Senator Michaelia Cash
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate
Senator for Western Australia
12 December 2025
Speech – Jewish vigil, Kings Park
E&OE
Shalom chaverot ve chaverim – words feel inadequate.
What happened at Bondi Beach was the unthinkable made real: a nightmare for your community, and a wound to the soul of our nation.
On a day that should have been filled with song and candlelight, children, rabbis and Holocaust survivors were murdered while celebrating Hanukkah – the festival of light. Families came to pray, to gather, to mark something sacred and instead they were met with pure evil.
Let me be very clear: this was a religious attack – an attack on Jewish Australians – and an attack on the most basic promise our country makes to every family: that in Australia you can worship openly, raise your children in peace, and gather without fear.
For years, the Jewish community warned loudly that the tide of antisemitism, or more plainly, Jew-hate, was rising.
Australians have seen it: attacks on homes, schools, workplaces and places of worshipand the public chanting of hate, without shame.
Your warnings were a plea: don’t wait until it’s too late. But those pleas fell on deaf ears.
Now fifteen innocent Australians have been murdered. A community has been shattered. And our nation is mourning what should never have been allowed to happen.
This is not the Australia we know and love.
And this cannot become normal. It must never be accepted. The fight to reclaim the Australia we love and hold so dear has begun.
We will never accept a future where every festival, every Shabbat service, every school pick-up, every community event requires barricades, metal detectors and armed protection because government didn’t do the hard work to protect you; because excuses and appeasement were chosen over prosecutions and action. That appeasement is a national disgrace.
Today, I want to speak directly to Jewish women mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers who have carried an extra weight these past two years: the constant calculation of risk; the second-guessing of ordinary routines; the quiet anxiety that follows your children out the door. The worry on public transport. The dread at community events. The instinct to keep your voice down to hide what should never have to be hidden.
You should never have had to live like this in Australia.
Australia is better than this. And yet, here we are.
So let’s be absolutely clear about what must never be normalised in this country:
Incitement is not protest. Glorifying terrorism is not free speech.
Harassing Jewish Australians intimidating families, targeting schools, vandalising synagogues is hatred. It is criminal. And it must carry severe consequences.
Importing overseas conflict onto Australian streets is unacceptable.
If you are here to chant for violence, to celebrate terror, to intimidate Australians because they are Jewish then you are not standing for any Australian value. You are attacking them.
Our forebears fought and sacrificed for a free Australia a country where people can live and worship without fear not for a nation where antisemitism is allowed to fester.
So I want to say this as clearly as I can:
To every Jewish woman: your safety is not negotiable.
To every Jewish mother: your children’s safety is not negotiable.
Your place in Australia is not conditional.
You should be able to light candles without fear.
You should be able to send your kids to school without a knot in your stomach.
You should be able to wear your faith openly, proudly and peacefully without looking over your shoulder.
And to those who would target Jewish Australians who would intimidate them, threaten them, or try to push them out of public life hear this:
You will not succeed.
You will not break this community.
And you will not break this country.
Australia will never be the same after Bondi. But Australia can still decide what happens next.
We can choose unity over division.
We can choose courage over cowardice.
We can choose action over excuses.
Jew-hate must be eradicated. Islamic extremism must be defeated. And we must not stop until it is done.
And every Australian must demand nothing less.
We will stand with you in the days, weeks, months and years ahead in Parliament, in our communities, and in a national resolve to restore what was shattered: the simple, fundamental promise that Jewish Australians can live freely, worship openly, and raise their families in peace.
We owe you nothing less.
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