The Fracturing of the Civic Compact

Twelve Australians are dead. Twelve lives ended in circumstances that would once have been unthinkable in this country. Their deaths are not isolated tragedies; they are signals – warning flares – revealing how deeply antisemitism has taken root in Australia and how little our governments have done to arrest its rise. We should be ashamed that a nation built on refuge, fairness, and civic decency has allowed imported hatreds to flourish so openly that violence has followed. We should be more ashamed still that our leaders, federal and state, have responded with little more than soft words and symbolic gestures.

To understand this moment, we must return to the idea that underpins modern Australia: the multicultural compact. For half a century, Australia operated on a simple, workable bargain: newcomers were free to keep their language, culture, and faith – but in return they had to accept the civic norms of liberal democracy, equal citizenship, and the rule of law. Those were the terms of belonging. They were not perfect, but they were clear enough. They allowed a diverse population to cohere into something more than a demographic mosaic. They allowed a nation to evolve without losing its shape.

That compact now lies fractured. The rise in antisemitism – expressed in chants, vandalism, threats, and now deaths – is not a random eruption but the visible outcome of a deeper civic unravelling. As my book Terms of Belonging argues, a small but assertive minority of recent arrivals, along with some of their Australian-born children, have imported a politics of grievance whose most menacing expression is hatred of Jews. This is not incidental. Antisemitism is the old world’s most enduring poison, a toxin that corrodes every society that tolerates it. Its reappearance on our streets is not only alarming but diagnostic. Sadly it tells us about It tells us so about our lack of political courage.

The warning signs were all there. On 9 October 2023, the steps of the Sydney Opera House – supposedly the nation’s living room – shook with chants of “Death to the Jews”. The chants were audible enough to rattle millions watching online, yet somehow inaudible to those charged with maintaining public order. Political leaders issued statements of concern, but not statements of consequence. Sixteen months later, in February 2025, the same forecourt hosted a performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony, a monument to human beauty and endurance. The juxtaposition says everything: the same public square that once echoed with hatred became the stage for one of civilisation’s great affirmations.

The tragic deaths that have now followed did not occur in a vacuum. They occurred in a climate where antisemitic slurs have been normalised, where police report that they are “writing cautions with tied hands,” where national agencies advise community workers not to “conflate hateful slogans with extremist intent”. Such messaging would be farcical if it were not so dangerous. It represents a government so paralysed by cultural anxiety – so fearful of causing offence – that it will not confront the very forces tearing at Australia’s democratic fabric.

And the contrast with past leadership is impossible to ignore. Australia once had leaders who understood that their duty was to protect the public, even at political cost. After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, John Howard did not triangulate, hesitate, or hide behind process. He acted. He confronted the gun lobby, faced public protests, and imposed sweeping reforms because safeguarding Australian lives mattered more than safeguarding his approval ratings. It was a moment that defined his prime ministership and reaffirmed the idea that national leadership requires moral courage. Today, as antisemitic violence rises and twelve Australians lie dead, that kind of clarity is nowhere to be seen.

And yet, we know this country is capable of better. Our history shows that when migrants embrace responsibility as well as opportunity, integration becomes a triumph. Vietnamese refugees, for example, arrived traumatised, penniless, and uncertain. But they embraced the civic contract: work hard, obey the law, contribute to society. Their children entered universities, professions, and public life; their communities transformed suburbs from sites of crime to centres of cultural vitality. Their success became a benchmark of what Australia can achieve when gratitude, resilience, and national belonging are aligned.

By contrast, what we are witnessing today in some quarters is the opposite: not a synthesis of identity and citizenship, but a rejection of the civic order itself. Disaffected activists – many born here – now chant slogans that lionise terrorist movements and menace Jewish Australians. Some claim to speak on behalf of diasporas whose real refugees recoil from such conduct. Refugees fleeing Aleppo, Mosul, Kabul, and Khartoum know what collapsed societies look like; they know that one does not keep a country safe by importing the conflicts that destroyed the last one. A loud Australian-born minority is playing at revolution – imitating the language and imagery of distant conflicts – while benefiting from the stability and freedoms of the society they are undermining.

Moderate voices within Muslim and Middle Eastern communities have warned of exactly this. “Why tear down the safety net we all benefit from?” asked one respected imam. But instead of amplifying those voices, governments have indulged the fringe – confusing cultural sensitivity with civic surrender. The result is predictable: when hate goes unchecked, intimidation follows; when intimidation is tolerated, violence is only a question of time.

No society can sustain multiculturalism on these terms. Diversity without shared norms is not multiculturalism; it is fragmentation. Tolerance without boundaries is not liberalism; it is abdication. A nation that cannot defend its Jewish minority cannot defend any minority. Once the civic compact is breached for one group, it is breached for all.

The tragedy of these twelve deaths forces us to confront what we have allowed to happen. It forces us to ask whether Australia still believes in the terms of belonging that made it one of the most successful immigrant nations on earth. It forces us to recognise that the moral clarity once expected of newcomers – that foreign land hatreds must be left at the dock – has been replaced by a muddled relativism that excuses, accommodates, or minimises prejudice so long as it wears the costume of political expression.

The path forward is not mysterious; it is simply difficult. Australia must recover the courage of its civic convictions. The compact must be re-stated clearly and enforced consistently: the right to maintain cultural identity does not include the right to menace fellow citizens, deny their legitimacy, or glorify violence against them. Governments must protect the vulnerable, support police with unambiguous powers, and make it plain that antisemitism – whether shouted on a street, painted on a synagogue, or whispered in a classroom – is incompatible with belonging in this country.

Twelve Australians are dead. Their deaths should be a turning point, not an epilogue. They demand that we reclaim the civic clarity that once allowed a diverse people to stand together. If we fail to act now, the fractures in our civic compact will widen, and the question posed in Terms of Belonging will haunt us: On what common ground will Australians choose to stand – if we allow hatred to decide for us?