In the aftermath of devastating violence, grief seeks certainty. Fear demands action. Politicians rush to be seen doing something. But history shows us that when governments respond to tragedy with escalation rather than intelligent strategy, the harm multiplies.
In recent days, NSW Premier Chris Minns has floated deploying the Australian Army to Sydney streets, expanding police use of long-arm firearms, and even considering the arming of a community security group. We are told this is about reassurance. About sending a message. About restoring confidence.
But we need to ask a harder question: is this the Australia we want to build in response to fear?
Let’s be clear from the outset: antisemitism is real, it is dangerous, and Jewish communities have every right to safety, dignity, and freedom from violence. The horror of the Bondi attack has shaken the nation. People are grieving. People are afraid.
Jewish families are rightfully demanding protection after years of rising threats and insufficient action.
That fear deserves care, not exploitation.
What it does not justify is a headlong rush into militarisation without evidence, without accountability, and without any coherent long-term strategy.
Because what is being proposed here is not safety. It is security theatre.
Soldiers on suburban streets. Snipers on rooftops. Police carrying weapons “you haven’t seen before.” The possible arming of civilian security organisations. These are not signs of a calm, confident democracy. They are signs of a government reacting to trauma with spectacle rather than substance. They are over-reactions designed to cover-up the failure of policy and/or policy implementation by the current government. They are signs of weak leadership.
We are being asked to accept that more guns, more uniforms, and more force will somehow heal the social fractures that produced this violence. That if the state simply looks strong enough, people will feel safe again.
But fear cannot be policed away. Militarisation is a threat to democracy.
There is a fundamental difference between response and reaction. Strategy requires thought, evidence, and long-term planning. Reaction is impulsive, symbolic, and often irreversible.
What We’ve Seen Elsewhere
We are not navigating uncharted territory. Other countries have already walked this path, and the results should give us pause.
After the 2015 attacks in Paris, France flooded public space with armed soldiers under Operation Sentinelle. Troops patrolled train stations, schools, places of worship, and tourist sites for years. What began as an emergency measure became routine. Yet repeated evaluations found no clear evidence that permanent military patrols prevented attacks. What they did was normalise armed force in civilian life, heighten racial profiling, and entrench fear, particularly for Muslim communities who came to experience public space as hostile and surveilled.
Christchurch is often cited as justification for troop deployment, but the comparison is selectively remembered. In the immediate aftermath of the mosque attacks, New Zealand increased visible security, briefly. What followed, however, was not permanent militarisation, but structural reform:rapid gun law changes,sustained engagement with Muslim communities, and a refusal to embed emergency measures into everyday life. The message was not that safety requires soldiers on streets, but that violence demands accountability, prevention, and care.
In the United Kingdom, armed patrols surged after terror attacks in London and Manchester. Years later, counterterrorism experts and civil liberties groups have warned that the expansion of armed policing has neither reduced threats nor improved public confidence. Instead, it has widened the gap between communities and the state, reinforcing suspicion rather than trust.
Even in countries living under constant security threat, there is growing recognition that militarisation carries deep social costs. The lesson is consistent: when fear becomes permanent policy, democracy erodes quietly but steadily.
Australia has the benefit of hindsight. We can see that exceptional security measures have a habit of becoming permanent fixtures long after the moment of crisis has passed, long after their effectiveness has been questioned.
The Slippery Normalisation of Force
When armed police flood public space, when soldiers are positioned as domestic peacekeepers, when civilian groups are considered for armament, we fundamentally reshape civic life. We entrench the idea that safety comes from force rather than trust. From surveillance rather than solidarity.
And once that line is crossed, it is rarely uncrossed.
We are told this is about reassurance. But reassurance for whom?
For many Australians, particularly those who have experienced racial profiling, over-policing, or state violence, heavily armed officers and soldiers do not signal safety. They signal danger. They signal exclusion. They signal that public space is no longer neutral, it is contested, monitored, and potentially hostile.
Security that frightens large sections of the population is not security. It is alienation.
More troubling still is the suggestion that arming a community security group should even be “on the table.” The idea that the state might devolve lethal force to non-state actors under the banner of protection is a profound departure from democratic norms. It risks normalising parallel armed authorities and deepening social fragmentation at a moment when cohesion is desperately needed.
If governments are serious about preventing violence, they must confront uncomfortable truths: militarisation does not prevent radicalisation. It often accelerates it.
Long-term safety comes from early intervention, social connection, credible community leadership, education, and investment in preventing isolation and grievance before they calcify into violence. It comes from tackling online extremism seriously, resourcing exit programs, supporting communities under threat without turning neighbourhoods into fortresses.
It comes from building relationships, not fear.
Australia has a choice right now. We can follow the well-worn international path of escalation: more guns, more troops, more powers, fewer freedoms. Or we can choose a harder but more durable path: care over coercion, prevention over punishment, cohesion over control.
Leadership is not about “sending a message” through firepower. It is about steadying a frightened public without inflaming panic. It is about refusing to trade democratic values for the illusion of safety. It is about recognising that hysterical reactions to terror are precisely what violent actors seek.
If the goal is to ensure Jewish Australians can live freely and safely, and it must be, then the answer cannot be to remake Australia into a permanently militarised society. That path does not honour the dead. It does not heal the living. And it does not make us safer.
The question before us is not whether we condemn violence. We must.
The question is whether, in our grief, we are willing to abandon the kind of country we claim to stand for.
Because once soldiers patrol our streets as a matter of course, once long-arms become normalised in civic life, once fear becomes the organising principle of public policy, the damage will not be temporary.
This moment demands courage, not panic.
And courage looks like choosing strategy over spectacle, care over coercion, and community over militarisation.
So, we must ask, plainly and urgently: Is this the Australia we want?
