Penny Wong‘s problem isn’t that she’s outspoken. It’s that when Jewish Australians need straight talk and visible solidarity from senior ministers, she reaches for language that dissolves responsibility.
After the Bondi terror attack, she was asked a simple question: is it time to say sorry? Her answer wasn’t an apology. It was the familiar drift into the collective: ‘all of us wish that we were not where we are…we all wish that the ISIS inspired terrorist attackers had been stopped…we all wish that antisemitism had not continued’.
That isn’t remorse, it’s certainly not saying sorry. It’s just weasel words.
I would have had more respect for the Foreign Minister if she had said an apology isn’t warranted. But, of course, it absolutely is, which only made the weasel words worse.
Then came a second, even more telling moment since Wong was taken out of witness protection by Labor in the wake of the Bondi attack. She was asked whether she regretted not visiting the communities in southern Israel devastated on October 7, 2023 during her official trip, and after Israel formally invited her to do so.
Wong’s reply: ‘I regret the way in which people have experienced that’. So she regrets people’s reactions to her deliberate snub, rather than delivering the snub in the first place. Especially now, after Bondi.
What a piece of work.
This is exactly why so many Jewish Australians have concluded that they are being managed rather than supported by the likes of Wong and Albo. No wonder Albo was booed at the Sunday vigil.
Penny Wong is pictured at a press conference at Parliament House in August
Dozens of bouquets of flowers are seen at a makeshift memorial after the Bondi shooting
It’s not that every foreign policy call must mirror Jerusalem’s preferences. Not at all. It’s that Wong cannot (or will not) speak with moral clarity when symbolism and accountability matter.
In her hands, solidarity becomes conditional, grief becomes procedural, and accountability becomes something that happens over there or in the community, never squarely on the desk of government ministers like herself. The concept of ministerial responsibility just doesn’t exist.
The Bondi attack was unambiguous: a mass casualty terrorist assault targeting a Hanukkah celebration, now investigated as Islamic State inspired, with the alleged use of firearms and attempted bombings.
Fifteen people were killed. This wasn’t a heated protest, a rowdy march or a nasty slogan on a placard. It was the consequence of an environment in which Jewish Australians had been warning, for months, that an antisemitic menace was becoming normalised and would have catastrophic consequences. The escalation was predicted but the warnings were ignored.
What makes this so corrosive for many is Wong’s broader pattern: she speaks as if she is the custodian of national decency. Sanctimony as a political brand. Yet when faced with the most basic human expectations of leadership, she defaults to weasel words.
The result is a Foreign Minister who can sound perpetually righteous while leaving Jewish Australians feeling perpetually alone.
The October 7 visit decision is not a trivial example. It sits in the realm of moral signalling. Community organisations warned at the time that skipping the massacre sites would be read as a negative, whether intended or not. And it certainly was. Yet in the wake of Bondi, rather than accept that reality with a plain sentence, Wong avoided responsibility.
Then there is the Binskin review into the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza. The report is damning about serious failures and breakdowns that led to a catastrophic outcome. But it also says the strike was ‘not knowingly or deliberately directed’ at World Central Kitchen.
Anthony Albanese and his wife Jodie are seen at a National Day of Reflection memorial
That distinction matters. Because in the public debate that followed, the government’s tone and framing repeatedly allowed the worst inference, that of intent, to hang in the air.
Israel’s embassy accused Australia of misrepresentations and omissions in how it responded publicly to the report. Even if one takes that accusation with a grain of diplomatic salt, the central point remains that when the facts are contested and emotions are high, the job of a foreign minister is not to inflame. Loose insinuations seep into the domestic setting, poisoning social cohesion.
Again and again, Israel’s conduct is positioned as the primary object of Australian admonition, while Hamas, despite being a terrorist organisation that started the war with mass murders and hostage-taking, fades into the background as though it is merely a regrettable complication in a problem Israel created.
Perhaps Wong’s worst moment, a case study in how she operates, was the ‘Israel, Russia, China’ comparison she made.
Late last year Wong delivered remarks that drew comparisons that grouped Israel rhetorically with Russia and China in the context of international law. She may insist she was arguing for universal rules. Whatever. Ministers are judged on how their framing lands.
Lumping Israel into the same rhetorical bracket as authoritarian powers is not careful diplomacy. It’s a gift to those who want to portray Israel as a rogue state, and it predictably deepens the sense among Jewish Australians that the government’s scrutiny is all one-way.
Can you think of a clearer way a politician can send a signal that risks stoking antisemitism?
Wong could have retained every substantive policy position she’s had and still led differently. Instead, she has done what she often does, standing on the high ground speaking down. That sanctimonious style might work inside the Senate chamber, it does not work when citizens attending the funerals of family and friends.
Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs is seen at the 2025 G20 Summit
A woman is seen placing a bouquet of flowers outside the Bondi Pavilion
Wong has a habit of presenting herself as the embodiment of progressive achievement, as though history is something she personally delivers. The same sex marriage example is telling because it exposes the performative side of her politics.
Marriage equality became law after the Turnbull government initiated the postal survey process and Parliament amended the Marriage Act in December 2017. Labor supported that outcome, sure, and many Labor figures argued for it, but the institutional pathway that made it happen was driven by the Coalition government of the day and a parliamentary vote that followed.
When Wong wraps herself in that win (despite not advocating for SSM when in government), it reveals the same instinct seen in her foreign policy language. Take the moral pose but avoid the hard ownership when it matters.
Wong’s (under) performance now isn’t a side issue. It sits at the centre of the government’s failure to make Jewish Australians feel protected and heard.
