Abbott: Bondi massacre a milestone in national decline

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has described the Bondi massacre as “a dreadful milestone in our decline as a nation”, in a Melbourne speech on the eve of the third anniversary of October 7.

Speaking at a B’nai B’rith Armchair Society special event at Caulfield Shule on Tuesday night, Mr Abbott said one of the Bondi attackers had arrived in the 1990s on a student visa and “managed to stay for the next couple of decades hopping from visa to visa without in any way assimilating our values.”

He said the man’s son, who had presumably been born and educated in Australia, had also “not assimilated the fair go for all.”

“It says something terrible about our country, that we have given up on the things that we used to think were what characterised us,” Mr Abbott said.

He said immigration policy had “shamefully neglected our country’s right and duty to keep our core Judeo-Christian heritage and values.”

Mr Abbott said the failure of all levels of government to stand up for “decent Australian values in the wake of the October 7 atrocity” was symptomatic of the country’s decline.

“I think Australia’s own day of infamy was on October the 9th when an ugly mob basically rioted in front of the Sydney Opera House,” he said.

He said he could not really blame police for failing to break up that first demonstration, because they had probably not expected “the level of rancour and hatred that was so clearly on display.”

“But having seen it once, I think that state governments, police ministers and police commissioners right around Australia should have been utterly determined that it never happened again.”

Instead, he said, weekly demonstrations in the major cities had united “recent migrants with, it seems, an ingrained hatred of Israel and Jewish people” with “a bunch of cultural Marxists” who had “this crazy idea” that people who had lived in the region for thousands of years were settler colonists.

“I mean, what a ridiculous idea,” he said.

Mr Abbott said the marches had been followed by intimidatory drive-throughs, ugly scenes outside synagogues, vandalism of Jewish property and the firebombings of synagogues “here in Melbourne”.

He included Coalition governments in his criticism, saying the country’s problems were not just a question of whether a Liberal or Labor government was in Canberra.

“I think all of our recent governments have let us down badly,” he said, pointing to economic stagnation, “social fragmentation driven by identity politics” and the “madness of our current energy policy”.

Mr Abbott said Israel was the one Western country that had not lost a sense of its national project, suggesting national service might be the reason.

“Rather than condemn Israel as our government constantly does these days, we actually should be learning from Israel,” he said.

He said the greatest lesson Australia could learn was “engendering once more a sense of pride and patriotism, of duty and service in our own young people.”

Mr Abbott told the audience that on his last visit to Israel he had offered to make aliyah.

“I am prepared to do aliyah. But only on condition that you let me serve in the infantry for three years,” he said.

He also recalled telling the then Chief of the Defence Force, after leaving the prime ministership, that he would be happy to leave Parliament to serve in the armed forces.

He was told he would probably pass the fitness test but could not be deployed because he would be “a high-value target.”

“That’s why I’m still in the Rural Fire Service, because they won’t let me go into the armed forces,” Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott, now federal president of the Liberal Party, was introduced by former Labor MP Michael Danby, and the address was followed by a conversation with Mr Danby and questions from the audience.

The AJN thanks J-Air for its help in providing Mr Abbott’s remarks.