Condolences are not leadership

While Parliament has stood to offer condolence motions following the Bondi Beach terror attack, Australians have been told that unity, grief, and social cohesion are our shared response.

Outside Parliament, the country is moving in the opposite direction.

What is happening on the streets of Australia is not “robust debate.” It is the normalisation of hatred in public space. It is antisemitism being shouted, chanted, and defended. It is intimidation repackaged as activism. And it is unfolding while political leaders retreat into vague language and carefully calibrated statements.

Australians are being asked to accept the unacceptable. Jewish Australians are being asked to live with it.

Start with the slogans. “Globalise the intifada” is not a clever provocation or an abstract political phrase. In the lived experience of Jewish Australians, it is a call to export violence. It is a threat dressed up as politics. It is the glorification of terror made palatable through repetition.

This is no longer a fringe concern. A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry has been established into measures to prohibit slogans that incite hatred, with “globalise the intifada” explicitly in its sights. That alone should tell us how far the line has shifted.

This is the street-level reality: incitement being mainstreamed.

After Bondi, NSW Police imposed and then extended restrictions on protest activity, explicitly linked to safety concerns and heightened community tension. Whatever one’s view of protest restrictions, the implication is unavoidable. Authorities believe the environment is combustible. They can see what too many political leaders continue to talk around.

While police manage the consequences, politicians manage appearances.

At the federal level, the government has now passed its Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism package — spanning hate crime offences, expanded migration powers and a national firearms buyback scheme. The question is not what has passed. It is what the Prime Minister will do with it.

Legislation matters. But legislation is not leadership.

Leadership is what happens when the press conference ends. It is what happens when enforcement becomes politically uncomfortable. It is what happens when clarity costs capital.

So the real question Australians should be asking is simple: will the government actually use the powers it has just legislated?

Will the Prime Minister back police and prosecutors when crowds cross the line from protest into intimidation?
Will ministers act when hate preachers and agitators weaponise public space?
Will the government stop hiding behind generic condemnations and start naming the ideologies that are driving this climate?

Australia is rightly alert to far-right extremism, and it must be confronted without hesitation. But the evasiveness becomes glaring when the ideology is Islamist. We can say “neo-Nazi” without apology. We can say “white supremacist” without fear of misinterpretation. Yet when radical Islamist ideology sacralises violence and targets Jews, our leaders reach for euphemisms, as if naming the problem is more dangerous than the problem itself.

Let me be absolutely clear. Naming radical Islamist ideology is not an indictment of Muslims. Most Muslims reject it outright. Many Muslims are also endangered by it. But refusing to name it protects only one group: extremists.

And when leaders refuse to name what people can plainly see, the message that lands on the street is unmistakable — the government is not prepared to confront this directly.

That weakness has consequences. When national leadership is timid, intimidation becomes bold. When language is blurred, the line collapses. When government signals hesitation, hate fills the vacuum.

Condolences honour victims. Laws provide tools. But tools do not enforce themselves.

So I will ask it plainly: Prime Minister, what will you do with the powers you have just secured?

Will you set a national expectation that chants glorifying violence have no place in Australian public life?
Will you back enforcement when consequences arrive and activists scream “free speech”?
Or will this follow a familiar pattern — legislation passed, statements issued, then communities left to fend for themselves while hate continues to march?

Australia is not short on words. We are short on backbone.

The question is no longer whether antisemitism exists. The question is whether our national leadership has the courage to confront it, to name what is driving it, and to use every lawful tool available to stop it.

Jewish Australians are watching closely. And so is everyone who understands that when hate is tolerated against one community, it never stops there.

Michael Gencher is Executive Director of StandWithUs Australia.