Nope, just another political cartoon.
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May I tee off? Please?
Before I go to bed?
Screw it.
Iām going to anyway. Please donāt ban me.
I say the following with all respect to Australian Jewish people. I have nothing against them at all. I know they have very serious challenges in this country and I wish them nothing but peace and security and the pursuit of every advantage this nation has to offer.
However. Iām really, really mad. Really quite emotionally mad. And Iām even madder that whatās making me mad isnāt being talked about, and Iām confused as Fark about why itās not being talked about by the people it affected most.
I donāt know who, but someone, whether itās AFP or ASIO or both, massively dropped the ball on the Bondi Massacre.
And no-one seems to care.
And I feel like some people here think Iām some sort of apologist, or that Iām soft on the subject.
Iām not. Iām extremely hard-line on it.
Why has no-one been sacked yet?
How do we know that these two went to a terrorist camp, and no-one has been sacked yet?
Why has not one other single person been linked to the massacre, and why, given that, has no-one been sacked yet?
Whatā¦those two kept this thing secret?
Really?
I want everyone deported. Their siblings, cousins, babysitters, Farkingā¦accountant.
All of them.
I donāt give a Fark.
If you said hi to them in the street I want you the fark out of my country and I donāt give a damn about due process.
But no-one is saying any of this. Itās not on the agenda.
Whatās on the agenda is a Royal Commission into anti-semitism that will have Fark-All to do with what happened and wonāt bring back anything for two years if they hurry.
And until thenā¦whatā¦meh?
WTAF???
/rant
Sorry.
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Yeah, thatās a rantā¦a tad unhinged maybe.
Possibly because there needs to be a proper investigation to figure out how it went wrong.
The father is dead so a bit hard to deport.
The son is an Australian citizen and so cannot be deported (unless you want us to turn into a version of Trumpās America)
This is the unhinged part I was referring toā¦it really needs no explanation.
I am kind of aware that itās unhinged.
Which is also kind of the point.
Itās not nearly as unhinged as I feel like some people
Really should be.
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We will probably find that there are way too many people on ASIOās many watch lists to properly surveil them all with ~2,000 employees across all their responsibilities.
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Somebody will tell us there have been ālearningsā and everything will be OK
There will always be learnings from something like this.
Recommendations relating to ASIO will be interesting to know and if they will be implemented.
I agree entirely with your rant. Itās of a high quality and I ask myself the same questions.
I suspect these reviews will shine a light on much of this, though the non NRC hopefully in quicker time.
I suspect thereās issues around resourcing / budgets at play. However thereās much more too it and answers are needed.
I reckon the number on watch lists wouldāve boomed in recent years and they probably havenāt had the growth in resources or budgets. I then think they probably focus on the highest risk ones and this means thereās a large, and growing group who might be medium to lower risk not being adequately followed.
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AI generated but seems about right. They need to do this with ~2,000 employees.
ASIOās core functions, as defined by the ASIO Act 1979, are to protect Australia and its people from specific threats through intelligence collection, assessment, and advice to the government.
Key Responsibilities
ASIOās main responsibilities involve addressing several āheads of securityā:
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Counter-terrorism: Protecting Australians from both religiously motivated and ideologically motivated violent extremism.
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**Counter-espionage and Foreign Interference:**Detecting, investigating, and disrupting efforts by foreign intelligence services to steal classified information, influence democratic institutions, or harm Australian interests.
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Sabotage: Protecting critical infrastructure and defence systems from deliberate damage or disruption.
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Politically Motivated Violence: Addressing violence or the promotion of communal violence intended to achieve a political objective.
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**Serious Threats to Border Integrity:**Investigating and providing intelligence on threats to border security, such as people smuggling operations.
Additional Functions
In addition to its primary investigative roles, ASIO also has other responsibilities:
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Providing Advice: Communicating intelligence and advice to government ministers, other Australian agencies (such as the Australian Federal Police and Department of Home Affairs), and industry partners to help them manage security risks and inform policy decisions.
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Protective Security: Offering protective security guidance to government and industry to harden environments against potential threats and build national resilience.
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Security Assessments and Vetting: Conducting security assessments of individuals for government client agencies to determine suitability for visas, citizenship, or high-level security clearances (Top Secret-Privileged Access Vetting).
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Foreign Intelligence Collection (within Australia): With a warrant from the Attorney-General, ASIO is authorised to collect foreign intelligence within Australia.
