Bernard Lagan: The political divide over the future of Bondi’s bridge
Who should decide its future: The bridge from where the Bondi shooters fired. Photo / Getty Images
The little arched footbridge has during decades carried tens of thousands to Bondi’s sand, water and waves. For some, like Iliana Labecky, 13, who grew up across the road, the bridge is a happy connection to her Sydney childhood on Bondi beach before her family moved to Copenhagen two years ago.
For others, such as Sydney’s top political leader – New South Wales Premier Chris Minns – the concrete structure will forever be a ghoulish reminder of the December 14 attack on Jewish people attending a celebration of the beginning of Hanukkah.
In his eyes, it must be destroyed; the footbridge was the elevated platform from where two gunmen with Islamic State connections fired more than 80 rounds, killing 15 and maiming scores more. Its concrete sides are pock-marked where a flurry of police bullets aimed at the gunmen landed before killing one shooter and wounding the second.
But Iliana, who the Listener found lingering on the bridge in Bondi last week, believes its destruction is unnecessary.
“I do believe that, like, there’s bigger fish to fry,” she said. “There are bigger things to discuss than whether a bridge should be taken down. It’s been here forever. I grew up here. I was crossing this bridge every day, practically.”
A bubbly 22-year-old Jewish man, JJ Hecht, manning a makeshift memorial beneath the bridge, believes its future should be decided by the families of the victims.
“That’s as it should be,” he said. “The families of the victims, the people who died here – they are the whole reason why it’s a question for their families.”
There is no erasing the events of December 14 – as much as some may wish. They have riven Australia, leaving Prime Minister Anthony Albanese looking uncharacteristically lacking in empathy and judgment and plummeting in the polls.
The conservative opposition – the centre-right Liberals and the country National Party that have been in forms of coalition for a century – has blown apart; they split in the shooting’s wake after an internal war on how far new hate-speech laws should go.
There is a sense that the nation is collectively appalled over the response of its national political leaders to the Bondi massacre. At a moment when leaders may have sought to bring a wounded country together, both sides of politics tried to leverage raw advantage from tragedy.