In this age when words are considered weapons, you’d think somebody could muster up some especially destructive ones to mark the first anniversary of the knife attack at Bondi Junction, Sydney, in which six people were murdered.
Or to put it another way, if politicians think words are so dangerous that legislation is necessary to control their use, then surely one of them — just one of them — could use this occasion to viciously articulate the contempt we have for lethal violence perpetrated randomly on peaceful citizens.
But alas. The most ardent supporters of laws against “hate speech” will never admit that words are not that violent, and the only response to actual violence is more violence.
There is a conspicuous correlation here, one which tells you all you need to know about the direction in which Australia is heading. The more you want to criminalise “hate speech”, the more likely you are to think that what happened at Bondi Junction a year ago was a routine tragedy that could not have been avoided.
To recap: Joel Cauchi, a schizo who had been off his meds, entered the shopping centre on April 13 armed with a knife and wandered around — for 25 minutes, according to one report — randomly attacking women and killing five of them.
One man was also killed — Faraz Tahir, a Pakistani refugee who was unbelievably on his first day as a security guard, who acted more heroically than any other person that day. May he rest in peace, and his memory serve as an inspirational example of the ultimate selflessness.
At least four other men tried to get in Cauchi’s way but for one reason or other were not able to stop him.
But where were the rest of the men in this crowded shopping centre during that horrific 25 minutes? Some were hiding in cupboards, according to the report in the Daily Telegraph the next day. “We ran into a shop, tried to close the doors and grabbed as many people as we could,” one was quoted saying.
“And then the door wouldn’t lock so we found a cupboard to hide in. We were in there for about half an hour before we sort of worked out it was safe.”
The reporter of this story described this as “leaping into action”.
In fact, it was the opposite. In every decent civilisation in history, men could be relied upon to run towards a woman screaming, not away from her. The men who were within hearing range of those attacks that day were forced to make a terrible decision: run to her aid, and risk being killed themselves, or forever deal with a guilty conscience.
The fact that it took a female cop with a gun to eliminate Cauchi almost half an hour after he began his rampage should have been a warning sign to Australians that their culture had somehow degenerated from the aggressive confidence of Crocodile Dundee into the histrionic timidity of Priscilla.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who it must be noted has marched in the gay Mardi Gras more times than most transgender cabaret singers have, inadvertently confirmed how low we had sunk by marking the anniversary with carefully worded platitudes.
“This should not be an anniversary,” he said yesterday. “They should still be here – with their families, their friends and in their communities, with all their hopes and dreams and joys that are the very essence of life.
“As we grieve them, we think of everyone who wakes each morning and feels the pain of their loss anew. Their hearts irrevocably tied to that day when the world was upended and normality was taken from them and we think of those who live with the memories, from the shop staff to the shoppers to the first responders.”
Albanese is better known for petulance than for rugged certitude. The only fights he’s ever been keen to join are against fellow Australian “Tories” and Russians in Ukraine, which is far enough away to support without needing to commit Australian soldiers. His statements of affection towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are as shallow as the platitudes he spouted yesterday. Sadly, Coalition leader Peter Dutton isn’t any better.
There are some explanations for the cowardice displayed at Bondi Junction that day. All Australian men under the age of, say, 40 have been raised to think that not only is their masculinity toxic, but that women are tough enough to take care of themselves, thanks very much.
Our entire education system is dedicated to indoctrinating children with these depressing and unproven ideas, which are entwined with a corresponding rewriting of our history as a genocidal colony that is so materialistic it is destroying the very planet on which we live. Why would any man brought up thinking all that risk his life to save a fellow citizen?
Today, both major political parties will be vying for your vote in the forthcoming federal election by pitching their vision for the future of this country. Neither of them will mention a word about the terminal decline of our culture, a decline that became blindingly obvious a year ago today.
