From the prime minister down, a consistent theme in messaging from authorities in the hours immediately after the rampage was to implore a shell-shocked community not to leap to early conclusions about the attacker’s motive.
As is well-known, the Bondi area is home to a significant population of residents of Jewish heritage. Tensions have been running high between the Jewish and Muslim communities in Australia’s two largest cities – and in the square of public opinion – ever since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and the bloodbath in Gaza that has followed. Emotions and rhetoric have been running white-hot. The merest hint that Saturday’s attack could have been related to what is unfolding in Israel and Gaza would have been akin to dropping a lit match into dry kindling.
Not that that stopped armchair theorists from leaping into premature speculation on social media, with some responsible voices sheepishly retracting in the hours that followed.
What the city witnessed from NSW Police inspector Amy Scott on Saturday afternoon sits in stark contrast to the decision-making paralysis that seemed to grip the commanders in the December 2014 Lindt siege.
Then, police came under sustained criticism from the hostages’ families for the delays in storming the cafe, doing so only after Monis had already fired his sawn-off shotgun three times, on the third round executing Johnson.
The coroner later found the police had grossly underestimated Monis’ capacity for violence, in part because of their mistaken belief that the gunman was conducting the siege for personal reasons rather than on behalf of Islamic state.
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This was despite the fact Monis had declared allegiance to Islamic State the month before, and was demanding that his actions be publicised as an IS-inspired attack.
As Barnes later found, police were adhering to an outdated strategy that all sieges had to be handled with a “contain and negotiate” strategy, even as the danger rose hour by hour. He criticised a “lack of flexibility in approach and a lack of initiative”.
Saturday’s actions by Inspector Scott were the very antitheses of paralysis. Thus far we know little about her instructions, or whether she took the actions she did on her own initiative. We do know that she undoubtedly saved lives.
International security adviser Neil Fergus, currently a consultant on France’s security preparations for this year’s Olympics, praises the police officer’s actions as “an example of individual accountability being exercised to best effect”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has heaped praise on her, as have her superior officers. And rightly so. Alone, with presumably only sketchy information as to the extent of the threat, she ran towards it unhesitatingly.
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Fergus is unhappy that police were less swift to act last August when a Sydney jet loaded with passengers was kept on the tarmac for several hours as authorities debated how to handle an individual who had made a bomb threat. That, in his view, was an instance of protocols that had been developed over many years in national anti terrorism exercises, seemingly being forgotten or ignored.
However, the fact that heavily armed tactical police and emergency services were on the scene in such numbers so rapidly on Saturday is reassuring.
As the inquiry unfolds, no doubt attention will also begin to turn again towards the vexed question of how well we support those with mental health challenges and protect the community from those (thankfully very few) who manifest an urge to violence.
Deborah Snow is associate editor and special writer at the Herald. She is the author of Siege: Inside the Lindt Cafe.
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