The Aboriginal community in Perth and across the country is still reeling after an explosive device was allegedly thrown into the crowd at Boorloo’s Invasion Day rally on January 26.
A 31-year-old white man was arrested and charged after he allegedly threw a homemade fragment bomb into a large gathering of protesters in Forrest Place in Perth’s CBD.
It did not detonate, but police confirmed it was intended to — potentially injuring or killing dozens within the thousands-strong crowd.
The following days have, for some, exposed authorities’ lacklustre response in designating the incident as terrorism, particularly given the robust reaction to the Bondi terror attack.
The Australian media soon copped the same criticisms. Activists argued the muted response from mainstream news has largely shied away from calling the incident what it is: a targeted attack on the Aboriginal community on their day of national mourning.
So what exactly happened at the Boorloo Invasion Day rally, and why has it sparked such debate?
What happened at the Boorloo Invasion Day rally?
As many as 2,500 people were assembled in Forrest Place for an Invasion Day rally on January 26. WA Police responded when an object “about the size of a medium coffee cup” was thrown near the rally’s main stage from a balcony as Elders were addressing the crowd.
Eyewitnesses described a terrifying scene. “I’ve spoken more broadly with members of the Aboriginal community and they are shocked, horrified, scared and very concerned,” Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
A 31-year-old man, whose identity has been suppressed, was charged with one count of committing an unlawful act or omission with intent to harm, and one count of making or possession of explosives under suspicious circumstances.
He appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on January 27. He did not apply for bail and the matter was adjourned until February 17.
The circumstances are still being investigated, with WA Premier Roger Cook saying this week that a joint terror squad comprised of WA Police, the AFP and ASIO will decide if the alleged attack amounted to terrorism within the next few days.
But some argued it’s a few days too many, with members of the Aboriginal community slamming the seeming delay in reacting to the incident with the urgency it glaringly deserves.
What was authorities’ response?
It reportedly took police nearly 30 minutes to fully evacuate rally-goers after the bomb was thrown. Footage shows officers urging the crowd to disperse via loudspeakers.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said police would allege the “device was designed to explode upon impact”, but he stopped short of labelling the man’s intent.
In the initial stages, Blanch said police were treating the alleged bombing merely as a “hostile act”, and it wasn’t until January 28 — two days after the rally — that WA’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team confirmed it was being investigated as “a potential terrorist act” .
In an update provided on Monday, Cook confirmed the decision of the terror label was up to the joint terror squad, but said the circumstances certainly point towards that designation.
“We look on, as bystanders, at the circumstances of this horrible act and you would not be surprised if ultimately the Commonwealth makes that decision,” Cook said.
But for some, the apparent reluctance paled in comparison to the Bondi shooting, which was declared a a terrorism incident by NSW Police and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese within just hours of it occurring.
What was the community response?
The initial shock and fear among the community soon translated into a need for swift action.
Fabian Yarran, an organiser of the Boorloo Invasion Day rally, joined the chorus of voices pushing for the incident to be labelled terrorism, citing the significance of the day and the crowd of Aboriginal people and allies who attended the rally.
Yarran called out the “lacklustre” response to what he claimed was a “hate crime against First Nations people and protesters”.
“This incident must be fully investigated as an act of terrorism and a hate crime against First Nations people and protesters, and appropriately charged as such,” he said in a statement.
Yarran also “condemn[ed] any attempt to downplay the politicised motives” of the alleged perpetrator, and called for the recently announced royal commission into antisemitism, launched after the Bondi attack, to “be immediately expanded to include all forms of racism and far-right extremism”.
“What we are seeing is not an isolated issue; these threats impact many communities, and any serious inquiry must reflect that reality,” he said.
The sentiment was echoed by other voices. Sivaraman told P.TV he’s “glad authorities are treating it as terrorism-related [because] that seriousness is warranted”, but said that process “perhaps should’ve happened initially”.
What was the media response?
The same allegations of indifference were levelled against the media.
Critics claimed the story was quickly buried into the broader news cycle and that it’s dire implications were downplayed. Others argued that the media failed to condemn the incident with the same vigour as Bondi, calling out the apparent difference in the coverage of the two incidents.
The sheer scale of the Bondi tragedy, which left 15 people dead, warranted blanket news coverage — and while the smaller coverage of a bomb scare that thankfully resulted in no injuries might align with fast-paced newsrooms, some still feel the bomb scare was too quickly swept under the rug.
“There was no shock, no reckoning, no pause. The man’s identity was swiftly suppressed, his name withheld from public view, the story filed away, the nation’s pulse barely stirred,” Daniel James wrote for Crikey.
“Had an Aboriginal protester been accused of violence toward a mainstream civic crowd, the country would have erupted.”
Why has the response felt muted?
That feeling, of authorities’ and the media’s seeming indifference to the bomb scare, boils down to one thing, according to Sivaraman and many others.
“Violence that targets Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is often minimised or gaslit or overlooked,” he said. “That’s because of racism and the dehumanisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
Politicians said steps need to be taken before these racist implications can be confronted. Investigators must uncover the man’s ideological motivations before labelling him a terrorist, a process partly responsible for the delay. But some experts say that threshold was overwhelmingly met in Boorloo.
“I do not see any way this would not meet the threshold for terrorism,” Professor Debra Smith, who specialises in violent extremism, told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Smith said she understands the need for “caveated language” as investigators try to prove the terrorism threshold, particularly given the relatively scarce information we have of the alleged bomber in comparison to the “very clear terrorist attack that happened at Bondi”.
Even still, Smith stressed the incidents should be treated equally. “We’ve talked about it in our team and none of us can see a way that this is not a terrorist attack,” she said.
What’s next?
A call on whether it was a terrorist incident will be made by the end of the week. That designation would allow what happened in Boorloo to be treated with the severity that many say it deserves, both symbolically and in the eyes of the law.
“It’s significant because it elevates the offense to one that’s about threatening an entire community or one that’s ideologically based or racist in its origin,” Sivaraman said. “It makes clear that this person was trying to harm that community as a whole and that’s significant.”
On Tuesday — more than a week after the incident — the Senate passed a motion officially condemning the alleged bombing, at which point various politicians had begun speaking more directly about the implications.
Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said it was an “attack on the social cohesion of the Australian community”, while Greens leader Larissa Waters said the response shows the “brutal truth” that “not all acts of hate are treated equally in this country.”
The accused bomber may face a slew of additional charges ahead of his court appearance if his actions are believed to be terrorism. But regardless of how the case is treated moving forward, some say the damage of the collective response has already been done.
“This appears to continue a trend of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s lives being seen as lesser and not as valuable or not as important,” Sivaraman said.
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