together against that evil that inflicted this devastation,standing together against hatred,standing together against division. And working together to eradicate antisemitism,wherever it hides,whatever form it assumes and whatever weapons it wields”.

The members of parliament,Albanese said,“must channel our anger into meaningful action to ensure an atrocity such as this can never happen again”.

“That responsibility starts with me,as Australia’s 31st prime minister,” he said. “It also belongs to each of us here in this chamber as parliamentarians.”

Ley,speaking next,said the Bondi attack was not an isolated attack but a culmination of years of rising hostility towards Jewish Australians,as she linked the attack to the pro-Palestine movement that surged during the war in Gaza.

“Antisemitic hate fuelled the terrorists on December 14,but it came out of the shadows in October 2023,” she said. “It walked our streets,it marched over our bridges,it took over our landmarks,it camped in university quadrangles ... Like a slow creeping disease,it festered in plain sight.”

Jewish Australians,she said,had warned of the “menacing storm” but felt unheard. “The Coalition heard you.”

Addressing the families in the gallery,Ley said they were owed an apology for how long it took Albanese to call a royal commission. “You should never have had to juggle grieving your lost loved ones with national advocacy for the royal commission you so understandably wanted and deserved,” she said.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser,who is Jewish,was even more scathing. “The feeling in the Jewish community right now is visceral,” he said. “It is a feeling of disappointment,anger,and betrayal ... Increasingly,Jewish Australians are asking the question:where are our leaders?”

As with Dreyfus’ speech,moments of anguish pierced the acrimony. Labor minister Jason Clare burst into tears as he read a statement from a survivor named Jessica who ran from the shooters with her daughter.

“We covered our children with our bodies,our bodies,and as the gunshots came closer and closer,as flying bits of flesh and bone sprayed over us,there was no mistaking it. This was a massacre,” he read.

“I realised I was no longer preparing to survive. I was preparing for how I wanted my daughter and I to die. I leaned into her ear and spoke the only words that came to me. ‘Go inside yourself,my darling,go to your beloved. Stay there,my baby,stay there’.”

Speaking in the Senate,Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi,a prominent champion of Palestinian rights,revealed a colleague of her husband died in the massacre.

She added a warning that “in moments of deep grief,there are voices that seek to divide us,to politicise loss,to police grief and to sow further hatred”.

“Many of my Jewish friends and comrades who have been shocked and devastated by the Bondi antisemitic terror attack have also expressed to me their distraught and their anger at the politicisation of these horrors and their grief being exploited by powerful forces to achieve narrow political ends,” she said.

Behind the scenes,as the condolence speeches continued,politicians and their staffers were meeting to craft legislation for debate on Tuesday.

With the government set to pass new firearms restrictions with the support of the Greens,Ley was preparing to work with the government on a watered-down version of its hate speech laws – albeit without the proposed new penalties for racial vilification.

“We need to respond to hatred with the ferocity of laws that are carefully targeted,and I must say in terms of hate speech,I wish we were going harder that we’re able to go tomorrow,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke lamented. “But we deal with the parliament we have.”

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