Albanese's royal commission wounds are self-inflicted

Be that as it may, I remain unconvinced that he is right to resist a royal commission. Royal commissions serve several purposes at once. Albanese is, at most, dealing with only one of them, and even then in such a limited (one might also suggest a guilty manner) and, if anything, heightening suspicions that he has something disgraceful to cover up.

The first purpose of a royal commission is to find out and explain what happened. This has several different purposes. The first, and most important audience is the public, around whose needs for information the commission should be oriented. Second are obviously interested groups such as Jews and Islamic people as subjects of anti-Semitic prejudice and people injured by the massacre. There are also security agencies - the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and state counter-terror bodies. Then there are governments, in this case particularly the Commonwealth and state governments, and possibly individual ministers in them. They are the ones, after all, accused by senior public figures of personal culpability, and a failure to heed clear warning signs of what happened. Dennis Richardson is there to judge what security agencies did and whether it was enough. He is not there to judge the politics, the context or the wider facts of the massacre.

That need won't be, cannot be, satisfied by a private and secret inquiry conducted by a security insider however conscientiously he goes about his remit. He might satisfy Albanese's limited desire for information, but he will not - cannot - make findings of fact about what happened at Bondi, the actions of various police agencies and civilians, the quality of the information exchange between Commonwealth and state agencies, or the efficacy and circumstances of actions by ministers, at both state and federal level, to combat anti-Semitic feeling. Some of the "facts" will be contested, and his authority to make findings will be limited if those with strong views and feelings cannot cross-examine witnesses, to contest evidence presented, or to put alternative interpretations of what occurred. Richardson is, in this sense, neither a judicially trained person, however expert he is in Australia's intelligence community and its functions, nor a person who will feel comfortable in making rulings about strongly contested issues, such as the definition of anti-Semitism.

In modern days, royal commissions into disasters and failures of the state serve another purpose - giving public witness to what occurred. It is usually a separate but necessary part of any inquiry. It does usually involve close cross-examination but is also an opportunity for unfiltered speech. Victims, witnesses, experts on different aspects of the circumstances describe what happened before their eyes and talk about the wider impact of the tragedy. Usually, they cannot shed much light on the "higher" circumstances of what was happening with intelligence collection or assessment, or even about government campaigns to reduce racial hatred. But they are experts who have a need to be heard, to have their testimony recorded, and to give witness to a very important history. We need to hear them too. They also have a right to interpret that history according to its impact on them including attributing blame, and not necessarily by the rules of a bill of indictment.

One might suggest that the NSW royal commission could serve such a purpose, but that commission will not have the power to ask questions of Commonwealth agents, including ministers. Or, if some Commonwealth agents volunteer to face the music, there will still be criticism that they are controlling the narrative by excluding evidence from the relevant agencies.

In dealing with this, and the other wider needs of an inquiry, Albanese must contemplate how politicised matters have become. Vehement allegations were made against Albanese himself, some by people angry about what they saw as the limited amount of government action, some by political opportunists and journalists with agendas. Albanese may have decided to take the criticism upon himself in a manful effort to promote unity and national reconciliation, rather than bitterness and blame. But the public anxiety is not dispelled by accepting blame, instead by satisfying a legitimate demand for information. By a capacity to form judgements. By a testing of the evidence and accusations of those who have suffered, and some of the statements made afterwards. It is not a two-dimensional process because a host of different national and constitutional issues and rights are in collision. Some have jumped to the ramparts and are demanding law reform. Some politicians, in panic, are not spending enough time weighing the issues. Others, including neo-Nazis and anti-immigration advocates, are using the tragedy to demand a reversion to a whiter Australia, or one closed to new immigrants. It is quite true that weighing and balancing such considerations may take time. But an inquiry can proceed by dividing different functions by urgency, and by issuing interim reports.

The very idea of an over-powerful Home Affairs department should come under close review. It's been a disaster.

We expect the inquiry will investigate the powers and functions of ASIO, federal and state police, and other intelligence and security agencies involved in protecting Australians from people trying to fragment our society. We expect that it will look critically at how assessments were made, and whether and how the killers slipped through the net. But the inquiry should also consider machinery of government matters, including the wisdom of positioning together various law enforcement and counter-intelligence agencies in the same portfolio. Albanese seems to think the juncture mere common sense, but people with far wider experience and judgement think he has the worst possible solution. That includes many of the parties in the forced marriages.

The idea of a Home Affairs portfolio originally came from Mike Pezzullo as he was attempting to build a national security empire, including one intended to establish a national surveillance system that would have made China proud. (Not surprisingly, there was a far-reaching and very intrusive police inquiry once details of the proposal were leaked. The other proponent seems to have been Mike Burgess, then head of the Australian Signals Directorate, but now head of ASIO.)

Though bodies such as the AFP and ASIO were supposed to be independent and separate from government in their functions, the Home Affairs model was focused on all of the agencies "singing from the same song sheet" and the highly contestable idea that security agencies would be more efficient if they were each under the same minister, and dealing with the same information. The establishment of Home Affairs was more about politics than efficiency or common sense. Malcolm Turnbull, when prime minister, established it as a means of appeasing Peter Dutton rather than for efficiency. Both police and ASIO protested. The prime minister's department disagreed with the concept, which was also being used by Pezzullo to justify the establishment of a national security, terrorism, and border control intelligence operation, duplicating work performed by others, and, according to some agencies, consuming far more resources in agency liaison than it could provide in improved communications and decision-making.

