Well someone's gotta do it.

After all, it is one of the most consequential events in Australia's recent past. Fifteen people dead with many more still in critical conditions.

The facts of the issue remain very unclear although it is clear that the authorities screwed up and are now anxious to deflect from that. So the go-to response has been to blame the guns as though the terrorists were mere instruments of the weapons.

I've said it on the pages many times before - Australia made and continues to make a terrible error by allow people from the Islamic world to come an live here. In the end, their ideology is incompatible with western values and it will always be so.

But they are here and there's no getting around that or reversing it. That's not to say it can't be managed or at least the damage mitigated. The problem however is that the authorities are not prepared to countenance let all implement the policy what would lead to such mitigation.

Islam should be confronted in this country and bought into line, suppressed and a cordon sanitaire placed around its adherents. Yet such a thing is impossible with our current leadership. Thus, they pretend that bringing in new guns laws will solve a problem that has nothing to do with gun laws. These people did use legal guns. Yet had they so wished, illegal guns are prevalent throughout their community.

Even now the PM, and his compliant ASIO advisors, want to pretend that right-wing violence is the real danger. Roam the streets of Sydney advocating for the deaths of Israelis, openly calling for the re-introduction of Zyklon B, and the authorities will turn a blind-eye. But raise your right arm to 45 degrees and the full force of the law will descend on you.

It is said this type of Islamic radicalism has no place in Australia. The politicians repeat it like a mantra. But the fact is, in reality it does have a place - on the outskirts of our major cities, dutifully voting Labor.

mhaze,

You begin by saying the facts are "very unclear", but then proceed as if motive, ideology, community responsibility, and policy failure are already established. Those two positions don't exactly sit comfortably together.

If the facts are unclear, then conclusions about Islamic terrorism, community prevalence of illegal guns, or deliberate deflection by authorities are, at this point, speculative rather than evidential.

Several different claims are being run together here:

1. That there were specific operational failures by authorities
2. That the attack was Islamist in nature
3. That Islam as a religion is incompatible with Western society
4. That gun laws are irrelevant to the incident
5. That enforcement priorities are politically biased

Each of these would need to be argued separately, with evidence. At present they're being treated as if they naturally imply one another, which they don't.

For example, if legal firearms were used, that doesn't make gun availability irrelevant. Equally, asserting that illegal guns are prevalent in a particular community is a factual claim that requires data, not inference.

Likewise, proposing the "suppression" of a religious group is a sweeping policy position. If that's the argument, it needs to be defended on legal, ethical, and practical grounds, rather than implied via a tragedy whose details are still emerging.

None of this precludes hard discussions about extremism or security. But those discussions are weakened, not strengthened, when uncertainty is used as a licence for certainty.

If you want accountability, the first step is clarity about what is known, what is unknown, and what is belief rather than evidence.

This'll elude you JD, but just because some things remain unclear doesn't mean all things are unclear.

Also what seems to elude you even though I've previous explained it and given proven examples (remember you embarrassment over the Australia banning of US meat issue?), some things can be known based upon past experience and history. That Islamism is incompatible with western values fits that category.

mhaze,

No one has argued that everything is unclear. The issue is which things are being treated as settled, and on what basis.

You are asserting three different categories as if they were equivalent:

1. Facts established by evidence about this specific event
2. Inferences drawn from documented patterns, with clear scope and limits
3. Broad civilisational claims about an entire religion and its adherents

The problem is that you are moving directly from (2) to (3), while using (1) as rhetorical cover.

"Based on history" is not a free pass to bypass evidence. History can inform hypotheses, but it does not justify collective attribution without specification. If "Islamism" is the subject, then it needs to be defined precisely and distinguished from Islam, Muslims, or migrant communities generally. That distinction is doing a lot of work here, and it is not being made.

Nor does past experience relieve you of the need to show relevance. Even if one accepts that certain ideological strands are incompatible with liberal democracy, it does not follow that:

- this attack was motivated by them
- suppression of a religious group is lawful, workable, or effective
- gun availability is therefore irrelevant
- or that entire communities can be treated as risk vectors

Those are additional steps, each requiring argument and evidence.

As for appeals to past debates, they don't substitute for engagement with the point at hand. If the case is strong, it should stand on its own logic and evidence, without detours or characterisations of the interlocutor.

The core issue remains unchanged: tragedy does not convert belief into fact, nor history into a blank cheque for certainty.

Not sure which “authorities” are being referred to - eyewitnesses say the police were hopeless (with just the TV vision to go on, a police marksman should have been able to take out the one with the rifle on the bridge easily enough).

Politicians, particularly Albanese and Burke, are responsible for this terrorist act, and they should resign or be sacked. I wonder if the GG's reserve powers would be of use.

Blaming guns, like blaming machetes (Victoria) is just another slippery way of avoiding judgement for the terrible immigration, multicultural policies of both parties.

Welcome to Australia today. No more of the un-Australian claptrap. This is Australia now.

The 4,000 antisemitic occurrences - and that's just those recorded - are Australian.

The mass immigration of people who hate us is Australian.

Antisemitism is a global disease, and it is an Australian disease.

There is nothing exceptional about Australia; it is the same as any Western country ruined by mad politicians, mass immigration, multiculturalism and self-hatred.

Hi John Daysh,

1. That there were specific operational failures by authorities
- It's clear they from the complete 10+ minute footage they could've done things better, but I don't want to criticise them too much, they stopped the shooting.

2. That the attack was Islamist in nature
- We may not know this for absolute certain, I've heard different things that he may have been a Christian who recently converted to Islam, I've seen x posts claiming that the shooters were in the IDF.
We can probably assume it was Islamist in nature, we can 'hypothesize'.

The discussion needn't stop waiting for evidence, we can make judgements based on likely different scenarios.
Fine tune when more info comes to light.
3. That Islam as a religion is incompatible with Western society
- I think its fair to say there are conflicts, maybe we should identify them.

'What is the cause of the conflict?'

"Likewise, proposing the "suppression" of a religious group is a sweeping policy position. If that's the argument, it needs to be defended on legal, ethical, and practical grounds, rather than implied via a tragedy whose details are still emerging."

- I say we hold an inquiry on all religions.
I'm not sure that 'religious' and 'ethical' are mutually exclusive.
We should take all these religious texts, take them apart piece by piece and work out which parts promote conflict and hate.

4. That gun laws are irrelevant to the incident
- They actually are. A determined person who planned, would've found a way even if they drove a RAM through the park instead, and there's little to nothing anyone can do to stop it.