The appalling Josh Frydenberg has come out blaming Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for the atrocity in Bondi. Always a Liberal. In this he is just echoing the bullshit spouted by the monster of Gaza, Netanyahu1.
It always disgusts me to see the hypocrisy of people like Frydenberg, who as a minister, was part of a government which used the dog whistle at every opportunity to try to obtain political benefit and votes from the racist halfwits in the Australian population. Whether it be Muslims or Africans2, or indeed any brown immigrants3. the dog whistle was used at every possible time where they thought they could gain some political advantage.
This post-White Australia Policy use of the dog whistle goes back to the Howard prime ministership. The Howard government lied about asylum seekers throwing children overboard, and demonised asylum seekers and used the Tampa incident to win an election4.
After Shire Ali murdered a person in Bourke Street in 2018, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison brought out the dog-whistle. He called on Muslim leaders to take “special responsibility” for stamping out radicalism in their communities, saying they must “call it out for what it is”, and has pointed out that Islamic extremism was the most dangerous form of radicalism in Australia. Tony Abbott, when Prime Minister, did something equally stupid in berating the Muslim community5.
In the Senate, the vacant, idiotic Pauline Hanson of One Nation put forward a motion in two parts. It was, to ask the senate to acknowledge:
- The deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation
- That it is OK to be white
28 senators were stupid enough to vote for such egregious white supremacist nonsense. Those who voted for it include a rancid pile of Coalition senators Abetz, Anning, Bernardi, Birmingham, Brockman, Bushby, Canavan, Cash, Colbeck, Duniam, Fierravanti-Wells, Fifield, Georgiou, Gichuhi, Hanson, Hume, Leyonhjelm, McGrath, McKenzie, Molan, O’Sullivan, Reynolds, Ruston, Scullion, Seselja, Smith, Stoker and Williams. If they had a modicum of intelligence, they would have known that this crap had been spread by neo-Nazis and white-supremacists including the Ku Klux Klan6.
Jewish Australians are part of multicultural Australia, as are Muslim Australians. However, some of the Coalition’s most avid supporters in the media look upon the word ‘multicultural’ as a dirty word. They blame it for ruining Christmas, and blame it for violence. They have even blamed it for the second wave of Covid-19. Some were even more specific in blaming that wave on Australians of South Sudanese origin. Indeed, even some of the elected members of Coalition parties hate multiculturalism, believing it has failed, this even extended to boycotting the February 2008 apology to the stolen generation delivered by Kevin Rudd7. One of those (Peter Dutton) who boycotted the apology, went on to lead the Liberal Party to their fortunately massive rejection at the 2025 election8.
Back in 2019, then Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg tweeted the following:
“I’m deeply concerned about the reports of children as young as 5 being attacked in schools because of their Jewishness. It’s completely unacceptable in our civilised society & State & Federal Govts must work together to educate our community about the atrocities of the Holocaust.”1
This coming from a member of the then government shows an exceptional lack of awareness of the impact of one’s own actions. Frydenberg’s government’s readiness to use the dog whistle was made clear when the reports were leaked of then shadow minister Morrison’s suggestion, in a shadow cabinet meeting, that the government should use community fear of Muslims to political advantage.
What Frydenberg fails to understand is that once a government unleashes bigotry, it gives licence to ALL bigotry, not just that against Muslims, and once this genie is out of the bottle, it cannot easily be put back in.
Unlike Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Howard before them, Paul Keating understood this when he said: “I think it’s a Prime Minister’s duty; one of the primary duties of a Prime Minister is to protect the country from prejudice. Howard was happy to let the racism virus out. And it’s like a flu virus, you never get it back. You know, when someone at the top of the system … you see Bob before me, Malcolm Fraser before him, Gough Whitlam, John Gorton – none of us would play around with this issue. None. The only one to do it was a little guy from Bennelong”9.
That little guy from Bennelong was the bastard John Howard. Frydenberg is a disgrace in blaming Albanese for bigotry that his side of the political spectrum have used to their political advantage at every opportunity.
Sources
- https://blotreport.com/2025/12/15/bondi-2025/
- https://blotreport.com/2018/01/01/dogwhistles-for-christmas/
- https://blotreport.com/2018/11/20/yet-another-dog-whistle/
- https://blotreport.com/2021/05/30/james-short-memory/
- https://blotreport.com/2018/11/11/desperate-dog-whistler/
- https://blotreport.com/2022/03/22/why-i-cannot-vote-for-the-morrison-government-racism-and-idiocy/
- https://blotreport.com/2021/02/25/no-care-no-responsibility-4/
- https://blotreport.com/2025/06/12/awful-arse/
- https://blotreport.com/2019/10/08/the-bigotry-genie/
Well said, thanks.
I ‘m sure we can all understand Frydenberg’s anger and pain. That doesn’t excuse his targeted public haranguing.
I don’t recall him being angry, or sad, or especially concerned about the innocents who died as a result of the Coalition’s Robodebt policies.
I don’t recall him calling on Netanyahu to stop targeting civilians, aid workers and journalists in Gaza.
I must have missed his expressions of distress om the the multiiple occasions the IDF “targeted a Hamas fighter sheltering among civilians or near medical facilities” (the standard response) with little or no regard for non-combatants.
I certainly missed his condemnation of Netanyahu withholding medical and food aid to civilians and his public outrage at the “accidental” (they were all accidental errors according to Netanyahu) obliteration of an Australian aid worker and her World Central Kitchen colleagues.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-04/death-australian-aid-worker-gaza-accountability-israel-zomi/103664508
Rightly or wrongly – hopefully the latter, this sort of selective moral outrage sends a message that non-jewish lives don’t matter, or are of far less value.
