Democratic Resilience in Retreat: Australia’s Response to the 2002 Bali Bombings

Abstract

This article takes democratic resilience as a means of exploring the quality of public dialogue following a violent extremist attack. Drawing on the normative theory of deliberative democracy, it argues that democratic resilience requires meaningful deliberations in the public sphere following extremist attacks. It focuses on the responses of political leaders and news media in Australia regarding the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia and asks whether and to what extent these responses fostered democratic resilience. A critical discourse analysis of these responses suggests that although the initial political discourse emphasised democratic values and multiculturalism, this rhetoric did not translate into practice. The initial messages of harmony and tolerance were lost in subsequent discourses of national unity, national sacrifice and collective responsibility, which emphasised an ‘us versus them’ narrative, and reinforced racial prejudices. As a result, the public sphere lacked the reflective and inclusive dialogue needed to foster democratic resilience.

Introduction

On 12 October 2002, the jihadist terror group Jemaah Islamiyah detonated three bombs on the Indonesian island of Bali. A popular tourist destination, the blasts killed 202 people including 88 Australians, marking the most significant loss of life of Australians to a violent extremist attack (National Museum of Australia, 2024). The attacks ‘ended any sense of careless abandon that Australia may have had’ and would forever mark the ‘psyche of our nation’ according to the conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard (in AAP, 2003). The timing of the Bali bombings, just a year after the September 11 attacks in the United States, also represented a ‘material change in the global and regional security environment for Australia’ (McDonald, 2005b: 308) and reinforced Australia’s participation in the US-led global ‘war on terror’ (Lewis, 2006; McDonald and Merefield, 2010). Controversial counter-terrorism laws, under consideration after 9/11, were soon passed, raising concerns about civil liberties (McDonald, 2005a). Meanwhile, the normalisation of anti-Muslim racism, which had already approached a degree of cultural and institutional hegemony in the wake of 9/11 and the Tampa affair ¹ (Poynting and Mason, 2006, 2007) was accelerated.

Despite these lasting effects, examination of what the attacks meant for Australian democracy and how resilient Australia’s democracy was in response to the attacks has been limited. Resilience is conventionally understood as an expression of continuity and recovery following crises (Holloway and Manwaring, 2023). In the study of democracy, resilience is generally treated as a regime-level marker of the capacity of a political system to resist democratic decline or polarisation (Lieberman et al., 2022; Merkel and Lührmann, 2021). Yet, this leaves the consideration of the democratic impacts of a violent extremist attack within the frame of a liberal understanding of democracy, focused on preserving the integrity of the formal institutions and procedures of democracy, such as free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power, and the balance between security considerations and individual civil liberties (e.g. Lenard, 2020; Wilkinson, 2006). While such a response may indeed signal the resilience of the political system, it tells us comparatively little about its democratic qualities, and whether they are eroded, sustained or possibly even enhanced in response to a crisis such as a violent extremist attack.

Drawing on the theory of deliberative democracy, this article introduces a distinctly deliberative approach to democratic resilience as a means of exploring the quality of democracy in the aftermath of a violent extremist attack. Deliberative democracy turns our attention from institutional and procedural understandings of (liberal) democracy to the quality of public communications in the public sphere, a site where issues of common concern are identified, articulated and deliberated (Bächtiger et al., 2018). When seen from a deliberative perspective, democratic resilience is not merely about the continuity of democratic institutions like parliaments, the capacity for political systems to recover a prior status quo, or balancing between rights and security – important as all these matters may be for a democracy. Rather, what matters is the capacity of the public sphere to retain (and even deepen) its democratic qualities, understood in deliberative terms in: the capacity for meaningful, inclusive and reflective dialogue (Bächtiger and Dryzek, 2024; Dryzek, 2002).

This article takes democratic resilience as a frame to explore public dialogue in Australia in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia. Through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the responses of two key Australian public sphere actors, political leaders and news media, this article examines democratic resilience in the year following the bombings. Bali is an apt case for studying democratic resilience in Australia not only because of the enduring cultural and political significance of the attack, but also because the attacks presented a potential inflection point for revisiting the social imaginary of Australia at the moment when its ‘innocence’ (Sobocinska, 2011) was said to be lost.

This research makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to understanding the potential of deliberation in fostering democratic resilience in times of crisis. While the initial response of political leaders to the Bali bombings emphasised liberal values like tolerance and celebrated Australia’s multicultural character, these declarations failed to translate into meaningful, inclusive dialogue. This lack of genuine engagement exposed the tokenistic nature of the response, which quickly devolved into an ‘us versus them’ narrative, particularly in the context of a highly sensationalist media environment and the use of potent symbolic framings like First World War Anzacs. As a result, the space for deliberations was extremely limited. Key deliberative qualities like inclusion, critical reflection and reason-giving were largely absent, as the voices of minoritised groups were further marginalized, and dissenting opinions were sidelined. As this article demonstrates, it is not enough to think of democratic resilience in terms of the continuity and robustness of formal (liberal) democratic institutions and process. Instead, a meaningful democratic form of resilience requires attentiveness to the quality of public deliberations in the face of crises.