Albanese has been bedazzled by aspects of the national security apparatus. On assuming power, he initially took ASIO out of Home Affairs, but then returned it. Leading a government affecting to have a more critical eye on the balance between national security and open and transparent government, he has gone further in attempting to restrict government information than any of his predecessors did. He is instinctively secretive, hostile to consultation with the wider public other than negotiations with "stakeholders" and lobbyists and is now seemingly working openly to destroy the effectiveness of FOI, and accountability systems. These regressive actions sit alongside government responses to Hamas atrocities in Israel and the virtual genocide against Palestinians that followed. They are inevitably a part of the wider context of the Bondi massacre, in just the same way that widespread (and justified) criticism of the state of Israel's actions in Palestine has been a major factor in the sense of siege that many Jewish Australians have experienced since October 2023.

Australians are focused on future safety and security, rather than the mere apportionment of blame. But if there are weaknesses they want them addressed.

Albanese's bargain of a secretive and closed inquiry into the effectiveness and efficiency of security agencies is an alternative to a public inquiry. It seems clear, from the advocacy of Jewish organisations and The Australian that everyone expects that a commission will be a shocker for the Albanese government.

While I am sure that there will be many things to criticise I don't think that Australians want or expect a lynch party. Even those insisting that they warned the government repeatedly of the risk of something like a massacre are somewhat less clear about the pathway. There was certainly anti-Semitism, not least from neo-Nazi and anti-immigration groups, but how it fitted in with events in Gaza was not obvious, the more so with the gross lack of proportion in the slaughter. It was certainly not a result of national Australian support for recognition of Palestine, or marches criticising Israeli actions.

Albanese can be very resistant to public pressure - described otherwise as being very stubborn - and, no doubt, he expects that the issue will fade away during the January holidays. But there's no sign of that happening yet. Nor are there many indications that the critics, including news.com.au, Australian Jewish organisations and the opposition, intend to reduce the pressure.

It is an issue that Albanese cannot control. Nor can he generate "good news" on the topic at will, nor create diversions to distract the public when others, on their own timetable, again put the issue to the fore. It can be expected that bans on demonstrations will be counter-productive, and that they will increase, rather than reduce community tensions.

Albanese is being quite heroic in thinking that Dennis Richardson's inquiry can substitute for what the public wants and expects. Even if Richardson ends up concluding that only slight adjustments to the national security and counter-terrorism machinery are required, anxieties will not abate. It has been put to me that I somewhat exaggerated Richardson's personal and mentoring relationships with current police and security chiefs, and the number of reviews of agencies he has conducted. That said, he has been the quintessential insider on security matters for three decades. Even very reasonable observations - for example about the virtual impossibility of having a screen on every potential lone wolf in Australia - will be greeted with suspicion. Even, or perhaps particularly, from those who demand limits on the powers and functions of such bodies.

Albanese might, in that sense, feel righteous about limiting the scope and length of any inquiry, with its potential to cost a bomb, to distract the various agencies from their prime functions, including the avoidance of further acts of terror, and to delay any necessary reforms or changes of procedure. He will worry that it will provide a platform and a pulpit for every nutter with a grievance or a grudge. More so if, as he claims, his national security chieftains have advised him against an open inquiry. One can be sure that if they had not previously given such advice, they have now. But many of the chieftains, and not a few of the most prominent former chieftains, assumed from the start that an open inquiry would occur and publicly expressed no misgivings about it until Albanese cued them.

In short, the Prime Minister has made a political decision, not one imposed upon him by independent advisers. Others would wonder why the institutional and reputational interests of the very agencies whose activities were in question would assume a priority over satisfying the legitimate and urgent desire of the public, the Jewish and Islamic communities, and other non-federal agencies in establishing what happened.

A cynic might posit two or three possible reasons: first, that the government believes that an open inquiry would disclose big gaps and deficiencies in counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism operations, some because of political decisions made by government. Those decisions could include a lack of resources, or a failure to follow intelligence and other political advice about needed action against an upsurge of anti-Semitic activity.

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Government, in short, might be avoiding an inquiry to conceal its own culpability or negligence, not shortcomings in intelligence operations. That people on the opposition side of politics suspect that this has been the case, and that prominent leaders of the Jewish community suspect it too, explains some of the partisanship that would normally be absent from action after a major terrorist action. Albanese would be wise to put this innuendo to rest.

Another possibility is that there are circumstances, known to government and intelligence agencies, which provide a context to the tragedy, but which the government and the agencies want to conceal, in what they judge to be the national security interest. An example might be the involvement of a foreign country, or information about a major infiltration of a terror group. Public silence about such circumstances might mean that the public remains unaware of vital information that could affect their personal safety and security. But it would not stop agencies, or governments, responding in the secret sphere.

Another possibility is that the government has concluded that it cannot possibly explain its investigative and assessment techniques - even in cases where it appeared they failed - without compromising the very system used to protect citizens. Overseas agencies seem able to cope with a much higher degree of public accountability, including a need to publicly justify and explain what they do and did. We need a robust Attorney-General, rather than the cypher we have.

This is self-inflicted pain for Albanese, unless he really has something to hide. If there is serious misconduct or maladministration involved, he might think he can stare it down. But it won't go away. This is a cancer on sound government the nation cannot afford.