There is an entire area of legal doctrine devoted to causation, as any recovering law graduate knows.

This week’s orgy of blame and counter-blame, of attack and counter-attack, has felt like a highly politicised, and at times inappropriate, version of what jurists call the “but for” test.

Bondi beach comes together as the mourning continues.Credit: Janie Barrett and Kate Geraghty

This test asks: “But for the action or inaction of Person A, would the harm to Person B have occurred?”

Trying to apply the test to the senseless tragedy of Bondi, as many have this week, is incredibly difficult, but still, the attempt has been made.

It reached its natural conclusion on Wednesday when former treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had to accept “personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old child”.

It was an extraordinary claim, a high-water mark of ad hominem rhetoric in Australian political life.

For me, the most enduring image from the week was the smiling face of the 10-year-old victim Matilda, delight beaming from her as she was photographed minutes before her death.

The nihilism of the people who killed her is almost too awful to stare down. But examining causation should be separate from the angry assignment of blame.

When the issue of gun control was raised soon after the attack, former prime minister John Howard, slavishly echoed by sections of the media, said any such talk was a distraction from the real issue, which was antisemitism.

Howard, with all his stature, gave the cue for the partisan politicking that followed, a lot of it taking........

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