A Deliberative Approach to Democratic Resilience in the Aftermath of Violent Extremism

Deliberative democracy is a normative theory of democratic legitimacy based on the principle that those affected by collective decisions have the right, capacity and opportunity to participate in consequential deliberation in the making of those decisions (Dryzek, 2002). As a ‘talk-centric’ approach to democracy (Chambers, 2003), deliberation requires the mutual exchanges of reasoned positions and the weighing and consideration of the views of others with an openness to change one’s own position (Ercan and Dryzek, 2015). Deliberative democracy has been increasingly used as a framework to critically analyse how democracies respond to a range of contemporary challenges, including extremism (Bächtiger and Dryzek, 2024).

The public sphere plays a central role in deliberative conceptions of democracy. The public sphere constitutes the totality of deliberation in public life (Bächtiger et al., 2018). It is here that social and political issues are identified, articulated and furnished with possible solutions (Habermas, 1996), and where collective identities are constructed, articulated and validated or challenged (Hendriks et al., 2020; Mendonça et al., 2022). The public sphere fulfils several key democratic functions, facilitating the free flow of information and communication among citizens, mediating between state and society, and enabling the formation of shared identities, connections and alliances across difference (Calhoun, 2002; Hendriks et al., 2020). The quality of deliberation in the public sphere matters for its capacity to perform these democratic functions. While deliberative democrats suggest a variety of standards that could serve as a benchmark to assess the deliberative quality of the public sphere, in essence they involve inclusion, reason-giving, mutual respect, listening and critical reflection (Bächtiger et al., 2018). Such standards are important as they ensure diverse peoples and perspectives are included with the capacity for communication and solidarities across differences, contending claims can be weighed and the effects of coercive forms of power on decision-making are limited (Ercan et al., 2019; Hendriks, 2009; Young, 2000).

Through violence, extremists can disrupt the democratic standards and functions of the public sphere. As well as inflicting injuries and the loss of lives, acts of violent extremism can deepen social divisions, radicalise particular segments of the population and undermine the legitimacy of governments (Bjørgo and Jupskås, 2021; English, 2016; Krause, 2018), destabilising the formal institutions and processes of democracy (Alexander, 2006). Despite the essentially communicative nature of violent extremism (Solheim and Jupskås, 2021), the effects of such acts, and extremism more generally, on the wider public sphere have been largely overlooked (Ercan et al., 2025; McSwiney et al., 2025; Sengul and McSwiney, 2024). Hence, in addition to targeting specific groups, governments or institutions, violent extremist attacks can also be viewed as an attempt reconstitute the public sphere and change its terms of engagement (Cowen, 2006; Fuji, 2021). Violent extremist attacks aim to inflame inter-group conflicts, polarising the public sphere around identify markers such as nationality or religion and push publics to take a side in an ‘us versus them’ competition (Krause, 2018; Parker, 2019; Volker, 2023). This limits the possibilities for inclusive and reflective exchanges across differences that are central to quality deliberation. Violent extremism may also distort processes of opinion formation, another key democratic function of the public sphere, by inducing an immediate reaction from government that may bypass usual decision-making processes, policy deliberations and media scrutiny (McSwiney et al., 2025). In these ways, violent extremist attacks present a direct challenge to the public sphere, and by extension, democracy.

What might democratic resilience look like in the face of such challenges? Political scientists have generally treated democratic resilience a regime-level indicator of the capacity of a political system to resist democratic backsliding (Burnell and Calvert, 1999; Holloway and Manwaring, 2023; Merkel and Lührmann, 2021) or political polarisation (Lieberman et al., 2022). In research on terrorism and violent extremism, resilience is treated as the capacity for individuals, communities or societies to resist extremist radicalisation and recover from an extremist attack (McNeil-Willson and Triandafyllidou, 2023; Stephens et al., 2021). A deliberative approach to democratic resilience shifts the focus of resilience, turning to the public sphere as a space ‘where democratic resilience can be observed and strengthened’ (Ercan et al., 2025: 2; see also McSwiney et al., 2025). From this perspective, democratic resilience is understood as the capacity for the public sphere to sustain reflective, competent and inclusive deliberations. Deliberation here is not aimed at building consensus. Rather, it is about the creation and maintenance of conditions wherein different views can be voiced and meaningfully engage with one another. A democratically resilient public sphere is one where the capacity for deliberation across differences is maintained, even during crises (Ercan et al., 2025), where diverse perspectives are meaningfully engaged, rather than silenced or sidelined (Curato, 2019).