Jon,
As someone said, there is nothing so useful in politics as a short memory.
Once again spot on. Both you and Jon. I think that using this hideous tragedy as a means to score political points is both disgusting and hypocritical in the extreme. The same people who demanded, and received, bipartisan support from the ALP after Port Arthur, 9/11, and several other significant events when the coalition was in government are using this as an opportunity to attack Labor. The same people who, whenever there is a significant climate change related disaster, attack anyone who dares to suggest it could possibly be related to inadequate action and accuse people of using tragedy for political purposes. Howard is appalling. The Murdoch press is disgusting. The coalition is pathetic.
Mark,
Yep they are all a disgrace to the species.
And now we have Ley attacking Penny Wong for “not having shed a single tear”. The coalition and the right wing media in this nation are reprehensible. Their divisive behaviour and rhetoric during the referendum campaign was the basest form of dog whistling politics. They have now seen this terrorist attack as another opportunity to use fear, racism and division for their own political puposes. The behaviour of these people is shameful.
I agree Mark – SHAMEFUL is the perfect word for Sus(s)an Ley’s latest brain fade.
Ley promised to be a rational and moderate leader with a fresh, more liberal approach to issues after the pathetic hard liners Morrison and Dutton. I welcomed the conservatives’ choice as their new leader at the time, but the facade has quickly crumbled and we’re now seeing the effects of her innate lack of judgement.
What a HUGE disappointment she’s been. Not that the Coalition has much hope of regaining govt at the next election but her imprudence should rule her out as a future PM forever. Labor wouldn’t drag it up during an election unless Trump has left the room (the sooner the better), but plenty of voters will remember how she tried to get his fwitted administration involved in our domestic politics over the govt’s recognition of Palestine in the UN (with caveats).
Her attack on Wong unsurprisingly bears all the traits of the same opportunistic hypocisy that we saw from Frydenberg, with large dollps of desperation and relevance deprivation thrown in for good measure.
Where were/are your tears for the thousands killed and maimed in Gaza Sus(s)an? Where was your condemnation of Netanyahu for the atrocities committed by the IDF for 2 years? Do you have ANY idea at all what extremist Jews in Israel want and what the beliefs that drive them are? Did you shed even one tear for the victims of Robodebt?
God help this country if this is the best the Liberals have to offer.
Jon,
I have a suspicion that the Liberals will go the way of their predecessors, the UAP.
And now it appears she’s been lying to the Australian people:
From SMH online updates: https://archive.is/0JHzk#selection-4595.0-4656.0
The Opposition Leader wouldn’t be high on the list of people Albanese needs to be consulting given their divisive public outrages but if Ley wants more then why didn’t she pick the bloody phone up and call him herself.
Albanese says he has ‘engaged constructively’ with opposition
ByNick Newling
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government has “engaged constructively” with Opposition Leader Sussan Ley following the Bondi terror attack, despite repeated claims from the Liberal leader that she has been cut out of conversation.
“I called her on the Sunday night. I spoke to her again on the Monday morning. I think people will judge whether Sussan Ley and others have been engaging in bipartisanship or not since then,” Albanese told a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra.
“We have engaged constructively. We’ve provided briefings for the leader of the opposition. We’ve provided appropriate briefings, and we’ll continue to engage constructively, and we’ll continue to engage right across the parliament as well,” he said.
Ley said during a press conference in Sydney yesterday that the prime minister had not spoken to her since the night of the attack.
Appalling Sus(s)an.
Saw some great letters yesterday. This from John Oakley was one of the best:
“It is depressing that so many Coalition and ex-Coalition politicians have quickly exploited the Bondi shootings to ramp up partisan attacks on the Labor government, claiming it is to blame for this tragedy, apparently unaware of their own hypocrisy (“Albanese’s approval rating plummets as social cohesion frays”, December 22).
For example, John Howard, of all people, claims gun reform to be a “distraction”; Sussan Ley asks what “values” migrants have brought to Australia; Andrew Hastie asks, “who are we letting into our country?” while Josh Frydenberg asks, “How did they come here?” Well, Mr Frydenberg and others, apart from the migrants who risked their lives trying to disarm the killers, shooter Sajid Akram came to Australia under Howard’s government; he received a gun licence under Tony Abbott’s government and his Australian-born son was assessed and cleared by ASIO under Scott Morrison’s government, of which you were a cabinet minister.” John Oakley, Wollongong
It is a problem that our politicians lie to us, but the big problem is that they believe their own lies. Too much of it is fueled by ideological beliefs, ones that are at odds with reality. Labor is not ideology free, but the Coalition parties make them look highly pragmatic.
I will keep watching with much interest. I know that “Climate Change” is real, and the cause anthropogenic, the lawsuits when the Dutch dykes are overtopped by sea level rise will be very “interesting” to watch from the sidelines, but whatever happens, it will drag all of us in. The arguments that the climate is always changing, and it is nothing out of the ordinary, I hear that all too much from so many, when while there is always change, it is the rate of change that so many are not prepared to acknowledge, nor the potential effects.
Think on what might be the situation with all modern technology, or near all, not available, no electronic banking, and the records of balances not recoverable from the hard drives of the banking systems and the data centers. Think on that for the 0.01% whose major assets are all in electronic records, and them facing major lawfare.
Jon,
One of the most useful characteristics in politics is a short memory.
The rate of change in the climate since the earth’s inception has not been anywhere in the ballpark of how fast it has been in the last two hundred years. Changes that took millennia are occurring in decades. It’s not that the climate doesn’t change – it does. But it has never changed as fast as it is now. Much too fast for any life form to catch up with it. We are all doomed – unless we do something, and do it quickly. Starting now.
Mercurial,
Yep. If our species survives, it will be in much smaller numbers.