How the government was busy helping ISIS-brides return before Bondi terror attack - and why Penny Wong sits at the centre of this mess: PVO
- READ MORE: Update on Bondi hero who confronted gunman
Timing in politics is everything, and this week has been a tragic masterclass in how quickly the national mood can turn on a government that looks like it is reacting rather than leading.
The Bondi attackers didn’t just choose a high-profile location. They chose a Jewish community event on the first day of Chanukah. Police and the PM have called it what it is: an act of terror and an act of antisemitism.
Authorities say the alleged perpetrators were inspired by Islamic State ideology, with homemade ISIS flags and explosive material reportedly found. Investigators are probing their recent travel to the Philippines, including the possibility they accessed training.
On its own, that is horrifying. Politically, it is corrosive because it crashes directly into a live argument about whether the Albanese government has treated antisemitism as a national security problem or as an occasional flare-up to be politically managed.
Albo’s own press conference after the shootings showed the bind. He spoke rightly about solidarity and support for the Jewish community, and he flagged additional security funding. But he also pivoted hard to tougher gun laws.
While tightening gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting makes sense, it also risks looking like deflection when ideological hatred targeting Jews is the core concern.
The government appointed a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in July last year. The envoy’s plan was delivered in July this year, with dozens of recommendations, many of which were ignored.
Now, after Bondi, Labor is ‘fast-tracking’ its response - which is another way of saying the plan already existed, the warnings certainly did too, but the politics of urgency arrived only after it was too late.
While the government was sitting on its envoy’s recommendations to combat antisemitism, it was busy helping ISIS brides return to Australia, writes Peter van Onselen
While the government was sitting on its envoy’s recommendations to combat antisemitism, it was busy helping ISIS brides return to Australia. In late September 2025, two women and four children linked to Islamic State fighters returned to Australia after getting themselves out of Syria via Lebanon.
They were issued Australian passports after security and DNA checks, and Home Affairs knew in June that the group intended to return and that they needed Commonwealth assistance to make it happen.
Now Australians are solemnly watching an ISIS-inspired terror investigation targeting Jews at Bondi while also being reminded that people from the ISIS orbit can and do end up back in Australia - and Labor let it happen.
The optics aren’t great, to say the least. Labor wants the public to believe that it had nothing to do with the repatriations claiming it’s only the government, and that the state manages those things.
Ministers apparently don’t hold a hose when it comes to helping ISIS brides return to our shores.
This isn’t a moral panic argument; it’s about trust. The Coalition has already moved to weaponise the ambiguity in Labor’s rhetoric, pointing to meeting notes and Senate estimates material to argue that the government was more involved than it claims.
That political attack line will now have far more traction than it did a fortnight ago because Bondi has changed the emotional context in which these arguments are being had.
Penny Wong sits uncomfortably in the centre of this mess.
Penny Wong is Foreign Minister, which means the government’s international posture on the Middle East, its messaging around Israel and Palestine, and its regional security coordination all run through her office
She is Foreign Minister, which means the government’s international posture on the Middle East, its messaging around Israel and Palestine, and its regional security coordination all run through her office.
In her ABC Radio National interview today, she emphasised unity and resolve, but she declined to engage on the more forensic questions about travel, detection, and intelligence arrangements beyond broad assurances that agencies are working with their counterparts.
That might be prudent during an active investigation, but politically it risks sounding like the same carefully managed language Australians have heard for two years while antisemitism escalated at street level and on uni campuses.
Wong also can’t avoid the Syria question forever. Earlier this month, the government would not say whether further family members of Islamic State fighters were on track to return, amid questions about what it knew and when.
After Bondi, such obfuscation can’t be good enough.
None of this is to argue that every returnee is a ticking bomb or that children should be punished for their parents’ choices.
But the politics of national security depends on clarity, consistency, and timing. Labor has failed on all three.
The deeper risk for Albo is that he now wears a narrative of drift. He leads a government that talks about social cohesion but only tightens the screws when the consequences become undeniable. And we now have an active investigation pointing directly at ISIS-inspired extremism.
