Fred Pawle

The tenth anniversary of the deadly ‘siege’ in Martin Place, Sydney, valiantly avoids using the M-word.

There was a touching ceremony in Martin Place, Sydney, earlier this month as some of the most senior politicians in the nation gathered to lay flowers to commemorate a decade since something they called the “Martin Place siege” happened there.

Passers-by who knew nothing about this “siege” would have been intrigued to witness Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, NSW Premier Chris Minns, Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Governor-General Sam Mostyn, assuming earnestly sombre facial expressions, bend over to carefully lay elaborate wreaths on otherwise innocuous slabs of concrete.

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Politicians struggle to look authentic at the best of times, but this ceremony was even more awkward than usual.

If the 10-year commemoration attracted such political luminaries, a casual witness might have asked, why are they gathering on the footpath? If this “siege” is so significant, why is its commemoration being conducted in such an anodyne location?

Closer inspection reveals a plaque on the ground under the wreaths, which marks a “symbolic memorial of the spontaneous sea of floral tributes following the December 2014 siege”. So a memorial to a tribute then, not to the victims of the “siege”. Got it.

There would be a more honest and prominent reminder of the “siege” if the politicians who attended this morning didn’t prefer that you forgot it ever happened at all.

As soon as it was over, the politicians all went back to business as usual, which is to pretend that the government isn’t indirectly responsible for the deadly “siege” in the first place, and that their current policies haven’t contributed to ASIO declaring that another “siege” is “probable”.

The “siege” was in fact an Islamic terrorist attack. Man Monis, the perpetrator, had claimed to Australian authorities in 2001 that he and his family were being persecuted by the Iranian regime. He was duly granted refugee status and allowed to stay here. Whichever useless bureaucrat made that decision, however, failed to notice that Monis was instead a travel agent wanted by Iranian police for allegedly stealing $200,000 from his customers and perpetrating a string of violent and sexual attacks.

Iran requested he be extradited, but Australian authorities, playing their usual role of protection racket for some of the world’s nastiest creeps, denied it.

Monis expressed his gratitude for all this magnanimity by abusing Australian war veterans, sexually assaulting women, denouncing western liberalism, praising Islam and helping his girlfriend murder his ex wife. So the Immigration Department considered him a model migrant, obviously.

At 8:33am on this day ten years ago, he armed himself with a sawn-off pump-action shotgun, casually walked into the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, took 18 people hostage, and flew a flag bearing the Islamic creed in the window. The siege lasted for 16 hours, and ended with Monis and two of the hostages – Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson – dead.

If the federal bureaucracy was less concerned about virtue signalling than it was about keeping Australia safe, none of this would have happened. The politicians laying those wreaths this morning know this, which is why their expressions of sombre reflection were about as authentic as Bruce Pascoe performing a Welcome to Country.

It goes without saying that neither Minns nor Albanese mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam” once in their statements about the commemoration.

There might be nothing to remind passers-by at this site of the fatal consequences of allowing Islam to take hold in the west, but last April there was an unequivocal reminder at the same location of the respect Islamists demand from the country to which they migrate. Here is footage from outside the former Lindt Cafe in April this year.

As coincidence would have it, news broke this same morning that the Sydney suburb of Chester Hill, which is 40 per cent Islamic, had been rocked by a hate-speech incident. Someone had sprayed “Fuck Islam” on an underpass pylon. Minns was quick to respond: “Vandalism like this that is aimed at particular religions is designed to incite hatred and is completely abhorrent,” he said. “Division and conflict from around the world cannot be allowed to be imported onto the streets of Sydney.”

But it is allowed. Nobody has yet been charged for chanting “Gas the Jews” in front of police on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 8 last year; nor do the police who block peaceful citizens from going about their business in the Sydney CBD every Sunday arrest any of the protesters for chanting the genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea…”

There is a line in the sand, and Minns knows where it is. He can spout platitudes about threats to “the fabric of our multicultural state”, but if he so much as hints that that fabric might not look so frayed if one thread of it wasn’t trying to weave the rest of it into a Persian rug, he will feel the righteous wrath of the morally offended. And by that I don’t mean Islamists, but their “liberal” apologists in the mainstream media, especially the ABC and SBS.

Meanwhile, Martin Place, like all pedestrian areas of the city, has now been decorated with concrete bollards that supposedly protect us from another “siege”, but do little to address the true cause. With unintended irony, the Ambulance Service, Fire Service and Police also laid wreaths today – on one of the bollards near where the attack occurred – a bollard designed to protect us from further “sieges”.

What a vivid illustration of the impotence and deception of our leaders and institutions.

If Johnson and Dawson could dodge shrapnel as well as our political leaders duck the truth, they’d still be alive.There was a touching ceremony in Martin Place, Sydney, today as some of the most senior politicians in the nation gathered to lay flowers to commemorate a decade since something they called the “Martin Place siege” happened there.

