Deliberating after Violence: Parliamentary Debate after the Bondi Terror Attack

Description

After extremist attacks, parliamentary debates can serve as critical sites for shaping public discourse and reinforcing democratic resilience, provided they exhibit high deliberative quality. This paper examines the deliberative quality of parliamentary debates following the 2026 Bondi terror attack in Sydney, combining qualitative discourse analysis with computational text methods. The analysis shows that, although a degree of cross-party agreement was eventually reached in both cases, deliberative quality was consistently low across all four debates in the New South Wales and federal parliaments. The paper argues that poor deliberative quality in parliament carries broader consequences, including polarisation and the curtailment of democratic freedoms such as protest and free expression. The paper is co-authored with Emily Foley, Jordan McSwiney and Tariq Chouchair.

Period	4 Jun 2026 → 6 Jun 2026
Held at	University of Melbourne, Australia, Victoria
Degree of Recognition	National