Such a response to a violent extremist attack is not just a desirable theoretical possibility. As Fitzpatrick and Beausoleil (2025) demonstrate in their analysis of Aotearoa New Zealand in the aftermath of the 2019 Christchurch massacre, democratic resilience from a deliberative perspective is possible – even if it is not necessarily evenly distributed or sustained across the polity. However, as they show, democratic resilience does not happen by chance. The way in which key public sphere actors, like political leaders and news media, respond to threats like extremist attacks is crucial for democratic resilience. Their responses are key to shaping public perceptions of events and the scope of policy debates, as well as identifying affected publics and establishing norms of interaction in the public sphere (Eyerman, 2011; Hajer and Uitermark, 2008; Lewis, 2005; Norris et al., 2003; Vatnoey, 2015). They also have long lasting effects beyond the public sphere, such as exacerbating and legitimising racist harassment and violence (Abdel-Fattah, 2021; Poynting et al., 2004). Democratic resilience is a long-term process that may change over time in response to major shocks like a violent extremist attack; it does not necessarily remain stable but requires ongoing political work to sustain (Ercan et al., 2025; Fitzpatrick and Beausoleil, 2025). Yet, it is in the immediate aftermath where the initial norms and parameters of public discourse are established that stand to have the most significant impacts on future deliberations (Ercan et al., 2025; McSwiney et al., 2025).

The Bali Bombings and Their Impacts in the Australian Public Sphere

The 2002 Bali bombings were carried out by a cell of the al-Qaeda–affiliated jihadist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Three bombs were detonated on the Indonesian island of Bali: one in front of the American consulate, followed by two larger bombs in the tourist district of Kuta; one inside Paddy’s Irish Pub and another outside the Sari Club. Timed to coincide with one of the busiest periods for international tourists, the attacks killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and injured 209. Along with the immense personal tragedies, the Bali bombings have had a lasting cultural and political impact in Australia. Indeed, they have entered a space of almost spiritual significance in the Australian national imaginary, as Bali has become ‘a place, like London and Gallipoli, where something of the Australian spirit dwells upon another shore’ (Gillard, 2012; see also Commonwealth, 2022).

The attacks came at a time of heightened anxiety in Australia. The federal election in November 2001 had resulted in John Howard’s conservative Liberal-National Coalition government returned to power with an increased majority. Security and border protection were the issues of the day, combining the post 9/11 ‘war on terror’ with anti-asylum seeker sentiment in response to the Tampa affair (McAllister, 2003) in a campaign where Howard whistled up the ‘dogs of racism and xenophobia’ (Brett, 2007: 85). As Moreton-Robinson (2015: 148) writes, 9/11 and Tampa served to position Muslims as the external Other threatening (white) Australia, which Howard was able to successful mobilise ‘mainstream’ Australia against during the 2001 federal election (Johnson, 2002). By the time of the Bali bombings, Australian forces had already been in Afghanistan for nearly a year and the attacks became a further justification for Australia’s continued and expanded involvement in the ‘war on terror’ (Lewis, 2006; Lewis and de Masi, 2007).

In this context, the Bali bombings amounted to a serious blow to the comfortable self-assuredness of Australia. The attacks contributed to newfound and widespread public concerns about terrorism in Australia (Pietsch and McAllister, 2012) and challenged an ‘inchoate but significant sense of [Australia’s] regional belonging’ (Lewis and de Masi, 2007: 62). In doing so, the attacks reinforced an Australian sense of cultural isolation and invasion anxiety (Lewis, 2005). The cultural significance of Bali as a popular tourist destination on ‘Australia’s doorstep’ meant that the attack was seen as ‘local’ (Lewis, 2006; Poynting et al., 2004) and so undercut, as Howard put it, a complacent attitude among Australian’s that ‘it [violent extremism] can’t happen here’ (in Lewis, 2005: 23). The bombings marked a radical shift in the way Australians conceptualised terrorism ‘from a nuisance criminal behaviour that predominantly affected parts of the Middle East, to an immediate security problem on Australia’s doorstep’ (Ungerer, 2006: 196).

