Condolences
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (12:34): I rise on behalf of the Nationals to extend our condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the Bondi terror attack, to all that were impacted and particularly to the Australian and Victorian Jewish communities. 14 December 2025 has, sadly, become one of those times when we will all remember where we were. I was driving to Melbourne from home when I saw a message come up from my brother saying, ‘I hope no-one is involved in the horrible events at Bondi.’ Having family in Sydney, I immediately went to see what he was talking about and was horrified. The early indications that this was a deliberate attack on the Jewish community I, frankly, did not believe. I wanted to see more information, because this is not Australia, this is not our country and this is not who we are or what we want to be. But, sadly, it has come to this state.
My own understanding and knowledge of the Jewish community is relatively limited, and it is mostly informed by my good friend the member for Caulfield, who is a champion of his community. But on the day after the horrible event I joined him and the Leader of the Opposition and others at the Caulfield synagogue, and what I found there was a community in grief – a community connected in a spiritual, cultural way, quite incredibly, with their brothers and sisters in Sydney and, as the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition have said, a community that was angry, very angry. Probably what struck me, apart from the grief and anger from the individuals, was on two occasions on that day attending the Caulfield synagogue and seeing the numbers of police and security guards around that synagogue. Clearly it was a heightened situation the day after and the fact of the cabinet and many from the opposition being there increased the security risk, but as the Leader of the Opposition indicated, this is sadly something that the Jewish community have had to get used to: security around their events, security around their places of worship and security around their schools. Like the Leader of the Opposition, I cannot fathom how it would be to go about your daily business and have to be worried about an attack such as this at any given time.
We remember the victims and the heroes, and the Deputy Premier has mentioned Ahmed Al Ahmed. There were many others, including Reuven Morrison, one of the victims. The others were Edith Brutman; Dan Elkayam; Boris and Sofia Gurman, who were killed at the start of the attack when they tried to prevent it from happening; Alexander Kleytman; Rabbi Yaakov Levitan; Peter Meagher; Marika Pogany; Rabbi Eli Schlanger, Adam Smyth, who was simply walking past with his wife when the attack occurred; Boris Tetleroyd; Tania Tretiak; Tibor Weitzen; and 10-year-old Matilda. I want to read out a little bit of the experience as relayed to the ABC by her father Michael Britvan:
We dropped to the floor. To be honest I thought that it’s going to be over in a second. I thought there would be police or something … but the shooting just kept happening.
Mr Britvan said he initially could not locate his daughter in the chaos of the attack.
I couldn’t see Matilda straightaway and I was trying to stay down and trying to look.
…
she actually ran to where we were sitting because she got scared. There was chairs, like a row of chairs and when we fell, we fell on other side and I saw Matilda on the other side.
He called out to her repeatedly.
I was screaming, “Matilda, Matilda.”
As he crawled around the chairs to reach her, he realised she had been injured.
… that’s when I realised that she was hurt.
…
[I] was just trying to calm [Matilda] down, trying to tell her, “Please just wait, wait, wait, help will be coming soon” … she just told me that she was hard to breathe.
Help did come from the many people that the Premier, the Deputy Premier and the Leader of the Opposition have mentioned, who came in the face of danger to assist, but sadly for Matilda and the other 14 victims it was too late and not enough. Matilda’s mother Valentyna Poltavchenko said she hoped her daughter’s death would have a broader impact:
I want her to be remembered like a light that will overcome darkness.
We all hope and we here in must work to ensure that the light does indeed overcome the darkness.