In a development that has sent tremors through the chattering classes of both hemispheres, the alleged Bondi gunman, a fellow of such singular ineptitude that one wonders if his weapon was loaded with blancmange, now faces a further 19 charges. This brings the grand total of accusations to a number that would make even a televangelist blush. The authorities, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to add 'discharging a firearm in a manner likely to cause alarm' to the list, as if the initial 37 charges weren't enough to induce a collective nervous breakdown among the beach-going public.
But let us pause, dear reader, to consider the sheer theatre of it all. Here is a man who, by all accounts, attempted to turn a sun-drenched Sunday into a scene from a Coen brothers film, but succeeded only in proving that the average Bondi hipster is more terrified of a spilled flat white than a hail of bullets. The charges now include 'possession of an unlicensed firearm', a detail that will no doubt shock the nation's vast community of unlicensed firearm possessors who were, until now, operating under the blissful assumption that their activities were perfectly legal.
Meanwhile, the British Foreign Office, that stalwart guardian of the realm's sunburnt holidaymakers, has issued a statement that can only be described as a masterpiece of understatement. 'We advise British nationals to remain vigilant and follow the instructions of local authorities,' they intone, as if the average tourist from Slough has any intention of doing anything other than getting lashed on cheap rosé and arguing about the price of a prawn sandwich. The security lapses, it transpires, are not so much lapses as gaping chasms in the fabric of Australian public safety. It emerges that the gunman, a man whose social media presence alone should have set off every alarm in the Southern Hemisphere, was known to police for a litany of minor infractions that would make a traffic warden weep.
One cannot help but marvel at the exquisite absurdity of it all. Here is a nation that spends millions on border security to keep out the occasional smuggled avocado, yet fails to prevent a clearly unhinged individual from wandering onto a public beach with a weapon that could, in the right hands, cause a significant amount of mussel-dread. The charges, we are told, are 'the result of a thorough investigation', a phrase that in the lexicon of officialdom means 'we found a few more things we could pin on him after the fact'.
As the sun sets on another day of Australian farce, one is left to ponder the eternal question: What is the point of a warning system if the warnings are ignored? The British tourists, those intrepid explorers of the global hangover, will no doubt continue to flock to Bondi, their spirits undampened by the prospect of being caught in a crossfire between a madman and a bumbling constabulary. For they know, as we all do, that the greatest threat to their safety is not the gunman, but the exorbitant cost of a beachside cocktail.
