At the Bondi vigil, Pauline and Barnaby turned tragedy into opportunism. It is inexcusable | Julianne Schultz

Mourners crowded around a sea of flowers behind the Bondi Pavilion on Tuesday, quietly singing a traditional song of peace. Shalom, shalom, they whispered in unison, grief settling in like the grey clouds above.

The emotional intensity of the moment was suddenly broken by shouts: “Albo must go”, and then a rejoinder, “What did you do? You’re in the parliament too.” The singing stopped. Confused, I looked over.

There, standing at the front of the crowd, surrounded by besuited security personnel and journalists, were two of the most egregious opportunists ever to be elected to the Australian parliament – Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce.

Amid the press of modestly dressed people, their faces contorted by sadness, the duo stood out, dressed to perform for the cameras.

Hanson, who has done more than any other politician to foster division since she was first elected in 1996, was talking about freedom and safety and the right to live “without fear”. Hanson said she wanted hate preachers “rounded up”. And reiterated the rallying call of her career, “Let’s get back the Australia I grew up in … I look at the people we are bringing to the country. Certain countries they should not be allowed to migrate here.”

Some, including a man in a Maga cap, clearly welcomed her empty words, holding up their phones to capture them and then pressing even closer for selfies. “We love you Pauline”, “You’re the only one who speaks the truth.”

Not everyone agreed.

At the entrance to the memorial a team of volunteers from Turbans 4 Australia were handing out food, fruit and water to anyone who needed sustenance. “Australians reject extremes,” one Sikh man told me, as he struggled to absorb her message. “If she had her way I wouldn’t be allowed to be here.”

Presumably Syria and Russia – the homelands of Ahmed al-Ahmed, Reuven Morrison and Boris and Sofia Gurman, the “heroes” who offered their lives to tackle the gunmen – would not be on her list either.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the overwhelming public sentiment has been that this was not just a targeted killing of Jewish Australians, but an attack on the very idea of the nation, as an inclusive society where fairness and tolerance were considered virtues, safety for most people most of the time was assumed and religion did not play a defining role.

That this could happen in a place that brings joy, a place that vies with the Sydney Opera House as the nation’s international calling card, was breathtaking. We know from tragic experience that for terror to work its evil, iconic places are always the preferred targets and human beings the collateral damage.

That the political response should so quickly descend into opportunism, name-calling and hair-splitting – about whether to tackle the evident flaws in the nation’s much-vaunted gun laws or antisemitism – was an even more powerful marker of the times we live in.

Of course, both must be addressed, seriously and substantially, not simply by hiding behind process, referring to reviews or demanding more surveillance.

Australians are not alone in struggling with hard conversations that demand more than superficial answers, but when the major parties – even in the face of tragedy – cannot agree on the basics, that is a dereliction of their responsibility. As the song says: We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on Earth we come … we are Australian.

Having listened to Hanson’s self-aggrandising comments, I was still taken aback to hear her quip as she moved through the crowd to leave the memorial site, “Next time I might wear an Israeli flag into the parliament and see what they do.” To turn this tragedy, which goes to what the writer Julie Macken has called the schism in the soul of the nation, into a pantomime as Pauline and Barnaby are wont to do is inexcusable.

This past year, so much of what was once unimaginable has become almost normal. The tone was set at the White House in January and has not abated.

Vile racist, misogynist and antisemitic language has been celebrated under the phoney rubric of free speech, angry mobs online have gone unchallenged, superpowers have tested the limits of what they can get away with, nations have struggled to hang on to a unifying sense of identity and purpose, fear and anxiety are pervasive. It is scarcely surprising that under these circumstances some people become prey to demagogues, while most retreat to the comfort of their families and loved ones.

Some call 2025 a “hinge year” – a year when we glimpsed a new inhumane order, shaped by those with unaccountable power and wealth. We can only hope that pollster Kos Samaras is correct when he wrote that people see through those who “seek to weaponise grief, hunt for scapegoats and turn fear into a wedge.”

We cannot allow this cruel political pantomime become the new normal. Tackling it will require determination, courage and humility, like that displayed by Ahmed al-Ahmed, Reuven Morrison, and Boris and Sofia Gurman – decent people who followed their instincts to protect others at whatever cost.