Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has been condemned for a “disgusting” personal attack on Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who she claimed had shed no tears over the Bondi massacre.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the Coalition attempting to score political points out of the tragedy would jar badly with Australians.

“I thought that was a disgusting element of an increasingly partisan politics in the wake of a national crisis,” he told ABC Radio National on Tuesday.

Ley earlier came out swinging at Foreign Minister Penny Wong after the senior Labor frontbencher said she wanted to see Australians take the temperature down following the Bondi terror attack.

Fifteen people were killed and dozens more seriously injured when two Islamic State-inspired gunmen opened fire on an event for the first night of Hanukkah celebrations.

“I haven’t seen Penny Wong on the streets of Bondi,” Ley said on Monday.

“I haven’t seen Penny Wong at the vigil for 15 innocent murdered Australians.

“I didn’t see Penny Wong at Bondi last night at the eighth night of Hanukkah. I didn’t see Penny Wong attend a single funeral. I haven’t seen Penny Wong shed a single tear.”

Bowen said those remarks said more about Ley than about Wong.

“Australia has in the past come together at moments like this, whether it be the Lindt Cafe or Port Arthur, and oppositions have chosen not to make political points,” he said.

“Susan Ley, I think, needs to reflect on her behaviour yesterday, it was pretty disgusting.”

But Ley doubled down on her comments on Tuesday, saying she made no apologies for her “passion for Australians, for Jewish Australians and for this hideous act of terrorism”.

“I’ve been down there [Bondi],” she told Nine’s Today program.

“The Prime Minister has hardly been there. Penny Wong has not been there at all. Her calls to take the temperature down were totally inappropriate.”

Jewish leaders have also criticised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government for a perceived lack of action to tackle antisemitism before the attack.

Post-massacre protest crackdown panned

Labor is facing internal accusations of betraying its own values as fast-tracked moves to curb protests face a constitutional challenge from a disparate coalition of civil groups.

Measures to limit demonstrations, stem hate speech and crack down on gun ownership were expected to pass the NSW parliament on Tuesday in quick response to the Bondi massacre of December 14.

The state’s lower house on Monday night overwhelmingly backed the sweeping changes, led by Labor and supported by the Liberals.

Under the planned changes, a terrorist attack designation would give police powers to reject protests for an initial 14 days and up to three months.

But that measure was branded undemocratic and unconstitutional by a group mobilising thousands of people weekly in Sydney’s city streets.

“The Minns government is seeking to introduce laws that will represent the single most aggressive assault on our civil liberties in living memory,” solicitor Nick Hanna, who will represent the Palestine Action Group, said.

Law reform was needed following the Bondi attack, Hanna said. But the protest changes were a knee-jerk attempt at politicising a tragedy and taking away basic democratic rights.

Hanna said the constitutional challenge to the protest ban would most likely be launched in January.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has directly linked pro-Palestine protests to the sowing of antisemitic rhetoric, which he said could develop into violence by “unleashing forces that the organisers of the protests can’t control”.

But the protest crackdown he has championed represented a shameful departure from Labor beliefs, senior left-wing party figure Peter Moss said.

“This is a betrayal of Labor values, a betrayal of our hard-won democratic rights, and a betrayal by Chris Minns of his own colleagues,” the Labor National Policy Forum member and convenor of Labor Friends of Palestine said.

“These laws are not about saving lives.”

Several outspoken Labor MPs who broke ranks with Minns over pro-Palestinian protests and marched across the Harbour Bridge in solidarity in August were also at the press conference.

With party rules forbidding MPs from crossing the floor, they are likely to vote for the laws.

The laws are expected to swiftly pass through the upper house late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday, despite the Greens wanting to split gun reforms from the protest crackdown and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MPs complaining their voters are being scapegoated.

The NSW parliament was recalled to debate the laws after the Bondi massacre, which has highlighted flaws in rules surrounding access to high-powered rifles.

Labor’s bill has caused a split in the Coalition, with Nationals MPs and one Liberal from a regional electorate opposing the changes due to concerns about the firearms restrictions, which cap the number of guns people can own to four and limit magazine capacities.

Minns previously said the extraordinary gun and protest measures were necessary to restore a sense of safety after the attack on Jewish residents.

“We can’t pretend that the world is the same as it was before that terrorist incident on Sunday,” he said.

“My government’s No.1 priority is to keep the people of NSW safe and that means making these changes.”

A poll out on Tuesday suggested three in every four Australians back toughening gun laws.

The Resolve poll of 1010 people conducted after the mass shooting found similar support among voters for Labor (80 per cent), the coalition (78 per cent) and One Nation (82 per cent).

The federal government has resisted calls for a national royal commission into the massacre, instead launching a more limited review of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies and backing a NSW inquiry.

The opposition has been joined by a handful of Labor backbenchers in pushing for a broad federal inquiry, which the Coalition wants to focus on drivers of antisemitism before the attack.

Meanwhile, NSW’s tough anti-protest laws are expected to immediately be challenged in the courts.

–AAP