It is not a time for action, it is a time for witness, for mourning and for community solidarity in the face of loss.
In any disaster, extraordinary leaders will emerge. Some are trained first responders, others simply do what they know to be right.
We saw these heroes at Bondi – the pregnant woman shielding someone else’s toddler with her own body, the lifesaver running towards danger and, of course, Ahmed al-Ahmed tackling the gunman while in the line of fire.
It is images like this we carry with us. They help us cope with the horror of violence because they make us feel safer, and they make our community appear more humane.
However, there is a time in the first few days after a major incident where there is a deep need for a different form of leadership.
It is a time when the community needs its trauma to be seen and acknowledged, and know that its elected leaders value it and share in its shock and loss. It is not a time for action, it is a time for witness, for mourning and for community solidarity in the face of loss.
Importantly, survivors need to know that their suffering is authentically felt by their leaders.
To do this, leaders need to become statesmen. Statesmen bear the weight of a deeply challenging and ethically hazardous situation, for the benefit of the people they serve and are driven by what is right and just for the entire community. It is immensely difficult, it comes at great personal cost, and it is absolutely essential if a community is to heal.
Over the last century, we have seen a series of prime ministers take on the role of statesman as they face community trauma. They have demonstrated a deep connection with survivors, and a clear and authentic sense of shared loss.
Harold Holt really began this tradition, expressing how “shocked and saddened” he was visiting the devastation left behind from the Tasmanian bushfires in 1967. Bob Hawke was visibly shaken by the brutality at Tiananmen Square, and Julia Gillard gave an extraordinary motion of condolence in Parliament for the Queenslanders who survived the cyclones and floods of 2010.
More recently, Allegra Spender paddled out to sea with survivors to mourn the dead at Bondi, and encouraged people to light a candle in their windows to show their solidarity at Hannukah.
Some prime ministers have had more difficulty managing empathy during disasters.
Gough Whitlam was an awkward figure, towering over families who survived Cyclone Tracy, reassuring them that “children are very resilient”, and famously Scott Morrison wasn’t there for the communities who needed him in the 2019 bushfires because “he didn’t hold a hose, mate”.
True statesmen have gravity. Their speeches show a deep sense of humility, respect and shared sorrow. They mobilise the community around a common purpose.
In New Zealand, Jacinda Adern confronted the terrorist attack in Christchurch by saying how hard it was to find the words to express the collective sense of loss.
“Our challenge now is to make the very best of us a daily reality,” she said.
Julia Gillard called for Australians to “hold on to each other as we grieve, as we recover, as we rebuild and … always remember the days of despair and the days of courage we’ve lived through”.
Just down the road from Bondi is the institution I respect deeply for their commitment to healing, equity and statesmanship.
St Vincent’s hospital was there for the AIDS epidemic, providing compassionate care to a community devastated not only by illness, but also by hate, prejudice and shame.
My profession of medicine has its own statesmen. When there is a traumatic death, there is a moment when the most senior consultant, often a surgeon, or obstetrician, must sit with the family and help them adapt to their new reality.
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These tragedies are different to the slow losses in other areas of medicine. During unexpected trauma, good consultants, the statesmen, will be the rock against which the tide of anger, and grief and loss will break. There is always a cost, but it is the cost which must be born when a person chooses to be a leader.
For survivors, there will be time for the long tail of trauma, which is where health professionals like me begin to hear the horror, understand its impacts, and try to guide those who suffer towards healing, a task that will go on for months or even years.
Community leaders will help families and friends mourn their losses and adapt to their new lives without their loved ones by their side. Behind all this, teams will deconstruct these events and try to reduce future risks. That time will come.
But for now, we need the statesmen, and for me, the greatest statesman to emerge from Bondi was a young woman at Moriah College.
Dina, a Year 10 student, gave us a masterclass in how to mourn and how to respond to tragedy. She gave us a glimpse of what it means to be a young person attending an orthodox Jewish school.
“You can tell it is an Orthodox Jewish day school,” she said, “because it has high steel fences, closed-circuit television cameras, electric bollards, boom gates. Outside the gates are armed guards with firearms. This is my reality.”
Dina does not need our leaders to promise more barbed wire, more firearm control and harsher penalties for hate speech. She is not asking for revenge. She wants community. She wants bigger Christmas trees, more menorahs, and huge Eid parties.
I am not Jewish, but Jewish people are an important part of my community. As a GP, I rely on the generosity of the Jewish community through my colleagues, their leaders and the wisdom they have shared through centuries of suffering and loss to help me support other people who suffer.
That generosity of spirit and depth of wisdom must be seen, valued and shared for all of us to heal.
If I had one request for our senior statesmen, it is this. Please, can our Parliament invite Dina to share her vision of the past and future of her community, so that we can all witness what it means to be a Jewish Australian. Witness is an essential part of mourning. Dina is an important part of our future as a nation.
As a member of a community that has witnessed the suffering and loss of so many Jewish families, I want to follow her lead. I want to remember the courage of those heroes who stood up for what was right and good, at great personal cost. I want to commit to rebuilding with humility, kindness and respect.
And mostly, I want all of us to face the sort of future Dina imagines, where “we go on living as true Australians, we love this country even more”.
Associate Professor Louise Stone is a working GP who researches the social foundations of medicine in the ANU Medical School. She tweets @GPswampwarrior.
