A coronial inquest into the Bondi Junction mass stabbing has delivered a powerful conclusion, identifying critical failures in the mental health system as a primary factor in the tragedy and labelling the issue as a fixable problem requiring immediate government action.
A Tragedy That Exposed Systemic Failings
The five-week inquest examined the deaths of seven people killed by Joel Cauchi at Westfield Bondi Junction on 13 April 2024. The victims were Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Yixuan Cheng, 27, Pikria Darchia, 55, Dawn Singleton, 25, and Faraz Tahir, 30. Ten others were injured before Cauchi was shot and killed by Police Inspector Amy Scott.
The court heard that Cauchi, 40, was an extremely unwell man from Queensland who had stopped taking medication for his schizophrenia five years prior to the attack. He was homeless and had developed a fixation with violence, knives, and serial killers, which he researched online before carrying out his own rudimentary planned attack.
A Call for Significant Investment and Reform
In her final submissions, the senior counsel assisting the inquest, Dr Peggy Dwyer SC, posed the central questions: Why did Joel Cauchi perpetrate the attack, how did he get so unwell, and were there opportunities to prevent his decline into psychosis?
Dr Dwyer stated that both Queensland and New South Wales suffer from a serious lack of adequate community-based treatments and housing for people with serious mental illness. It's not a political statement to say that we need significant investment in those areas to keep people safe, she told the court.
To illustrate the decline in services, she provided a stark comparison. In 1991, Sydney had around 1,150 short-stay beds in four inner-city hostels offering psychiatric care. Today, that number has plummeted to fewer than 300 temporary beds, with walk-up psychiatric care available at only two sites in the entire city. That is a finite problem that is fixable, she asserted.
An Imperative for Action, Not Just Reports
Dr Dwyer traced the roots of the current crisis back to the deinstitutionalisation policies that began in the 1960s. She recommended that NSW Health should act as the lead agency in advising the government on this decline and spearheading major reform of the sector.
It is imperative that this results in action, not just another report, she warned. Building appropriate housing for homeless people with mental illness would not only save money in the long term but also reduce the risk to the community and alleviate the immense strain on police services.
The inquest heard that the families of the victims had assisted in the challenging process of preparing submissions, underscoring the human cost of systemic inaction.
