I’ve Known Him Since Primary School. I Don’t Recognise Him Anymore.

I left Zimbabwe as a kid and ended up at a primary school in WA — a suburb full of Poms and Aussies who didn’t quite know what to make of me at first.

But kids are kids. Within a few months I had mates. Real ones. That was Australia in the early 1980s — give someone a chance and they’d give you one back.

One of those friendships has lasted over 40 years.

We grew up together. Got up to no good in the best possible way — the kind of childhood that shapes you without you even realising it. I’m genuinely blessed to have had him in my corner all these years — ambitious, a family man, one of the good ones. The kind of mate you never have to explain yourself to because they already know you.

Recently that mate said something that honestly made me rethink everything.

After the Bondi attack, he told me the Prime Minister should be in jail for not calling a royal commission, that Australia needs a right wing government and that extremists should be thrown out of the country.

I said — if you don’t like the Prime Minister, vote him out. That’s democracy. That’s how it works.

He wasn’t interested in that answer.

And I sat there looking at this bloke I’ve known since we were kids, and something shifted. I didn’t fully recognise him.

My mate and I disagreed. Not all Muslims are bad — not all anything are bad. You judge people as individuals. That’s non negotiable for me.

But here’s where I think he has a point, buried underneath the anger.

If you come to Australia and spread hatred, if you advocate for violence, if you fundamentally reject the values that make this country what it is — there needs to be a pathway to say this isn’t working.

Not based on your religion. Not based on where you came from. Based on who you are and what you stand for.

Better citizenship tests. Longer pathways. Real assessment of character over time. Not a rubber stamp.

I came here as a kid. I integrated. I built a life. I love this country.

If I can do it — and millions of immigrants before and after me have done it — then the standard exists. It just needs to be properly enforced.

Judge the individual. Always. But hold everyone to the same standard.

That’s not racist.

That’s fair.

Here’s the thing though.

I don’t think he’s a bad person. I don’t think he woke up one day and decided to become someone different.

I think he’s scared. I think he’s angry. And I think the people who were supposed to give him answers — politicians, institutions, leaders — gave him nothing. So someone else filled that space.

That’s what happens when governments fail people.

Not just in Australia. Everywhere across the Western world right now. Cost of living through the roof. Housing unaffordable. Wages flat for a decade. Kids with degrees working two jobs and still can’t get ahead. The middle class — the thing that held Western societies together — quietly hollowed out while politicians argued about pronouns and photo opportunities.

People like my mate didn’t drift toward anger because they’re racist. They drifted toward anger because they’re exhausted and nobody in power acknowledged it for long enough.

And when people are that exhausted, someone always comes along with a simple explanation.

It’s them. The ones who came here. The ones who look different. The ones who pray differently.

It’s a lie. But it’s a simple lie, and simple lies beat complicated truths when people are desperate enough.

I came to this country as a kid who looked different and spoke differently. I had an accent that turned a few heads back then. Somewhere along the way I lost it — and honestly that makes me proudly Australian.

The Australia I grew up in gave me a chance. The people I grew up with — my mate included — gave me a chance.

I’m not angry at him. I’m angry at the people who were supposed to lead and chose instead to point.

Because every time a politician uses immigration as the explanation for everything that’s gone wrong, they’re not solving the problem. They’re just finding someone for exhausted, frightened, decent people to blame instead.

And in doing so, they’re slowly turning people I’ve loved for 40 years into someone I don’t fully recognise anymore.

That’s not an immigration problem.

That’s a leadership failure.

And we should be a lot angrier about that than we are.