SENATOR THE HON BRIDGET MCKENZIE
LEADER OF THE NATIONALS IN THE SENATE
SENATOR FOR VICTORIA
Friday 19 December 2025
STATEMENT
The Prime Minister has doubled down on demonising law-abiding, licensed firearm
owners in the wake of the terrorist attack.
What happened at Bondi Beach was not like Port Arthur 30 years ago. That was the act
of a lone madman.
What happened on Sunday December 14, 2025, was a planned and premeditated act of
Islamic terrorism against Jewish Australian families who were celebrating Hanukkah.
It was calculated to generate fear and maximum international media coverage – like the
shameful Opera House celebration of the Hamas October 7, 2023 massacre; like the
Sydney Harbour Bridge protest of terrorist sympathisers.
Three of our most iconic sites hijacked into a global PR campaign for Islamic extremism.
But this time with the spilling of Jewish blood on the sands of Bondi Beach.
Let me be very clear, Islamic extremists should not be licenced to own a single gun in
Australia.
This Islamist act of terrorism follows a pattern overseas and has already drawn praise
from registered terrorist organisations and warnings of more to come.
Yet, instead of dealing with the factories of hate that insight these evil men, the Prime
Minister is targeting innocent Australians who follow the law.
He won’t even name the problem.
In 1996 after Port Arthur, former Prime Minister John Howard took on his own
constituency in the Coalition heartland, knowing it would cost him politically. He
accepted that responsibility.
Anthony Albanese refuses to do the same. He refuses to take on Labor’s constituency in
its own suburban heartland.
He is a coward.
It’s not the guns Prime Minister, its Islamic extremism in our suburbs.
This is a unilateral decision by a weak government that was warned, and warned, and
warned but failed to act.
Now the Prime Minister seeks to cover his failure by scapegoating innocent Australians.
There are around one million legal gun owners in this country.
We are not the problem. And we will not, and should not, stand by and take the blame.
Australians are demanding action: deport the preachers of hate, dismantle extremist
networks, halt large-scale immigration intakes from known conflict zones and
radicalised countries.
Cut government funding to universities, cultural institutions and NGOs that continue to
foster and cultivate anti-semitism and support radical Islamism.
Australia should be confronting the guilty, not punishing the innocent.
We will know the Prime Minister is serious when the first Vice-chancellor is sacked for
permitting rampant antisemitism on campus against Jewish students and academics
and when the first plane load of hate preachers takes off back to where they came from.