Parliament honours 15 killed in Bondi Beach terror attack

Australia’s parliament fell into silence on Monday during a condolence motion in the House of Representatives, confronting the human cost of the antisemitic terror attack that killed 15 people at Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025.

The motion, delivered before a gallery containing grieving families, injured survivors, first responders and Jewish community leaders, marked one of the most emotionally charged sittings in modern parliamentary history. It was both a moment of national mourning and a reckoning with the failure to confront rising antisemitism before it turned lethal.

Several MPs acknowledged family members of the victims, rabbis, communal leaders and volunteers seated above them, many of whom had buried loved ones only weeks earlier.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paused as he welcomed those in the gallery, describing their presence as an act of courage.

“From the depths of grief, you have summoned remarkable strength,” he said, addressing families and spiritual leaders who had travelled to Canberra. “You have given us a glimpse of who your loved ones were and how brave they proved themselves to be.”

As Albanese read aloud the names of the 15 people murdered, the chamber stood in silence. MPs lowered their heads. Some clasped their hands while others looked toward the gallery.

The Prime Minister told the House the attack was “not random” but “deliberately targeted at Australia’s Jewish community gathering to celebrate the first night of Chanukah”.

“This was an attack on Australia and our way of life,” he stated.

He spoke directly to those watching from the gallery.

“We recognise that for you an unbearable silence has fallen,” Albanese said. “The silence of laughter forever stilled. The silence of futures unlived.”

Parliamentarians repeatedly returned to the presence of the community above them, describing the debate as personal rather than abstract.

Jewish Liberal MP Julian Leeser said he was speaking “with the families and survivors watching us today in mind”, and warned that something foundational had been broken.

“The loss of the truth that Australia is good to Jewish people crushes me,” he said.

Leeser said Holocaust survivors, synagogue leaders, parents and children were now living with fear that had once seemed unimaginable in Australia.

“The question Jewish Australians are asking is simple,” he said. “Where are our leaders?”

“We have seen antisemitism grow louder, more brazen and more normalised,” Leeser concluded.

Another Jewish MP, Josh Burns, the Labor member for Macnamara, spoke of how Jewish life had narrowed under the weight of security and suspicion, and acknowledged Jewish community members in the gallery who now lived with armed guards outside schools and synagogues.

“Jewish life was shattered in Bondi,” Burns said. “People have questioned their place in this country.”

Burns briefly paused mid-speech when his newborn daughter cried in the chamber, a moment that drew quiet smiles across the House and underscored the generational stakes of a debate centred on ensuring safety for future generations.

He singled out relatives of Reuven Morrison, who died confronting one of the gunmen, and described private conversations with his family.

“The words that stayed with me were, ‘How dare they?’” Burns said. “How dare they come to our community?”

Wearing a kippah, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus also addressed members of the Jewish community seated above him, saying the House was not only mourning but bearing witness.

“For every person murdered, there are families left behind,” he said. “Children asking when someone is coming home. A seat left empty at the table.”

“You don’t have to be Jewish to feel this,” Dreyfus added, glancing towards the gallery. “But many of you here feel it every day.”

“For every person murdered there are families and friends left behind, a home left quieter, 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, a longing for one more word, one more moment, one more chance to say what was left unsaid,” Dreyfus said, pausing as he spoke.

Dreyfus concluded his remarks by reciting the Mourners’ Kaddish for the victims as the House stood in silence. After Dreyfus concluded his emotional speech, he was joined by Josh Burns who comforted him.

Several other speakers explicitly acknowledged rabbis and Jewish leaders present, including those who had conducted funerals, led shiva services and supported traumatised families since the attack. Their presence was referenced repeatedly as MPs spoke of vigils, memorials and prayers held in the weeks following Bondi.

Kingsford Smith MP Matt Thistlethwaite became visibly emotional as he spoke of Matilda, the youngest victim, whose parents were in the gallery.

He explained that at Matilda’s school in La Perouse, more than half the students were Indigenous, and that “she was given the name Wuri Wuri, meaning sunshine,” he said. “And what a ray of sunshine she was.”

He spoke of her final moments dancing among bubbles on the sand, a detail that prompted an emotional pause in the chamber.

Opposition figures also addressed the families and community members present. Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said she had attended funerals and sat shiva with families now watching from the gallery.

“I have held the hands of mothers who lost children,” Ley said. “Children who lost parents. Husbands and wives who lost their beloved partners.”

She told the House that many Jewish Australians had warned of danger long before Bondi.

“Hatred that is tolerated eventually turns violent,” she stated.

“You said you felt unheard,” Ley said. “Today, you are being heard.”

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles acknowledged survivors and first responders seated above the chamber, describing their actions as having saved “hundreds, perhaps more”.

“We will never know the names of all those who are alive because of what you did,” he said.

Marles also referenced Holocaust survivors in the gallery, calling their presence a reminder of what Australia had promised to be.

“For generations, Australia was a safe harbour,” he said. “That is why this wound cuts so deeply.”

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender, whose electorate includes Bondi, spoke directly to Jewish families present, many of whom she said she had met repeatedly since the attack.

“When a community feels it has to look over its shoulder, something is deeply wrong,” she said.

“When Jewish Australians tell me they are thinking of leaving this country,” Spender said, “it breaks my heart.”

She described parents now explaining hatred to children far too young to understand it.

Across the sitting, emotion was not confined to Jewish MPs. MPs from across parties paused mid-sentence, lowered their gaze towards the gallery, or spoke through breaking voices as they recounted survivor accounts. The presence of families and wounded survivors removed any remaining distance between the chamber and the violence it was discussing.

Repeatedly, speakers emphasised that the condolence motion was not an end point.

Several referenced the establishment of the Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, as well as pending hate speech and security reforms, but warned that legislative action alone would not repair the damage.

Leeser cautioned that Bondi could become either a turning point or a midpoint.

“If we move on,” he said, “then Bondi will not have changed anything.”

Burns framed the moment more starkly. “How a country responds defines a country,” he said.

The debate closed in silence, with MPs standing as victims’ families and members of the Jewish community watched from the public gallery. There was no applause and no sense of finality, only the weight of shared grief and an expectation, voiced throughout the sitting, that words would need to be matched by action.