Australia, that sun-drenched repository for the world’s most venomous spiders and most mediocre politicians, has finally done it. In a display of legislative agility usually reserved for voting themselves a pay rise, the Canberra clown car has passed a suite of ‘tough’ new hate crime and gun laws. This comes, of course, exactly when it is most useless: weeks after fifteen people were slaughtered at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach. There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh ink on a bill to cover up the lingering scent of cordite and irony.

The culprits, Sajid Akram and his son Naveed, decided that the best way to spend some quality father-son time was to engage in the nation’s worst mass shooting in nearly thirty years. It is a touching vignette of familial bonding, provided your idea of a family heirloom is a high-capacity magazine and a heart full of ancient, recycled grievances. While the rest of the world’s fathers and sons are arguing over who forgot to mow the lawn, the Akrams were busy reminding Australia that its vaunted ‘strict’ gun control is about as effective as a screen door on a submarine when faced with someone who simply doesn't care about the rules.

Naturally, the political class reacted with their favorite sedative: ‘National Soul-Searching.’ This is a phrase used by governments when they have no idea what to do but want to sound profound while doing nothing. They search for a 'soul' in a demographic that spends sixteen hours a day arguing about real estate prices and coffee blends. The soul-searching, it seems, led them to the conclusion that if they just make ‘hate’ more illegal, people will stop hating. It is a stunningly naive bit of alchemy. They believe that by rearranging the legal definitions of bigotry, they can somehow lobotomize the tribalistic urges that have defined human misery since we first crawled out of the muck.

Both sides of the aisle, usually busy pointing fingers at each other’s corruption, managed to find common ground in this performance. The Left preened about 'safety' and 'inclusivity,' as if a new statute could magically dissolve the antisemitism that has been simmering in the shadows of their multicultural utopia. The Right, meanwhile, grunted about 'security' while failing to explain how their previous decades of governance allowed a father-son duo to stockpile enough hardware to turn a religious festival into a morgue. It is a bipartisan failure wrapped in a bipartisan ribbon of self-congratulation.

The new laws target 'hate crimes' as if there’s a version of mass murder that is motivated by mild annoyance or a misunderstanding about a parking spot. To the victim of a bullet, the ideological motivation of the shooter is a tertiary concern at best. But to a politician, the motivation is everything—it’s the leverage they need to expand surveillance, restrict speech, and pretend they are ‘fighting’ an abstract noun. We are told that these laws will prevent future tragedies. This is the same lie told after Port Arthur, and yet, here we are, staring at the sand of Sydney’s most famous beach, now seasoned with the blood of people who were just trying to celebrate a holiday.

The reality is that Australia’s smug sense of superiority over the gun-toting Americans has been punctured by a very simple truth: laws only govern those who have something to lose. For the fanatic, for the man who sees his son not as a legacy but as a tactical partner, the law is just a suggestion. Stiffening the penalties for hate crimes is like increasing the fine for a suicide bomber. It is a performance for the survivors, a way to tell the public that the state is still in control, even when the state is clearly just a collection of terrified bureaucrats in expensive suits.

We will now endure months of editorials about 'cohesion' and 'tolerance,' written by people who wouldn't spend five minutes in a room with someone they disagree with. The Bondi shooting will be distilled into a talking point, a footnote in the next election cycle, and a reason to give the police more toys they shouldn't have. In the end, the only thing that has actually changed is the length of the criminal code. The hate remains, the stupidity remains, and the next 'national soul-search' is already scheduled for the next time someone realizes that the law is not a shield, but merely a very expensive piece of paper used to wipe away the stains of our collective incompetence.