In working-class suburbia we were taught to refer to police as pigs — it was ugly and unfair

Police officers embrace during a candlelight vigil to honour the victims of the Bondi Junction tragedy at Bondi Beach. Picture: Jenny Evans

She ran towards him. The police officer who took down the Bondi Junction killer; that small, small man who broke the nation’s heart. She did her duty. Selflessly. Courageously. Calmly. She knew what she had to do, for everyone at that shopping centre.

Amid all the trauma of that weekend and haunted, still, by those vivid lives cut short, I’m thinking of service. Selflessness. Of those who serve others. Thinking of mother Ashlee Good thrusting her injured baby girl into the arms of two men, despite being traumatically stabbed herself. Of those brothers who staunched her baby’s wounds. Of French tradie, Damien Guerot, who tried to take down the killer with a bollard. Of the 75 paramedics who rushed to the scene to help the injured, working in chaos and not knowing if the killer was still active among them. Of the medical teams in hospitals across Sydney who operated on the injured.

And I’m thinking of that police officer, in her neat blond bun, who with great fortitude and professionalism prevented more deaths.

Then just two days later, Sydney was faced with another stabbing horror, this time at a church in Wakeley.

First responders were attacked in a riot afterwards; several police officers were injured by thrown projectiles. NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said people used whatever was available to them in the area, “including bricks, concrete pilings, to assault police and throw missiles at police and police equipment”. Injured officers were taken to hospital; 20 of their vehicles were damaged. The hospital went into lockdown. Paramedics were holed up in the church, with the suspect.

NSW Ambulance Commissioner Dominic Morgan said, “Six of our paramedics could not leave that facility for fear of their own safety from the community that they serve.”

Growing up in working class suburbia, police had a bad rap; we were taught to refer to them as Pigs. Grubs. Wallopers. Hatred, inexplicably, was indoctrinated – it was ugly and unfair. Because for the vast majority of frontline workers, the will is towards service. Complicated, dangerous, volatile servitude. These people have devoted careers to protecting their fellow human beings; it is the best of us.

Almost a year ago to the day of both those stabbing horrors, paramedic Steven Tougher lost his life in a Macca’s carpark. The young father had stopped towards the end of his nightshift for a bite to eat. He was stabbed in the back of his ambulance as he did some paperwork. Retired paramedic Scott Fogarty wrote a tribute, summing up the danger frontline workers constantly face: “We know the dangers and unfortunately are exposed to (them) far too often, but we all hope that at the end of our shift we can go home … in one piece. Some of us break down after years of burnout and torment from the trauma we experience, some push on carrying the scars … for this young man his duty and career has ended far too soon, from the very thing that scares us all while on duty. He has paid the ultimate price for being a caring, brave soul, devoting his life to saving and serving those in need.”

I can never understand why people attack frontline workers; people whose raison d’etre is to save us. As WH Auden wrote, “we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know”. The Archbishop of Canterbury said at the coronation of King Charles, “service is love in action”. He spoke of active love, which is what service to others is.

Police Inspector Amy Scott ran towards a man who’d just stabbed more than a dozen people. She was alone, without a stab vest, guided by shoppers. She served us, and she has the nation’s gratitude. I hope she’s OK. Hope all first responders are OK, in the aftermath of what they do. We owe them.