NSW Government Uses Bondi Massacre to Justify Increased State Security Protocols

“The security protocols and resources are going to have to change in Sydney. They have changed in Rome. They have changed in Paris,” said NSW premier Chris Minns at a 29 December 2025 press conference, which was yet another announcement about the approach his government is taking in the wake of the 14 December Bondi Beach massacre. “They are going to have to change here.”

“Anyone who is suggesting that we can just have the same regime – the same process – as we had in place on December 13 is wrong,” the top NSW minister continued somewhat ominously. “Those days are over.”

As the premier fielded a range of questions on Monday, in his second appearance before the press in as many days, it became apparent that the authorities are considering a major overhaul of security operations in direct response to the mass shooting that saw 15 Jewish people murdered by ISIS-inspired father and son killers, who targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Gadigal land at Bondi Beach.

The ideas being flagged to bolster security in New South Wales, and in particular, to protect its Jewish community, include deploying Australian Army soldiers to city streets, permitting Jewish organisation the Community Security Group (CSG) to operate armed, along with providing law enforcement with machine guns for New Years Eve and cracking down on hate preachers.

The equation the NSW premier has posited is that if basic rights and checks have to be undermined, along with law enforcement being beefed up with long-arm rifles and military officers deployed in public, so as to ensure that the NSW Jewish community and the broader constituency can feel safe, then such moves towards authoritarianism are worth it.

Overhauling security measures

Deploying the army in public has been flagged in order to help protect the NSW Jewish community. Minns has stressed that he does not want to get ahead of himself on the prospect of troops in public, as he’s currently in discussions with the Commonwealth about whether having armed and uniformed Australian Army troops out on the streets is desirable.

The other security development to have come to the fore, is the prospect of arming CSG officers. CSG employees and volunteers has been providing security for the Jewish community since 1997. Run by the NSW Jewish Council of Deputies, CSG has officers that already carry pistols at Jewish schools and synagogues, but now they might be armed at Jewish events as well.

The CSG sent a 26 November letter to NSW police entitled Jewish Festival Calendar Notification, which outlined that there would be a heightened risk of Islamic extremist lone-wolf actors at the Chanukah by the Sea event that was the target of the massacre. And it further warned that local Jewish people could be targeted over Israeli acts in the Middle East, despite this being a dubious link.

Minns warned both on Sunday and Monday that local constituents might be surprised by the fact that NSW police officers may start appearing on city streets equipped with long-arm rifles, and he further considered that members of the public may be surprised on New Years Eve by the sight of police officers wielding machine guns.

The premier further outlined that NSW will be holding a Royal Commission into the Bondi Beach massacre, even though federal Labor has determined that it would not be the best approach. And he also advised that the state is considering legislating the ability to shut down hate preachers, which he envisions will be done by closing down their prayer rooms via the cutting off of utilities.

Authoritarian creep

Whilst bolstering security following the Bondi mass murder was to be expected, the deploying of the military to city streets and the arming of a security group to protect one part of the community were not necessary outcomes. Indeed, one reporter queried whether other parts of the community would also have their own armed guards, however no direct response was forthcoming.

This drift towards authoritarianism commenced last week when the premier reconvened NSW parliament for three days before Christmas in order to pass an omnibus bill that sought to install new gun controls, as well as to legislate a framework providing that all public protests in a designated area can be banned for 14 day periods, with a cap at 90 days, in the wake of a terror-related incident.

NSW police commissioner Mal Lanyon called a public assembly restriction declaration, or a PARD, across a large section of Greater Sydney on Christmas Eve, just hours after the laws were enacted.

The designated area subjected to a protest prohibition, at least until 7 January 2026, comprises of three policing regions, which includes banning demonstrations across Gadigal land in the NSW Police Central Metropolitan Region, as well as on Dharug land in the North West Region and on Dharawal, Dharug and Gundungurra land in the South West Region.

As per the new laws, the police commissioner has determined that a blanket ban on protests is appropriate across this large region, as a public demonstration right now is considered to likely cause a reasonable person to fear harassment, intimidation or violence, or fear for their own safety or that it could risk community safety.

So, for this holiday season, the basic right to free speech, the right to political communication and the right to assemble with others in public are now suppressed across great swathes of Greater Sydney.

Thumbing our noses at the terrorists

Minns has been clear with his message to the people of Greater Sydney in respect of attending New Years Eve celebrations on Wednesday this week. The premier explained that the NSW public should “show defiance to these terrorists”, in terms of continuing to get out there and have a good time as 2025 turns into 2026. He added that the killers would want people to stop having a good time.

However, whilst NSW constituents continuing to celebrate New Years Eve might not satisfy the terrorists, what will is the fact that NSW Labor has been reconvening parliament, drafting excessive laws and pondering whether to heighten law enforcement presence in public.

The broad removal of freedoms that the NSW premier has overseen and is now toying with in terms of heightening the process, are exactly the sort of damage the terrorists would desire.

The NSW premier has repeatedly been telling the public that the reason the state doesn’t have the same broad freedom of speech protections as does the United States, is specifically because our society is multicultural in makeup and Minns considers this to be an issue that requires basic cultural and political rights to be undermined in the name of social cohesion.

This equation doesn’t necessary stack up either, when considering that the United States is increasingly considered a multicultural nation itself.

But what is clear is that NSW is being run by a premier who considers undermining basic rights is a necessary evil, which he’s achieved on a grand scale with the implementation of the blanket protest ban, and as he now progresses further measures to heighten the NSW police state, local constituents ought to be wary about just how far Minns is planning to go.