By Zac de Silva, Grace Crivellaro and Tess Ikonomou in Canberra

Immigration has been dragged back into focus following the Bondi massacre, amid calls from the coalition to put a spotlight on “Australian values”.

Police and intelligence officials are investigating the massacre at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s most famous beach.

Naveed Akram, 24, and his father Sajid Akram, 50, opened fire on attendees, killing 15 people and wounding 40.

Naveed is under police guard and likely to face criminal charges, while Sajid was killed at the scene.

Anthony Albanese is facing criticism his government has been slow to tackle anti-Semitism.

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said “all the warning signs were there” that hatred of Jewish people was ramping up.

“In a cynical ploy to protect his voting base in southwest Sydney, he’s trying to switch the conversation to gun reform,” he said in a video uploaded to social media.

“What we really need to talk about is immigration, is citizenship, is education, we need to talk about Australian values and what we want our country to look like.

“We need to differentiate between those who love Australia, our people and our values, and those who hate us.

“The time is right now”.

Defending Labor’s track record, Mr Albanese on Monday listed action taken including criminalising hate speech advocating violence, funding Jewish community groups and promoting inclusivity for Jewish students and staff at university campuses.

“We have taken strong action. We’ll continue to work with the community,” he told reporters.

“Anti-Semitism is a scourge. It’s been around for a long period of time. We need to do whatever we can to stamp it out.”

After the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue in 2024, the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel warning for Jews coming to Australia.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the centre’s associate dean, said he wanted to remove the cautionary notice, but the attack at Bondi made it difficult.

“You’d have to say that (Sunday’s) attack was inevitable,” he told AAP.

Dr Cooper said he was concerned about the language used by some pro-Palestinian protesters, who compared the actions of the Netanyahu government to those of the Nazis.

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender said the Jewish community was frustrated by the government’s slow response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism.

The delayed response to the recommendations in the report by Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Jillian Segal was “simply not good enough”, she told Nine’s Today show.

“This is the worst that anyone can imagine. And so I think that there is anger there,” Ms Spender said.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the government must implement the report.

“We can’t afford to have an approach by the government that treats anti-Semitism as a problem to be managed, not an evil to be eradicated,” she told ABC News Breakfast.

News all day, every day at CityNews.com.au.