I was walking down Elizabeth Street after collecting a parcel when the snarl of a motor pulled me from a daydream. I glimpsed, in my peripheral vision, the car roaring through the mall and then disappearing west along Bourke Street.
On the footpath, everyone was still, staring, astonished.
That was 20 January, the day that Dimitrious Gargasoulas allegedly rammed pedestrians along Melbourne’s iconic mall. Nearly 40 people were injured; six of them have since died.
Over the weekend, I walked past the same corner. The flowers and the toys and the hand-written tributes that, for several weeks, had commemorated the dead had been removed.
Today Bourke Street looks much as it ever did: the shoppers outside the Myers windows; the buskers competing with the rattle of trams; the men selling the Big Issue on the corner. Though the victims’ loved ones still grieve, as they probably always will, the rest of us are getting on with our lives, as Melbourne, quite rightly, refuses to cede a landmark to the memory of a hideous crime.
It could, however, have been very different.
When the news of the murders broke, activists from the far right circulated a (now-discredited) clip alleging that the driver had shouted “Allah Akbar” during the rampage.
What if that was true? What would have happened if the rantings of this man had taken on a specifically Islamic colouration? What if, instead of ranting on Facebook about Kurdish mythology, he’d posted about jihad or the caliphate – and an enterprising spokesman for Islamic State had endorsed his actions?
We all know the answer. Even if every other detail of the Bourke Street deaths stayed the same, the most tenuous link to Islam would have transformed the nation forever.
You’ll remember how Pauline Hanson interrupted a WA press conference to announce a terrorist attack in Melbourne and to denounce Muslims, migrants and refugees.
“If people don’t look right,” she said, “[if] they’re not going to assimilate into our society, have a different ideology, different beliefs, don’t abide by our laws, our culture, our way of life – don’t let them in.”
Had Hanson’s claims of a Muslim connection been based on a skerrick of evidence, others would have taken up her cry. We would have experienced a fresh assault on multiculturalism, a renewed call for Trump-style “extreme vetting” of immigrants. Pundits and shock jocks would have demanded surveillance of mosques, racial profiling and registration of imams: a necessary response to the existential threat facing Australia. New anti-terror laws would have been proposed, with both parties uniting to offer more funding and additional powers for Asio and other security agencies.
Sixteen years after 9/11, the “war on terror” has spawned an enormous infrastructure. From politicians to intelligence agents and from pundits to academics, there’s now a broad layer in Australia with a real and material interest in transforming every hint of Islamist activity into a fully-fledged panic.
Hanson, for instance, knows that a wave of Islamophobia in the wake of a terror attack would take One Nation to a new level, which was why she was so ready to jump the gun.
Of course, what Bourke Street actually demonstrated is that domestic violence and drug abuse cause far more misery in Australia than terrorism. But there are no votes in saying that – and, as soon as more details of Gargasoulas’ depressingly quotidian history of lumpen criminality emerged, Hanson said nothing else about the matter.
The deaths in the mall were, if anything, more grisly and more appalling than the Lindt Cafe siege – but, because the perpetrator didn’t mention Islam, they’ve had almost no political impact at all.
Personally, what I remember about 20 January isn’t the violence – which, in any case, took place so quickly as to barely register.
Instead, I remember the response afterward: the tremendous decency of the ordinary people unexpectedly caught up in tragedy. A little knot gathered beside those who’d been injured, doing whatever they could to assist before the emergency services arrived.
Everywhere around me, strangers behaved with surprising calm and kindness.
At the time, it seemed probable that we’d witnessed something comparable to the attacks in Berlin or Nice. A helicopter flew low overhead as police cars came screeching from all directions. Perhaps there would be other assailants. Perhaps there would be bombs. But I didn’t see any panic and I didn’t hear any bigotry – at least, not until I got home and turned on the TV.
The centre of Melbourne is as diverse as anywhere in the country. Yet, throughout the mall, people of varied backgrounds, ages and ethnicities comforted and reassured each other.
The whole ghastly episode reminded me of something it’s easy, these days, to forget – people are basically good, despite all the efforts to make them otherwise.