The Bali bombings also contributed to a narrowing frame of reference for national identity already underway in Australia. Howard and his government’s general ‘unease’ with the previous Hawke-Keating era consensus on multiculturalism was well established before 2002 (Brett, 2003; Curran, 2004), and Islamophobia had already attained a degree of cultural and institutional hegemony in Australia (Poynting and Mason, 2006, 2007). However, the normalisation of Islamophobia accelerated significantly after Bali, with ‘the presence of Muslims in the nation increasingly considered in terms of “invasion”’ (Wilson and Valencia, 2024: 88–89). Islam, Muslims and those perceived as Muslims were increasingly portrayed as terrorists or supportive of terrorism in both political and media discourses (Lewis and de Masi, 2007; Mahony, 2010). Such tropes contributed to a racialised framing ‘of those of Arabic-speaking background, Middle Eastern appearance or Muslim faith . . . as a “dangerous other”, radically different from an implicit Australian norm’ (Poynting et al., 2004: 6), foreshadowing several decades of increasingly mainstream anti-Muslim racism in Australia (Poynting and Briskman, 2018).

Research Design

This article adopts a critical discursive approach to examine how Australian media and political leaders responded to in the 2002 Bali bombings and what these responses meant for democratic resilience understood in deliberative terms. CDA is principally concerned with how power and inequality are ‘enacted, reproduced, legitimated and resisted by text and talk’ (van Dijk Teun, 2015a: 466), and how these discourses can ‘legitimise the processes and decisions of the politically powerful and/or the state’ (Wodak, 2008: 56). It has a long tradition of examining elite discourses, such as those of media and political elites, and their reproduction of division, exclusion and racism (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; van Dijk Teun, 2015b, 2017). CDA allows us to examine how these discourses may be ideological in their shaping of ‘the representation of events and persons for particular ends’ (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 5). As Wodak (2014: 31) writes, ‘CDA studies not a linguistic unit per se but rather social phenomena’ – in this case, democratic resilience in the aftermath of a violent extremist attack. Given the focus on how discourses influenced the broader public sphere, here the analysis focuses on the macro level of discourse, rather than micro-linguistic components of speech acts.

Empirically, the article draws on Australian legacy newspaper articles and federal parliamentary transcripts (Hansard) of speeches relating to the attack over the period 12 October 2002–12 October 2003. This period, covering the immediate aftermath up to the first year commemoration of an attack is a critical period for democratic resilience. While democratic resilience is a potentially long-term process, it is in the immediate responses to a crisis such as a violent extremist attack where the norms for subsequent deliberations are established (Ercan et al., 2025; McSwiney et al., 2025). Political leaders and news media are two key public sphere actors in this regard, given their responses play a central role in shaping public perceptions of events (Eyerman, 2011; Hajer and Uitermark, 2008; Vatnoey, 2015).

The corpus of news media is comprised of coverage in six daily papers collected from the Factiva database (n = 463) based on the search string ‘Bali (Bombing) (terror) (2002)’. The papers are broadly representative of the concentration of media ownership and include the News Corp-owned right-wing national broadsheet The Australian and dailies The Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier Mail, as well as the ostensibly centre-left Fairfax-owned The Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald, along with their weekend editions. Collectively, the papers cover the bulk of newspaper circulation in Australia.

This is combined with federal parliamentary transcripts (Hansard) from both chambers of the Australian parliament using the same search string (n = 48). Though parliamentary debates are typically excluded from deliberative accounts of the public sphere, given parliaments are a limited discursive field not open to the participation of everyday citizens (Habermas, 1991; Seeliger and Sevignani, 2022), political leaders are nevertheless critical public sphere actors in their own right. They play a key role in shaping public conversation, particularly in the aftermath of a violent extremist attack both in their parliamentary addresses (which circulate and are responded to in the wider public sphere) and through their direct engagements in the public sphere through, for example, media appearances (Anwar and Sumpter, 2022; Hajer and Uitermark, 2008; Rafoss, 2019; Vatnoey, 2015).

As an ‘abductive and pragmatic’ methodology, data were analysed recursively throughout the CDA, moving back and forth between theory and the corpus of texts (Wodak and Meyer, 2001: 17). First, macro discourses were identified, before proceeding to a deeper reading of the materials to examine the particular discursive strategies and their connection to wider social and political processes. In particular, the analysis of discursive practices focused on the ways that Australian political leaders and news media represented the attack, those affected and those responsible, and furnished potential solutions or responses to the events. These four dimensions speak to key factors for democratic resilience in the public sphere in the aftermath of violent extremism. This includes how collective identities are constructed, the level of attention to differences within and across different groups and whether public sphere actors can acknowledge and share public anxieties without recourse to divisive language (Ercan et al., 2025; Fitzpatrick and Beausoleil, 2025; McSwiney et al., 2025). Such matters are directly related to the question of democratic resilience in that they are critical to whether a public sphere can sustain the kinds of inclusive, competent and reflective deliberations essential for a healthy democracy. Textual excerpts from the corpus are used to illustrate the findings and support analysis (Yin, 2011). These excerpts are broadly representative of the communications under examination and are selected to highlight particular features of the data as part of the analysis process (Eldh et al., 2020).

