Today is about lighting the nation in defiance of evil

When we look to Bondi, we see it not just as a beach, but as a part of our promise to the world. A welcoming embrace. That famous crescent of sand and water where there is room for everyone.

A place where nothing should break but the waves.

And yet there on that most fateful of evenings, our hearts were collectively shattered.

The terrorist attack was anything but random. It was antisemitic. Jewish Australians were targeted because they were Jewish.

Today we stand in solidarity with their families. And to affirm the shared values of unity, compassion, and resilience that define Australia.

Today we share their grief. A grief with no ending, only a beginning.

Grief is love wrapped around an absence. The imagined silhouette in the doorway. The longed-for footsteps in the hallway that never come.

It is the voice desperately held on to as it passes into the realm of memory.

It is the unanswerable desire for one more conversation, one more embrace, even just one more glimpse. It is the glow that shines, bereft, through the cracks of broken hearts.

That is the love those 15 souls inspired. That is the love they created.

Love is the light that brightens our days and lifts our hearts, yet in grief we feel its weight.

And for that weight to be felt like this by a community that has carried such a burden of suffering across generations is a cruelty beyond measure.

As we look back on those most difficult days, when the lighting of each candle in the menorah felt like an act of defiance in the face of evil, we return to the messages of Chanukah.

The message of hope, of resilience, and of the need to keep sending the glow of those candles out into the world.

Because that is the light that will win.

Originally published in The Daily Telegraph on Thursday, 22 January 2026.