We'll talk more about this now with our foreign affairs editor, Kethevan Gorgistani, who joins me on the set
And Kethevan, as I was saying before, Australia is known for having some of the world's strictest gun laws
and yet now officials have announced that they want to strengthen those laws even more
What exactly would that look like? Well, look, first of all, as you said, those tough gun laws, they've been in place for three decades
The real turning point for Australia's relationship to guns was 1996 and that massacre in Port Arthur where 35 people were killed
And that led to a complete overhaul of access to guns. They were much harder to get
There was a buyback scheme. And certain types of guns, including semi-automatic weapons, were all but banned for Australians
there were in this attack 15 people who have died. They were shot by one-shot rifles
Just imagine what the death toll would have been like if there had been a semi-automatic weapon involved
So the laws that had been put in place have already restricted heavily
the sort of mass shooting that we saw. But at the same time, you still have the number of guns in Australia
steadily rising over the past couple of decades. And so the prime minister announced
that more restrictions were going to be put in place to take into account some of the specifics of this attack First of all limiting the number of guns that one person can own It seems that one of the perpetrators the older one the father legally owned six firearms And so the
idea is here, do you actually need six firearms in Australia? The second issue is the fact that
Licenses for firearms right now are not time limited. And the prime minister said people's circumstances can change
People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity
In this case, the father had been legally licensed to own a firearm since 2015
But obviously that had not been renewed or rechecked. And then there are two other propositions
One is to limit gun ownership to Australian citizens. That would have excluded the father who arrived in 1998 in Australia and has been a permanent resident but not a citizen
It would not, however, have excluded the son who was an Australian-born citizen
And finally, enhanced background checks. There is a push for more information and additional use of criminal intelligence to be involved when they decide whether or not someone can legally be licensed to own a firearm
Now, this attack has been defined as an anti-Semitic terror attack. And the Israeli prime minister has weighed in on this saying that Australia recent recognition of a Palestinian state encourages tourism Ketven I going to come back to you in just a minute but first let listen to what Benjamin Netanyahu had to say
Even today, they are trying to murder, and unfortunately, even today, they succeed in murdering Jews
They massacred Jews in Sydney, Australia. Four months ago, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Australia
I told him, your policy encourages terrorism. It encourages anti-Semitism. You call for a Palestinian state
and you are essentially giving a reward to Hamas for the terrible massacre they committed on us on October 7th
The Israeli prime minister, they're criticizing the Australian government, and there has been growing criticism from within Australia as well
from within the Jewish community, for not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism
I mean, are these fair criticisms? Well, look, obviously the criticism from the Israeli prime minister has more to do with the recognition of the Palestinian state
And that is very hard to tell whether or not that was actually what was at stake here and what fueled this attack
But the broader criticism is that basically since October 7th, 2023, and the government has acknowledged that
there has been a steady rise in anti-Semitic incidents, whether they're insults towards Jewish people
all the way to arson attacks on synagogues for example or Jewish schools But the criticism is that while the government has acknowledged that there has been a rise they haven done enough to protect the Jewish community That said because of this
rise in anti-Semitic attacks, the government did appoint back in July of 2024 its first special
envoy to combat anti-Semitism. Jillian Siegel was put in that position, and a year after she was
named, in July 2025, she put out a report with wide-ranging and sometimes controversial propositions
as to how to ensure that the Jewish community is safe. Among some of the proposals, there was
for example, strengthening hate and intimidation laws, improving education about the Holocaust
But there were also more controversial proposals like withholding funds from universities and artists
who they deemed had failed to do enough to fight against anti-Semitism
or even the proposal of, quote, monitoring media coverage of these ideas
The prime minister of Australia rejected the accusation that they have not done enough
He pointed to the fact that they criminalized hate speech, they banned hate symbols, and
there has been a lot of money put over the past two years in helping the Jewish community
boost its security around sensitive sites like, of course, synagogues. Okay