Royal commission report doesn’t help us start making sense of Bondi terror attack

Justice Virginia Bell has handed the governor-general her interim findings from the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded immediately by promising to implement all its recommendations.

The interim report recommends specific changes to counter-terrorism policy – and a speedy resolution to the lagging gun buyback scheme.

These sorts of changes may help. But they don’t begin to answer deeper questions about how a terror attack on that scale could occur in Australia. The commission is yet to examine how underlying conditions might have fuelled the attack, and what else governments, their agencies and we as a society must do to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Read more: Months on from the Bondi terror attack, the national gun buyback is floundering

What does the interim report recommend?

The interim report contains 14 recommendations, five of them confidential.

Of the nine public recommendations, nearly all focus on counter-terrorism policy and the ways government agencies operate. For example, recommendations three through six focus on the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee: a high-level coordination body made up of senior members of government.

The interim report recommends the committee be included in the Australian government’s Crisis Management Framework. The committee should brief National Cabinet at least annually.

Recommendation seven says ministers on the National Security Committee of cabinet should participate in a counter-terrorism exercise within nine months of each federal election.

These changes will not stop a terrorist from committing another attack. And most Australians could be forgiven for having never heard of these committees.

There’s also no reason why this all couldn’t have been investigated, possibly more quickly, by the original, departmental inquiry announced by Albanese. This was to be led by former head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson.

Richardson recently resigned from the royal commission, saying he felt like an overpaid research officer. He was also worried the process would take too long to deliver concrete recommendations on policing and intelligence.

Back in 2019, Richardson undertook a comprehensive review of Australia’s intelligence and surveillance architecture. The interim report explains key findings from that review and others that preceded it.

This interim report reads more like a continuation of those earlier reviews, and less like a fundamental inquiry into how the Bondi terror attack could possibly have happened in Australia.

Still, it’s just the first step in a longer, ongoing process. We can’t expect, at this point, concrete answers on what, if anything, might have prevented the attack. More practical interim recommendations may well be found in the classified version.

The commission is also hamstrung somewhat, as it can’t take evidence or comment on anything that might prejudice the accused’s criminal trial. This includes statements from witnesses or details on how the attack unfolded.

What can we expect next?

Public hearings for the royal commission will begin next week. In the first round, people with lived experience of antisemitism are expected to give evidence.

After that, it remains to be seen where the inquiry will direct its focus.

Its terms of reference are extremely broad, covering antisemitism, social cohesion, training for law enforcement, border control and immigration, radicalisation, specific circumstances surrounding the attack, and anything else that might be “reasonably incidental” or relevant.

It has so far received more than 3,500 submissions. The commission must report back by December 14 this year, before the one-year anniversary of the attack.

To report meaningfully on all these topics on such a pressured timeline will be a monumental task. Some focus may be necessary, but there will be valid differences of opinion as to whether this inquiry is primarily about antisemitism, social cohesion, counter-terrorism, radicalisation, the Bondi attack, or all of the above.

Read more: These are the 6 key questions the antisemitism royal commission needs to answer

At the moment, it is about all these things, which may ultimately undermine what it is able to contribute on any one.

Bell clearly knows the scale of the task. She has warned that “examining the ways in which we might strengthen social cohesion in Australia could well be the work of years, not months”.

For now, there is little in the interim report for Australians to start making sense of last year’s terror and tragedy in Bondi.