Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Bondi attack was a race relations problem

This business of Australia tightening up its gun laws feels like it runs the risk of distracting from the bigger problems over there. 

I don’t think guns were the problem on Sunday. Australia already has some of the tightest gun laws in the world. 

This is a race relations problem. 

This attack was predictable. There was no shortage of warnings. 

Jewish businesses have been set alight in recent years, synagogues have been attacked, obviously Jewish people have been hassled, Israeli people have been denied customer service in Melbourne, cars have been set alight in an anti-Semitic attack and two nurses in Sydney lost their jobs for bragging on TikTok that they would kill Jewish patients. 

There is a timeline on Time magazine’s website of all the events leading up to Sunday that is confronting. 

The Albanese Government knew there was a problem brewing. They asked the special envoy on anti-Semitism to give them a set of recommendations. 

For the last six months they’ve had those recommendations and done nothing. 

So, tightening up gun laws is never a bad thing. Checking in on a licence holder every few years rather than never must be a good thing. 

But if the Aussies think that’s the fix for what just happened, they are misguided and allowing themselves to be distracted. 

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