Leaders and Media Responses to the Bali Bombings in the Australian Public Sphere

Initially, political leaders responded by to the attacks by appealing to liberal virtues of tolerance and harmony and affirming the multicultural character of Australian society in a discourse of community cohesion. Both the conservative Prime Minister John Howard and leader of the centre-left Australian Labor Party Simon Crean firmly stated that the attacks were not targeted at Australia or Australians. As Crean noted, ‘from the advice we have had. . . this attack has not been identified as being directed against Australia per se’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7502). Leaders were careful to distinguish those responsible for the attacks from Islam and Muslims writ large. Invoking the multi-faith character of Australia, Howard argued that Muslims were neither culpable nor blameworthy for the events of 12 October:

The war against terrorism is not, as has frequently been said in this place, a war against Islam. People of good Islamic faith will abhor what happened in Bali. They will find it as despicable to the tenets of their faith as Christians, Jews and many others will find it despicable to the tenets of their faiths (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7499).

This discursive strategy of ‘bridging and wedging’ is used repeatedly by Howard and other political leaders to differentiate between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ while also appealing to the ‘“good” elements’ (Hajer and Uitermark, 2008: 15) – that is, those of ‘good Islamic faith’ (Howard in Commonwealth, 2002b: 7499). Adopting a similar strategy, Opposition leader Simon Crean likewise spoke out against those who saw Muslims as responsible. The attacks were the ‘work of criminals and fanatics . . . not the work of people of faith’, adding that Australian ‘Islamic leaders have been very strong in their condemnation’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7501). As such, Crean implores his parliamentary colleagues to remember that:

in determining our resolve to pursue the terrorists, we have to be certain that it is only the terrorists that we pursue …. Let us not, in the circumstance of our grief and in the search for rationale or reason in this, make scapegoats of others (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7501).

Employing a strategy of positive self-presentation (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001), political leaders sought to discursively reinforce Australia’s liberal democratic commitments of openness and acceptance of differences, articulating a multicultural imagining of Australia as a tolerant and welcoming society. The Bali bombings, ‘have seared us and it will in time steel us’, according to Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and future Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, because ‘if we Australians have had one view of ourselves in the past it is this: we are a fun-loving people; we are a gregarious people. We enjoy the cultures of other peoples’ (Commonwealth, 2002a: 7577). As Howard claimed, the ‘Australian spirit has not been broken. The Australian spirit will remain strong and free and open and tolerant’ (in Martin, 2002). Returning to this theme one year on from the attack, Howard sought to re-emphasise these so-called Australian values: ‘the values of tolerance, openness and harmony, and of welcome to those who believe in the values and aspirations of this country’ (Commonwealth, 2003: 21041).

This emphasis on a value-based view of Australian identity was characteristic of Howard during his prime ministership (Brett, 2003). These excerpts appear to indicate that some scope for deliberations across difference, mutual respect and a capacity to listen were present in the response of political leaders. Yet, this discourse of cohesion and its emphasis on liberal values did little to foster meaningful, inclusive dialogue in the aftermath of the Bali bombings. Not least because the articulation of such values carried possessive and assimilationist undertones (Hage, 1998; Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Rather than evidence of democratic resilience, these gestures to inclusion and pluralism in political discourse soon devolved into an ‘us versus them’ framing that offered a restricted view of who belongs. The effect was to reinforce the already widespread Islamophobia in Australia, furthering the stigmatisation and marginalisation of Muslims and those perceived as Muslims, closing the already limited terrain for deliberations across differences.

This can be observed in the emergence of a more restrictive articulation of national identity through the discourse of national unity. The foundations for this discourse are laid through the legitimisation strategies of emotion (particularly fear) and a hypothetical (in this case, uncertain) future (Reyes, 2011). Despite earlier claims that the attackers had not specifically targeted Australia, here the framing shifts to emphasise the proximity of the attacks and the likelihood of future violence. In the days following the attack Howard warned that ‘everybody’s a bit at risk after something like this’, disabusing the public of ‘the idea that it can’t happen here. It can and it has happened on our doorstep’ (in Dodson, 2022). A similar attack, Howard warned, could ‘happen in one of our cities and on our own mainland’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7498). Australian news media followed suit, running dozens of sensationalist headlines including the phrases (all in caps): ‘TERROR HITS HOME’ (Madden, 2002), ‘TERROR ON OUR DOORSTEP’ (Dawson, 2002) and ‘TERRORISM STRIKES HOME’ (Wilkinson, 2002). The Bali bombings had brought ‘terrorism to our doorstep, to the holiday home away from home. . . No one is safe’ (The Australian, 2002). According to Peter Charlton (2003) in the Courier Mail, ‘only a bombing on in the heart of Surfers Paradise [a popular holiday destination in the Australian state of Queensland] would have had more impact’. Drawing a direct parallel with the US experience of September 11, Trevor Kavanagh (2002) writes in The Daily Telegraph that ‘this was Australia’s 9/11’.

