It was a speech that salved Jews and left gentiles lamenting the fact the speaker was no longer in politics.
Oscillating between rage and sadness, it was unnervingly raw and human, but not one syllable was weak.
For 15 minutes on Wednesday, Josh Frydenberg stood at Bondi Beach and gave voice to the fears and frustrations with which Australians have been grappling since the first shot rang out on Sunday.
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For 15 minutes, Frydenberg was more than a former Treasurer and more than a Jewish leader.
For 15 minutes, he was father of the nation.
It was a speech filled with the determination and emotion the Prime Minister should have mustered but didn’t. Or couldn’t.
“I’m here to mourn, but I am also here to warn,” Frydenberg told the crowd gathered at Bondi Beach.
The mourning he did privately; the warning less so.
“Unless our governments, Federal and State, take urgent, unprecedented and strong action, as night follows day, we will be back grieving the loss of innocent life in another terrorist attack in our country,” he said.
“This was all too predictable. Ever since those hours after Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7, we saw the heinous scenes on the steps of another national icon, the Sydney Opera House, with people celebrating that death and destruction.”
And then came the shameful chronology of antisemitism that ensued.
“Since that day, we have seen the doxxing of Jewish creators, the cancelling of Jewish artists, the boycotting of Jewish businesses, the graffiti of our schools, the harassment, the intimidation of Jewish students and staff on our university campuses and of course, the firebombing of our synagogues and day care centres, and daily, daily protests of hate in this, the lucky country which is lucky no more.”
The anti-Semitism Frydenberg catalogued in his speech was a mere fraction of the totality of intellectual and physical hate directed at Jews over the past two years.
Hateful thoughts became abhorrent words typed on a laptop and posted to social media.
Words typed became words spoken, then yelled.
To Anthony Albanese’s shame, words were allowed to become actions.
First came the Jew-hating graffiti and the burning of a synagogue.
Our own slowly evolving Kristallnacht.
And all the while, there was contemptuous gas-lighting of a frightened people.
“For two years, as the Australian Jewish community and others raised the alarm bells, they were told by people who should know better that this was not as significant as they had said,” Frydenberg argued.
“We were told they didn’t say ‘gas the Jews’ on the steps of the Opera House, they simply said ‘where are the Jews’?
“And then we have the nurses in Bankstown calling for the death of Israelis. And we are told it’s just a joke. We’re told it’s just a hoax.”
With little resistance in its path, the tempo of anti-Semitism increased.
“The history of the Holocaust is that bad things happen when good people stay silent,” Frydenberg told the people around him.
The Prime Minister, he asserted, said nothing. And in the silent void, at 6.47pm on Sunday, a shot rang out.
“Our Prime Minister has allowed Australia to be radicalised on his watch,” Frydenberg thundered.
“It is time for him to accept personal responsibility for the death of the innocent people, including a 10-year-old child.
“It is time our Prime Minister accepted accountability for what has happened here. And it’s time our leaders stood up and led at last.”
If Frydenberg had ended there, the ALP may have been able to respectfully pass off his speech as an emotional missive but the one-time contender for The Lodge crafted his speech in a way that did not afford Labor that luxury.
What started as a eulogy became a call to arms and finally, a manifesto on how to defeat hate.
“Firstly, Prime Minister, ban the hate preachers. On October 8th in Lakemba, you had Islamic preachers say that October 7th was on the back of courage and pride. When the Muslim community hears that message for the last two and a half years, is this any surprise?
“Second Prime Minister, ban these extremist organisations that have been allowed to flourish on your watch.
“Third, prosecute those who incite violence and hate that has produced this.
“Fourth stop the protests. For two and a half years we have put up with daily protests, which have become incubators of hate.
“Fifth, invest in education. Across Australia, there is some Holocaust education, but it’s piecemeal, it’s uncoordinated and it’s different according to different States.”
Frydenberg put a lashing of pepper on the next point, encapsulating in a handful of neat sentences an entire country’s exasperation about border control.
“Prime Minister, put in place a much more effective and rigorous and strong immigration system,” he said.
“On your watch, thousands of people have come from a terrorist hotspot without sufficient security checks.
“Your Home Affairs Minister, who couldn’t even put his face here in daytime, has to send officials out of the room to make promises about ISIS brides.
“You tell me how that is in Australia’s national interest. You tell me how bringing people to this country who don’t accept, don’t know our democratic ideals, our values of tolerance, you tell me how that makes any of us, Jew and non-Jew alike, more safe.
“It doesn’t, and until you change our immigration system to remind people it’s a privilege to come to this country, it’s a privilege to stay in this country, it’s not their right, then nothing will change.”
That last line was a nod to John Howard’s “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstance in which they come” speech and will no doubt resonate in online forums.
People visit a memorial at Bondi Pavilion before a candlelight vigil at Bondi Beach. Credit: Audrey Richardson/Getty Images
The seventh point in Frydenberg’s plan of action was devastating in its simplicity.
“Your hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism put together a comprehensive program that had initiatives from everything from the digital and media space to our universities and to our creative arts, to hard security, to soft security.
“She talks in that report about more resources for operational security, and today we’re talking about a graphic and tragic failure of operational security.
“Yet she presented her report to your Government more than 150 days ago, in July of this year.
“For 150-plus days, you had a report, and you did nothing, and this is the result.”
The last point was a well-constructed political boobytrap.
“Finally, Prime Minister, no ifs, no buts, no equivocations, no distractions. You must call a Royal Commission into what has happened here and into the rise of anti-Semitism in our country.
“We here deserve answers. We don’t need pious words of comfort. We need answers.
“How did people come into this country with these views that are so antithetical to our democratic ideals?
“How did these people in Australia go unchecked to the Philippines for terrorist training?
“How did these people acquire licensed firearms that they used on innocent civilians?
Visitors at the memorial site. Credit: Gaye Gerard NewsWire/NCA NewsWire
“How were these people radicalised in Islamic ideology?”
And then a plea for clarity about one of the most perplexing aspects of Sunday’s tragedy.
“How, with some 1000 people here in a heightened threat environment, did we just have three police ill-equipped to provide the first and fundamental duty of both the State and the Federal Governments to protect the safety of their citizens?”
After sympathising better than the Prime Minister and rallying the afraid better than the Prime Minister, Frydenberg had finished with a path forward which was clearer than anything the Prime Minister had managed to articulate since Sunday evening.
“If you don’t want to do the job, give it to somebody who does,” was Frydenberg’s final line.
Anyone who heard his address on Wednesday would surely walk away thinking they’d just listened to someone who wanted to apply for the position.