ASIO operates under a comprehensive oversight framework to ensure all its activities are conducted legally and with propriety, including oversight from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and a Parliamentary Joint Committee.
A lot of people care (I do) and in due course itāll all come out. I think there might have been major failings by the AFP and ASIO and maybe even NSW police. But there may have been other failings by all levels of government (including dep. of Home Affairs) that contributed to the Bondi event and antisemitism in general. Remember Mike Burgess publicly stated in February 2025 that antisemitism posed the biggest threat to life and there was a 50% chance of a terrorist attack in the near term. That sounds like a pretty good heads up that an attack against Jews was probable. Why wasnāt there more security at the Hanukkah event?
What did ASIO/AFP/state and federal governments do about this clear warning form Mike Burgess in February 2025? As Albo has stated since Bondi his government could have done more. Ditto Minns and his government. Were there failings at a leadership level in government, Home Affairs and agencies such as AFP and ASIO.
Hopefully the RC will get to the bottom of any failings.
I wonder how many employees they had a decade ago? Or even 20 years ago?
I reckon the number of suspects that could be on any bona fide watch list wouldāve grown faster than the spot price of silver in recent years.
posted this article a month or so back but Iām going to keep posting it because it keeps being relevant
The agency measures success not by the safety it delivers but by the scale of its next appropriation. It builds its case for expanded power through the very catastrophes it fails to avert. Budget submissions cite āevolving threatsā and āunprecedented challengesā, the same rhetoric deployed year after year, immune to falsification. This is not protection; it is performance, underwritten by the fiction that more surveillance equals more security.
In this model, sovereignty becomes a marketing slogan rather than a strategic commitment. The operational questions, who we surveil, who we trust, and what risks we accept, are resolved not in Canberra but through the inherited architecture of Cold War alliance structures.
Australian intelligence does not operate in service of Australian sovereignty; it operates as a subordinate node in an Anglosphere network whose strategic priorities are written elsewhere.
The neoliberal infection manifests in the familiar pathologies: bloat without capacity, data without insight, secrecy as substitute for competence. ASIO has grown larger, louder, and more publicly visible under Mike Burgessās leadership, yet its core function, preventing mass casualty attacks on Australian soil, has not demonstrably improved
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this, plus we shouldnāt really go arresting people for things they might do without hard evidence of their intentions
i donāt reckon a father and son would have been planning this kind of thing via documented means so i donāt think itās reasonable for there to be an expectation for law enforcement to have a heads up
Did you know Mr Mapo that in 1973 ASIO had about 600,000 files on Australian citizens.
They even one on me, which I could have seen but could not be bothered. The MP I worked for visited the file vault with others which was held in Melbourne at a āsecretā ASIO building in Queens Road. He said that his file was thick with many detailed conversations between him and his wife which had to be transcribed from listening devices. He said Jim Cairns file was huge. All files were hard copy.
Today they say that ASIO has files on about 40,000 people in Australia. No file on me any longer, definitely not important enough.
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If they hurry. And now that Albanese has folded after the concerted, multi fronted campaign to have him do so and cop it in the poll nads, surely some bi-partisanship from the victorious and definitely well meaning Libs?
Nope, the man with the convenient yamaka, the man with the plan to relaunch his political career so keenly that he soapboxed a mass murder site, little Joshy has come out gunning for the PMās choice to head this hugely expensive enterprise. Apparently the government we voted in must bow to some prominent members of the Jewish community and appoint someone āsympatheticā to them. Is this how things are supposed to work?
Small reminder, the Nats and ON are playing defence for the gun lobby and resisting calls to tighten laws. Thatās the real Coalition at work. Funny huh?
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yet never better funded
How do we know that these two went to a terrorist camp, and no-one has been sacked yet?
Primarily because there is no evidence (yet) that anything of this kind occurred. They spent a month in a particular place in the Philippines but no evidence (again, yet) that they were involved in anything untoward.
Of course, the investigation currently underway (not the RC) may well uncover new information which could/should have consequences.
With all the computer tech available now, Iād have thought that the main question to answer is how a guy on an Asio watchlist due to association with a radical preacher was able to travel overseas, to a known terrorist training country no less, ( presumably on his own passport given it was public knowledge within 8 hours of his identity being revealed) without the security services raising a flag. The instant that passport was used to head overseas, he should have become a priority watch for AFP / Asis /Asio.
It boggles the mind that he wasnāt. Everything that flowed from that could / should have been prevented. As noted previously, this is not a case of a random unknown popping up to commit mass murder, he was on the radar. And then missed.