In such a climate of uncertainty, descriptions of the attacks move into an existential register, ‘a day when evil struck with indiscriminate and indescribable savagery’ (Howard, in Mickelborough and Robinson, 2002). In a notable shift from earlier statements that the attack had not targeted Australia specifically, Rudd moves the locus of victimhood from those individuals killed and injured in the blasts to the national and civilisation registers, asking: ‘how could anyone hate us, or hate the culture and civilisation of which we are in the main a part, and do this appalling act?’ (Commonwealth, 2002a: 7577). Rhetorical questions such Rudd’s serve to reposition the debate (Fairclough, 1995), casting the attacks and the broader global ‘war on terror’ in which it is now situated as the latest (and most proximate) development in an existential struggle against ‘evil’. This use of Manichean division (Wodak, 2017) works to shift the framing of the attack from an act of criminal violence perpetrated by a small number of individual violent extremists in Bali, to one between the ‘freedom-loving’ forces of good (Australia) and those evil doers whom, according to Howard ‘would destroy your sons and daughters’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7498). In response, Howard expressed his government’s ‘fierce determination to do everything I and we can to bring to justice those who have done such evil things to our people’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7500) – most significantly by joining the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The government’s response was not without critics. Leaders of the Australian Greens and Democrats, along with some media commentators and the families of some of those killed in Bali accused the Howard government of exploiting the deaths to justify Australian involvement in Iraq and controversial anti-terrorism laws (McDonald, 2005a; McDonald and Merefield, 2010). Through the topos of the people (Wodak, 2021), Howard leveraged the discourse of national unity to marginalise his critics. Bali had ‘horrified Australians beyond the partisan political divide and what they want of their political leaders right now is a united cohesive response and they will have no patience with the use of this issue for partisan political remarks’ (in Dunlevy, 2002). By questioning the motives of his critics, and speaking in the name of the Australian people, Howard’s discourse of national unity left little space for Labour to challenge government’s response ‘without seeming unpatriotic or not having the best security interests of the nation at heart’ (Williams, 2002: 16). There was no need for further reason-giving, or public deliberation more generally, to determine how Australia should respond to the attacks. The Opposition embraced the discourse of national unity and would not stand in the way of the government’s security responses. As Crean described, ‘we as a nation need to grieve and we need to extend our sympathy, but most of all we need to stand united to demonstrate our resolve’ (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7501).

This discourse of national unity intersects with the discourse of national sacrifice, which emphasised the innocence, ordinariness and youthfulness of those Australians impacted by the attacks, valorising the nation through what Lewis (2005: 5) calls the ‘mantra of national victim-hero’. Positive presentations of those ‘young innocent Australians who were engaging in an understandable period of relaxation’ (Howard in Commonwealth, 2002a) were read through the topos of history (Wodak, 2021) appealing to the past collective experiences of the Anzacs. For example, Rudd describes an editorial cartoon from an Australian paper where the legendary Anzac stretcher bearer John Simpson appears among the wreckage of the Bali blasts: ‘eighty-seven years later, we have Simpson and his donkey walking again among the dead and the wounded’ (Commonwealth, 2002a: 7578). Likewise, Crean describes a planned memorial rugby match to mark the first anniversary as of the attacks as evoking ‘the memory of that famous photograph of those young diggers playing cricket on the beach at Gallipoli. . . a typical Australian reaction to a crisis’ (Commonwealth, 2003: 21042). Similar descriptions can be found throughout news media accounts of the events. Anna Cock (2002) in The Daily Telegraph writes of the ‘emotive parallels between the experiences of our Diggers and the young Australians caught in the Kuta carnage . . . young, naive Australians thrust into a foreign conflict for which they could never have been prepared’. Likewise, Richard Hinds (2002) in the Sunday Age resituates holidaying in Bali as an ‘expression of youth and vitality is as much a part of the Anzac spirit as the bravery shown in the trenches’.

