Former Australian PM: Government using gun reform to trying to distract from antisemitism failures

16 December 2025, 10:49 am

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John Howard (C), former prime minister of Australia, waves to the crowd after laying flowers outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on December 16, 2025, to honor victims of the Hanukkah terror attack (DAVID GRAY / AFP)

Former Australian prime minister John Howard slams Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, saying that the effort to reform gun laws in the wake of the deadly terror attack at a Sydney Hanukkah event is a “big attempt at diversion.”

Howard, who visited the site of the attack, decries Albanese’s “collective failure over the last 2.5 years, to do enough by words and deeds… to demonstrate his detestation of antisemitism,” The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

“We have failed in our obligation to a part of our community, and I’m ashamed of that. Part of that failure, a big part of it, has to be taken by the leaders,” Howard says.