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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would act to toughen national firearms laws after gunmen killed 15 people in an attack on a Jewish festival in Sydney.
Speaking on Monday after visiting the scene of the attack at Bondi Beach, Albanese said authorities would do “whatever is necessary” to protect Australia’s Jewish community, saying antisemitism was “a scourge and we will eradicate it together”.
Sunday’s attack targeted a Jewish celebration of the first night of Hanukkah, the festival of light, at one of the world’s most famous beaches. Widely viewed images showed two gunmen, who authorities said were aged 50 and 24, firing ‘long-arm’ weapons as people fled.
Officials said on Monday that a father and son carried out Sunday’s assault. The older gunman was killed by police while the other is in custody.
Some of the victims were identified on Monday, including a British-born rabbi, a 10-year-old girl, a retired policeman and a Holocaust survivor. A further 27 people remain in hospital and authorities said some were in critical condition.
Authorities said they were treating the attack as terrorism.
Albanese said the government’s national cabinet, including state leaders, would convene on Monday to discuss whether stricter curbs were needed, including limits on the number of guns that can be sold to an individual and whether gun licences should be reviewed rather than issued in perpetuity.
Australia adopted some of the world’s most stringent gun laws after 35 people were killed by a lone gunman in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. The measures included a gun amnesty and buyback scheme as the country moved to ban the type of semi-automatic weapon used.
Licensing was tied to specific types of weapon, as were tests that a gun buyer was a legitimate owner.
However, there are now thought to be more weapons in circulation than in 1996, with powerful ‘long-arm’ rifles and shotguns popular with hunters.
The country also lacks a centralised firearm registration system and some shooting incidents have occurred after gun users moved to different states and were not picked up.
The older gunman in the Bondi shooting legally possessed six guns, according to police, and held a licence to use firearms for a decade.
“The government is going to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Albanese said.
Tony Burke, Australia’s home affairs minister, said at a press conference that the younger man was an Australian-born citizen, while the older gunman had first entered Australia in 1998 on a student visa which was transferred to a resident visa and had been renewed multiple times.
The minister also said that Australia’s intelligence service looked at the son in 2019, due to his association with others under investigation, but he was assessed as presenting no threat of violence.
Burke declined to comment on whether the police had shared the father’s gun ownership with intelligence services at the time of the investigation. “I’ve got full support for our security agencies,” he said.
Speaking at another press conference, Albanese did not directly address a question about comments by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who following the attack said he had previously written to his Australian counterpart to warn he was not doing enough to curb the spread of antisemitism.
“This is a moment for national unity. This is a moment for Australians to come together. That’s precisely what we will be doing,” Albanese said.
Netanyahu on Sunday said Albanese “did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country”, adding: “You took no action. You let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.”
Chris Minns, premier of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the state capital, also said gun laws “need to change” but that it would take time for legislation to pass. He said it was “horrifying” that powerful weapons intended for farms would be used in a terrorist attack in the heart of Sydney.
Maya Argüello, a law lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology’s law school, said that the attack would raise questions about whether the gun laws need to be tightened, especially as one of the attackers was known to the security services.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said that there clearly had been “catastrophic failings” in the country’s political and security reaction to the growing tide of antisemitic incidents and attacks, including two synagogue fire bombings.
“The consequence is body bags in the sand,” he said.
