Tonight, Australia grieves.

We grieve not as spectators to distant tragedy, but as custodians of a civic order that was built, slowly, deliberately, on restraint, responsibility, and the equal dignity of its citizens. When innocent people are murdered in public spaces for who they are, the loss is not confined to families and communities alone. It is a wound to the moral architecture of the entire nation.

This was not merely an act of violence. It was an act of hatred. And hatred of this kind does not arrive unannounced. It grows where truth is suppressed, where warning signs are dismissed as prejudice, and where those tasked with safeguarding the public choose comfort over courage. Antisemitism is not just a “foreign conflict imported here.” It is an ancient poison that resurfaces wherever societies lose the will to name evil plainly. Evil that celebrated as they murdered the innocent.

I am not Jewish. That fact is irrelevant. What matters is that no free society can survive if citizens are targeted for their ancestry or faith while institutions avert their eyes. This was not only an attack on Jewish Australians, no, it was an attack on the Australian way of life, on the expectation that public spaces are governed by law, not ideology, by reason, not rage.

For years, concerns about radicalisation were waved away with slogans. Those who warned of consequences were smeared rather than answered. Debate was replaced with denunciation. Speech was policed, while incitement was excused. A state that cannot distinguish between vigilance and bigotry is a state that has already begun to fail its most basic duty, that of protection of the innocent.

When governments ignore their own security assessments, downplay ideological threats, or delay decisive action, responsibility does not evaporate. Power entails obligation. Authority without accountability is not governance, it is negligence with a letterhead. Whether through inaction, denial, or deliberate censorship, the refusal to confront violent doctrines has a cost, and that cost is paid in lives.

Law exists not to soothe feelings, but to restrain those who would impose their will through force. Justice is not measured by intentions, but by outcomes. A system that responds slowly (45 Minutes), speaks softly, and apologises endlessly to aggressors teaches the wrong lesson, to the public and to those watching for weakness.

This moment demands more than vigils and platitudes. It demands moral clarity. It demands that Australians reject the lie that calling out hatred is itself hateful. It demands that institutions remember why they exist, not to manage narratives, but to secure peace.

Grief is natural. Anger is justified. Forgetting would be unforgivable.

If this country still believes in ordered liberty, equal justice, and the sanctity of life, then this must be a turning point, not a footnote. Evil thrives where it is excused, rationalised, or renamed. It recedes only when confronted, calmly, lawfully, and without apology.

Tonight, we mourn the dead. Tomorrow, we must recover our resolve.