The use of the Anzac imagery brings with it an explicit association with foreign conflict, linking Australian national identity and values like mateship to military endeavour (Bongiorno, 2014; Bromfield and Page, 2020; Holbrook, 2017). Unsurprisingly then, a narrative emerges wherein Australia has found itself embroiled in a global and existential battle between ‘freedom’ and ‘intrinsically evil’ terrorism (Commonwealth, 2002b: 7498). Here emerges the discourse of collective responsibility. This discourse relies on a dual strategy of positive self-presentation and singularisation to present Australia and Australians as superior due to their liberal values, and negative Other presentation and the topos of comparison to exaggerate the supposed inferiority of others (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak, 2021). The effect is a racialised Othering of Muslims, who are discursively constructed as having a collective responsibility for the events of 12 October on the basis of their shared faith. This discourse is particularly prominent in the news media, building on the Manichean divisions introduced by political leaders. For example, Piers Akkerman (2002) writes in The Sunday Telegraph, that ‘we are a target – along with other Westerners – for a variety of reasons that all, essentially, have to do with the freedoms our liberal democracies permit us to enjoy’. The attacks should therefore be understood as ‘another wake-up call to the civilised world’ (Kavanagh, 2002), which ‘proves that all freedom-loving peoples are at risk from terrorism, at home and abroad’ (The Australian, 2002). It is indicative, Shaun Carney (2002) writes in The Age, of an ‘unbridgeable gulf between the West and radical Islam’ and a ‘direct assault . . . on our way of life’. Echoing Rudd’s earlier rhetorical questioning, the Bali bombings, can only be understood as having been motivated by a deeply felt hatred by the Other of ‘our persistent goodness’:

Because we like to go to the pub and enjoy each other’s company. Because we go to the beach in a swimming costume. Because we no longer hate homosexuals. Because we believe that people of all religions and none, and all races, can live in peace and freedom in one society (Sheridan, 2002).

In this reading, Australia has no choice but to respond with strength through military action in the Middle East. This is because, as Andrew Bolt (2002a) writes in the Herald Sun, ‘tragically, the Muslim world too often respects strong men simply for being strong. Weakness is fatal’. There is an increasingly explicit ideological connection between Muslims, Islam and violent extremism around the world in the Australian media discourse on Bali – a connection that casts a cloud of suspicion over Australian Muslims and those perceived as Muslims (such as the wider Arab-Australian communities). In perhaps the most explicit (and strikingly racist) example, Piers Akkerman in The Australian extends the culpability from the Indonesian terrorists responsible for the blasts to Australian Muslims. After a brief caveat that ‘any backlash against local Muslims is condemned, as all lawlessness must be’, Akkerman (2002) writes:

the silent majority of Australian Muslims, who claim to be moderates, have been unable to give us any assurances that our very lifestyle is not under attack …. We need an assurance and a guarantee from followers of Islam in Australia that they have no desire to forcibly impose their religion upon others and that they would oppose those who might.

These discourses of national unity, sacrifice and collective responsibility are highly charged and left little scope for more reflexive assessments of the attack and potential responses from Australia. Taken together, they undermine key deliberative norms of inclusion, reason, mutual respect, listening and critical reflection, culminating in unwillingness to the engage in the usual kinds of scrutiny and debate on Australia’s response and dismissing alternative viewpoints and voices out of hand. Those that questioned whether the Howard government’s support for the US-led ‘war on terror’ and Australian involvement in Afghanistan may have motivated the attackers were given little space in the press (though see Cassin, 2002; Coady, 2002; Crouch, 2002; Rundle, 2002), and in parliament were limited to a small number of Opposition backbenchers and minor parties like the Greens and Democrats. Yet even these few dissenters were ferociously attacked by both media and political leaders. This questioning was dismissed as ‘tragic – no, worse: it is contemptible’, part of an ‘ideological war’ by a conga line ‘of hissing and spitting academics and activists’ (Bolt, 2002b). Any such attempt to understand the motivation for the attacks was derided as ‘demeaning and demented’ (Sheridan, 2002), while any who warned against ‘killing innocent Iraqis in a possible future war against [Saddam Hussein]’ were dismissed as a ‘cowardly attempt to sway Australia from a course that requires all the fortitude this country can muster’ (The Courier-Mail, 2002). Howard spoke strongly against any such doubters: ‘To those people who believe that you can escape attacks of this kind by saying nothing when evil occurs, by doing nothing when evil occurs, not only is that moral bankruptcy but it’s also wrong’ (in Dunlevy, 2002).

How Democratically Resilient Was Australia’s Response?

By much of the democratic resilience literature, which largely understands the concept in terms of the durability of democratic processes and institutions (Burnell and Calvert, 1999; Dunleavy and Evans, 2024; Lieberman et al., 2022; Merkel and Lührmann, 2021), Australia demonstrated democratic resilience in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings. Although changes to counter-terrorism legislation raised concerns about civil liberties, the formal institutions and processes of Australian democracy were by-and-large unaffected by the attacks. Yet, this is evidently a very shallow understanding of how resilient Australia’s democracy was when considered from a deliberative perspective.

