This was going to be a column about how community expectations for frugal use of taxpayer money run into the need for people not to sacrifice their family to take political office.
But the rights or otherwise of politicians to hold their family in their arms pales against the horror that unfolded on Bondi Beach on Sunday night.
There are too many families that will now never hold loved ones in their arms again.
The phrase that came up again and again from shocked witnesses speaking to reporters after the deadly shooting was, “This is not Australia”.
The problem is that it is.
This was the worst mass shooting in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre nearly 30 years ago.
It was the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the October 7 ambush by Hamas.
Now, after two years of talk about stopping anti-Semitism, Jewish leaders are calling for action.
ASIO boss Mike Burgess warned back in February that long-festering anti-Semitism in Australia had been given oxygen by the conflict in Gaza and that Jewish Australians were increasingly being conflated with and blamed for the actions of the state of Israel.
“The normalisation of violent protest and intimidating behaviour lowered the threshold for provocative and potentially violent acts … I am concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued,” he said.
In August, he stood alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to reveal that Iran-directed actors were behind at least two of the worst anti-Semitic attacks over the previous year.
But plenty more of the threats and attacks were homegrown.
And the undercurrent of anti-Semitism is running alongside a growing hostility towards the “other” in our society.
It was Australians who turned out in their thousands to anti-immigration rallies.
It was Australians who dressed in the black uniform of a neo-nazi group and stood outside the NSW Parliament with anti-Jewish signs (plus one South African who was promptly deported).
And it’s Australian voters being drawn to far-right movements amid an environment that Burgess warned was handing excuses to anti-Semites.
Albanese has had a blueprint to combat anti-Semitism from his special envoy Jillian Segal for close to six months. He’s had the corresponding report on Islamophobia from Aftab Malik for three months.
Both talk about the importance of education, social cohesion and action across the whole of government and society.
Neither has been acted upon so far.
Politicians have urged people wanting to do something concrete in response to the tragedy to donate blood.
Those same politicians have the power to do something even more concrete than that, to act on anti-Semitism and stamp out racism.
They must do it, lest Australia become the thing we don’t recognise.
Katina Curtis is The West Australian’s Canberra bureau chief
https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/katina-curtis-hatred-is-our-new-reality-and-its-time-for-action-on-anti-semitism-and-racism-c-21005972