Passers-by who knew nothing about this “siege” would have been intrigued to witness Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, NSW Premier Chris Minns, Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Governor-General Sam Mostyn, assuming earnestly sombre facial expressions, bend over to carefully lay elaborate wreaths on otherwise innocuous slabs of concrete.

Politicians struggle to look authentic at the best of times, but this ceremony was even more awkward than usual.

If the 10-year commemoration attracted such political luminaries, a casual witness might have asked, why are they gathering on the footpath? If this “siege” is so significant, why is its commemoration being conducted in such an anodyne location?

Closer inspection reveals a plaque on the ground under the wreaths, which marks a “symbolic memorial of the spontaneous sea of floral tributes following the December 2014 siege”. So a memorial to a tribute then, not to the victims of the “siege”. Got it.

There would be a more honest and prominent reminder of the “siege” if the politicians who attended this morning didn’t prefer that you forgot it ever happened at all.

As soon as it was over, the politicians all went back to business as usual, which is to pretend that the government isn’t indirectly responsible for the deadly “siege” in the first place, and that their current policies haven’t contributed to ASIO declaring that another “siege” is “probable”.

The “siege” was in fact an Islamic terrorist attack. Man Monis, the perpetrator, had claimed to Australian authorities in 2001 that he and his family were being persecuted by the Iranian regime. He was duly granted refugee status and allowed to stay here. Whichever useless bureaucrat made that decision, however, failed to notice that Monis was instead a travel agent wanted by Iranian police for allegedly stealing $200,000 from his customers and perpetrating a string of violent and sexual attacks.

Iran requested he be extradited, but Australian authorities, playing their usual role of protection racket for some of the world’s nastiest creeps, denied it.

Monis expressed his gratitude for all this magnanimity by abusing Australian war veterans, sexually assaulting women, denouncing western liberalism, praising Islam and helping his girlfriend murder his ex wife. So the Immigration Department considered him a model migrant, obviously.

At 8:33am on this day ten years ago, he armed himself with a sawn-off pump-action shotgun, casually walked into the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, took 18 people hostage, and flew a flag bearing the Islamic creed in the window. The siege lasted for 16 hours, and ended with Monis and two of the hostages – Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson – dead.

If the federal bureaucracy was less concerned about virtue signalling than it was about keeping Australia safe, none of this would have happened. The politicians laying those wreaths this morning know this, which is why their expressions of sombre reflection were about as authentic as Bruce Pascoe performing a Welcome to Country.

It goes without saying that neither Minns nor Albanese mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam” once in their statements about the commemoration.

There might be nothing to remind passers-by at this site of the fatal consequences of allowing Islam to take hold in the west, but last April there was an unequivocal reminder at the same location of the respect Islamists demand from the country to which they migrate. Here is footage from outside the former Lindt Cafe in April this year.

As coincidence would have it, news broke this same morning that the Sydney suburb of Chester Hill, which is 40 per cent Islamic, had been rocked by a hate-speech incident. Someone had sprayed “Fuck Islam” on an underpass pylon. Minns was quick to respond: “Vandalism like this that is aimed at particular religions is designed to incite hatred and is completely abhorrent,” he said. “Division and conflict from around the world cannot be allowed to be imported onto the streets of Sydney.”

But it is allowed. Nobody has yet been charged for chanting “Gas the Jews” in front of police on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 8 last year; nor do the police who block peaceful citizens from going about their business in the Sydney CBD every Sunday arrest any of the protesters for chanting the genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea…”

There is a line in the sand, and Minns knows where it is. He can spout platitudes about threats to “the fabric of our multicultural state”, but if he so much as hints that that fabric might not look so frayed if one thread of it wasn’t trying to weave the rest of it into a Persian rug, he will feel the righteous wrath of the morally offended. And by that I don’t mean Islamists, but their “liberal” apologists in the mainstream media, especially the ABC and SBS.

Meanwhile, Martin Place, like all pedestrian areas of the city, has now been decorated with concrete bollards that supposedly protect us from another “siege”, but do little to address the true cause. With unintended irony, the Ambulance Service, Fire Service and Police also laid wreaths today – on one of the bollards near where the attack occurred – a bollard designed to protect us from further “sieges”.

What a vivid illustration of the impotence and deception of our leaders and institutions.

If Johnson and Dawson could dodge shrapnel as well as our political leaders duck the truth, they’d still be alive.

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Fred Pawle is one of Australia’s most experienced journalists. He worked for many years at The Australian newspaper. Surfer, veteran journalist and author Fred Pawle brings a larrikin perspective to the issues that perplex ordinary Australians. Are you bewildered by the conformity of politics, the idiocy of academia and the cultural authoritarianism of corporations? So is Fred. His scathing yet lyrical writing style presents a uniquely entertaining take on the Land Down Under.