Broadcast 19 December 2025, 3:19pm - 3:22pm
Transcript
HOST: The Governor-General has described the growing floral tribute outside the Bondi Pavilion as a scene of great somberness. Speaking to Sky News, Sam Mostyn says it's her role as The King's representative in Australia to reflect the light and shade of the country. The Governor-General also revealing that she's been heckled by some members of the community this week in the aftermath of the attack.
GOVERNOR-GENERAL: Of course there is anger, of course there is much that is yet to be unpacked and debated. And of course, I just have to remind all of the people that watch you and that watch me around wherever I go, I'm not a member of the government. I am absolutely something quite different. I have no politics, I have no policies, I have no money to dispense, no programs to give. I am what Sir Zelman Cowen, the Jewish Governor-General from whom I have taken great light since before I started in this role, said explained the role.
The role of the Governor-General is to be above and beyond and to be the person who represents Australia all the time. But in these moments, he always said that it was the job of the Governor-General to reflect the light and shade of the country, to interpret the country back to itself and to act as almost like a lightning rod for the healing and unity that the country must now pursue.
I believe deeply in the words of Sir Zelman Cowen and of another predecessor of mine, Sir William Deane, still alive in Canberra as a 94 year old, who told me when I started in this role, that the job is about acts of compassion and standing beside communities.
Always, from the moment this occurred, I have been standing beside the Jewish community. I've been calling this absolutely as an antisemitic attack on Jewish Australians, on Australians, on Jews around the world. A heinous, ghastly, atrocious of a kind we should never have expected in this country.
It is indeed a moment of shade, as Sir Zelman Cowen described it. Now there are many, many people who are calling out to me, yelling at me. I'm happy to absorb their pain and their anger at the moment, telling me that I should sack governments, that I should have sacked governments before.
I guess it's an important civics lesson just to remind people that that is not one of my powers in these moments. That there are matters before governments and before politicians that are dealt with in our responsible and representative government, our system of government, our democracy, which is the envy of the world. Where the power of who is in office in the States and territories and our local governments and at the Commonwealth level are held by the people, compulsory voting, independent electoral commission - all of these things to make us a beacon of the world, our democracy.
And in moments like this, of course, people are angry. And I know they're directing their pain and their anger in many directions, and I'm happy to take their pain and absorb that and then reflect the fact that my job is to help people know where those solutions sit.
And they don't sit with the Office of the Governor-General. What sits with me is to hold the country, to hold the very best of us, to know that two things can be true at the same time, that the very best things can be happening while the very worst things are happening.
And we saw that on Sunday. And we'll keep seeing that if we let it. We'll keep seeing bad things in response to the good things. We're seeing the rise of the community, a communitarian spirit around the country.
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