Four key discourses emerged from the analysis based on their prevalence in political leader’s and new media’s attempts to make sense of the attacks: community cohesion, national unity, national sacrifice and collective responsibility. The sum of these discourses – and the kinds of discursive strategies used to enact them – indicate a critical lack of democratic resilience in the Australian public sphere. Taken together, they left little scope for deliberations on the meanings of the attack and how Australia should respond. Although the discourse of community cohesion and its emphasis on liberal democratic values of tolerance and harmony as well as the apparent embrace of Australia’s multicultural character appeared to gesture towards an open and inclusive public sphere, they were insufficient to ensuring that a diversity of views and voices could meaningfully engage with one another. Instead, the discourses of national unity, national sacrifice and collective responsibility produced an environment that was poorly suited to hosting meaningful, inclusive and reflective dialogue required for a healthy democratic public sphere, undermining the communicative norms vital to sustaining quality deliberations. The response of Australian political leaders and news media to the Bali bombings is characterised by the limited capacity for meaningful and inclusive deliberations in the aftermath of the attack, whether on the question of how the attack should be understood, its relationship to questions of identity and belonging and how if at all Australia should respond.

Certainly, it may be natural – and even appropriate – for political leaders to emphasise the need for unity and social cohesion in times of crisis (Curran, 2004; Ercan et al., 2025). And to some extent, the unwillingness of Howard to open discussion on questions of national identity in the aftermath of Bali is not unexpected, as his view of Australian identity was not a pluralistic one (Curran, 2004). Nevertheless, it had series anti-deliberative effects, circumventing usual processes of policy deliberations and media scrutiny. As Lewis and de Masi (2007: 63) have elsewhere argued, ‘informed commentary was limited and examination of the socio-political context was even more scarce’ in the aftermath of the attack. The equivalence, particularly in media coverage, between Islam and terrorism further ‘subverted alternative discourses by marginalising dissenting voices’ (Lewis and de Masi, 2007: 63) while also accelerating and entrenching anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia, a process already well underway following 9/11 and the Tampa affair (Poynting and Noble, 2003; Poynting et al., 2004). The effect was to close the space for the kinds of meaningful, inclusive and reflective dialogue healthy democracies depend on.

The analysis also challenges understandings of the prominent role of political leaders as public sphere actors, shaping debate in the immediate aftermath of a violent extremist attack. Research suggests that initial statements from political leaders set the tone for media coverage and future deliberation (Hajer and Uitermark, 2008; Vatnoey, 2015). However, this was not the case in Australia, particularly with respect to the discourse of community cohesion invoked in the initial statements by political leaders. Their claims that Australia was not specifically targeted, that the Muslim community could not and should not be held responsible and that Australia would respond with tolerance and harmony, were effectively ignored and were soon dropped by political leaders themselves. This suggests democratic resilience cannot be driven by political leaders alone, nor with only a few statements in support of democratic values in the immediate aftermath. Rather, the fostering of quality deliberations in the public sphere in the aftermath of a violent extremist attack requires both sustained political work, as well as a degree support from other public sphere actors. Aotearoa New Zealand’s response to the 2019 Christchurch massacre shows that this is a practical, not only theoretical, possibility (Ercan et al., 2025; Fitzpatrick and Beausoleil, 2025). Here, for example, news media adopted an editorial compact to limit the publication of excerpts of the shooter’s so-called manifesto, as well as any symbols, images or gestures that may promote the shooter’s ideology. It followed an earlier commitment from political leaders to not name the shooter.

Conclusion

At a time of heightened political polarisation and extremism, the role of public sphere actors in fostering democratic resilience has never been more vital. Examining democratic resilience in Australia’s response to the 2002 Bali bombings through a deliberative lens offers an alternative roadmap for political leaders and media to facilitate inclusive, meaningful dialogue that challenges the divisive aims of violent extremists. The Australian response poses critical questions about the conditions required for democratic resilience in the aftermath of a violent extremist attacks – especially so when the public sphere is already saturated prior with stigmatising and exclusionary discourses (e.g. Johnson, 2007; Poynting et al., 2004). For a democratically resilient response to take root, public sphere actors need to do more than offer a limited embrace of liberal values and multiculturalism. They need to be willing to challenge sensationalist framings of an event and hold open meaningful space for minoritised groups to participate fully in dialogue (Bächtiger and Dryzek, 2024; Fitzpatrick and Beausoleil, 2025; McSwiney et al., 2025). However, it is not only the inclusion or exclusion of minoritised voices that matters for democratic resilience, but also the substance of that inclusion in terms of the capacity to challenge or dissent from a particular framing (e.g. the demand that Muslims publicly affirm their horror and condemnation of a violent extremist attack) (Poynting et al., 2004). To live up to the normative demands of democratic resilience from a deliberative perspective, public sphere actors must challenge the divisions and ruptures violent extremists seek to create, but in ways that still preserve the integral democratic capacities of public dialogue and the public sphere as a site for communication that is meaningfully inclusive and critically reflective.