In the wake of the Bondi attack and the visit of Israel’s president, governments claimed to be defending social cohesion. What followed instead were expanded police powers, legislated language, and a narrowing of democratic rights – exposing how conditional Australia’s freedoms can be.

The last few days in Australia have been different. In fact, the last few months have been different.

For over two years, many Australians have taken to the streets to protest the large-scale killing and maiming of Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gaza – livestreamed on to our phones and into our living rooms. We have watched it in real time. It has unsettled us in real time.

In December 2025, two radicalised gunmen shot and killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration at Bondi Beach. Most were Jewish Australians. Not all. It was a targeted act of antisemitic violence that rightly horrified the nation.

In the aftermath of that terrorist act, something shifted.

It did not matter that a Muslim man risked his life to tackle one of the shooters and wrestle away his gun. The narrative hardened anyway – casting entire communities under suspicion rather than confronting the actions of individuals. And Australia changed – exposing just how fragile our democracy is.

Rights and liberties we assumed were bedrock – the kind people migrate for, uproot families for – suddenly felt conditional.

Sydney in the last two days has been unrecognisable. The level of police force we have witnessed is not something I have seen in 25 years of living here – nor something I ever expected to see. It is both shocking and frightening.

State and federal governments are becoming unrecognisable too – passing laws to outlaw certain phrases. Imagine that. A cohort of predominantly English-speaking – and largely monolingual – politicians suddenly recasting themselves as linguistic scholars of Arabic, as arbiters of meaning, as experts in Middle Eastern politics.

In Melbourne, laws were passed giving police the power to randomly search people in the CBD – without a warrant or reasonable cause. In Sydney, police were empowered to stop people in streets and walkways and arrest them as “agitators” for peacefully shouting “shame” towards a visiting foreign leader – on the basis that it might have “incited fear”.

And then we were told by the Prime Minister that inviting the head of state of a country accused of genocide to Australia was “to foster a greater sense of unity”. Unity?

It was as if he had not been paying attention – unaware that citizens of this country have spent over two years watching devastation unfold in Gaza, deeply distressed by what they have seen. And oblivious to the fact that since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza – including around 500 since the ceasefire last October – and well over 170,000 Palestinians have been injured.

Somehow, rolling out the red carpet for Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, was supposed to heal that fracture.

The Prime Minister even referred to Herzog as the “ Jewish community’s head of state” – a troubling remark that ignored opposition from many within the Jewish community itself and sat uneasily alongside the Jewish Council of Australia’s strong condemnation of the visit.

The Prime Minister’s stance has been bewildering. In seeking to appease one section of the community, he has been willing to permit Herzog’s visit under the guise of fostering unity, when he should have known it would only deepen division and conflict. Meanwhile, we are told repeatedly to cohere socially.

But how? That has never been articulated. Presumably, it begins with respect – for one another and for our rights.

What responsibility do elected leaders bear in fostering social cohesion? Rhetoric matters. Selectively invoking fear, legislating language and amplifying division shape the culture far more powerfully than any protest ever could. When leaders cast one community as suspect and another as aggrieved, they erode the very cohesion they claim to defend. Where is their respect for Australians who do not look like them?

These last few days – and months – have been instructive.

We congratulate ourselves on being a mature democracy. We boast about our freedoms. But for those of us who came here escaping precarious democracies or authoritarian regimes, it is unsettling to see how quickly free speech can be curtailed, how swiftly the right to peaceful assembly can become conditional, and how easily police powers can be expanded.

It did not take much.

At every citizenship ceremony, new Australians pledge:

“From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”

It is devastating to watch the ideals we once believed were secure reveal themselves to be uncertain and alarmingly fragile.<