Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christianamio.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, January nineteenth, twenty twenty six. Get on board
Speaker 1: or face the consequences. That's the warning from Beijing, who
Speaker 1: says Australia must accept China's so called reunification with Taiwan
Speaker 1: or else there'll be no forgiveness. China's ambassador in Australia,
Speaker 1: zhaou Chen, also likened Taiwan to Tasmania and said Australia's
Speaker 1: bilateral relationship with China could be compromised if our government
Speaker 1: seeks to block Beijing's efforts to bring the island under
Speaker 1: its control. That story's live right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot Au. Members and senators will descend on
Speaker 1: Canberra on Monday for an emergency parliamentary sitting. They'll debate
Speaker 1: reworked gun control and hate speech legislation. After so port
Speaker 1: for the government's proposed omnibus bill waned Today National Editor
Speaker 1: Dennis Shanahan on why the government still has a shot
Speaker 1: at redemption.
Speaker 2: My job as the Australian Prime Minister is to act
Speaker 2: in the national interest.
Speaker 3: A list of people wanting a Commonwealth's Royal commission into
Speaker 3: the Bondai attack is growing by the day, but.
Speaker 2: Anthony Albanezi is still resisting cascading pressure to green light
Speaker 2: a royal commission. The government is committed to making sure
Speaker 2: that we can't wait years for answers. We need to
Speaker 2: get on with any changes that are required.
Speaker 1: It took Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi twenty five days to
Speaker 1: call a federal Royal commission into the December fourteenth terror
Speaker 1: attack at Bondai Beach, where two gunmen allegedly motivated by
Speaker 1: extremist Islamic ideology, opened fire on Ahuneker festival, killing fifteen
Speaker 1: people and injuring dozens more. After twenty five days, the
Speaker 1: chorus was too loud to ignore.
Speaker 2: Today, I have asked that former High Court Justice, the
Speaker 2: Honorable Virginia bell Ac to serve as the commissioner.
Speaker 3: The government now has one chance at redemption.
Speaker 1: Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor.
Speaker 3: After two years of failure, what is now needed is
Speaker 3: a clear declaration of intent of what the government actually
Speaker 3: wants and what the Australian public actually needs. What we've
Speaker 3: seen is a government reluctant to actually declare clearly what
Speaker 3: it wants, what the principles are, it's obfiscated, its delayed, deferred.
Speaker 3: And what we've seen since Bondi is a government that
Speaker 3: has resisted a royal commission, then caved in and called
Speaker 3: a royal commission. We saw a government that said it
Speaker 3: didn't want to recall parliament, and then recalled parliament, and
Speaker 3: then it introduced legislation which was so flawed and fraught
Speaker 3: that the Prime Minister was forced into a second major
Speaker 3: backflip and said, oh no, sorry, we're going to change
Speaker 3: all of this, because the only unity he had achieved
Speaker 3: was that people were unified against him. Dreams, Coalition, liberals, nationals,
Speaker 3: religious leaders, Muslim leaders, Jewish leaders, they were all against
Speaker 3: this legislation. But the real issue here is that what
Speaker 3: the Australian public wants, even more than some attempt to
Speaker 3: create a age of front against anti Semitism, is a
Speaker 3: real investigation into how the Bondai massacre happened, what could
Speaker 3: have been done to prevent it, and what can be
Speaker 3: done to prevent another one. What we need over the
Speaker 3: next two days of parliamentary sitting is a clear intention,
Speaker 3: a declaration of intention from the government. We want all
Speaker 3: the interagency cooperation to be investigated. We want ASIO, the AFP,
Speaker 3: the State police all to be looked into to see
Speaker 3: what they knew and when the reality is we'll never
Speaker 3: be able to stop terror attacks, but we should be
Speaker 3: able to reduce them, and that's what we've got to
Speaker 3: do now.
Speaker 1: The security inquiry, led by former ASIO boss and respected
Speaker 1: foreign affairs expert Dennis Richardson, will go ahead as part
Speaker 1: of the Royal Commission, but without the teeth.
Speaker 3: Important to recognize here, Dennis Richardson does not have the
Speaker 3: powers of a Royal Commissioner. He cannot coerce witnesses into
Speaker 3: giving evidence. If the head of ASIO, for instance, and
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting he is, but if the head of
Speaker 3: ASIO were to stall Dennis Richardson on questions about the
Speaker 3: involvement the priorities of ASIO, Dennis Richardson in himself cannot
Speaker 3: say okay, listen, Mike, you get down to it here
Speaker 3: and you do as I say. Dennis Richardson then has
Speaker 3: to go to Virginia Bell write a letter. Dear Virginia,
Speaker 3: what I want is for you to tell ASIO to
Speaker 3: cooperate with me. Now, the Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell doesn't
Speaker 3: have to actually do that. But the look, imagine this,
Speaker 3: the look for a departmental head, a minister, somebody who
Speaker 3: says to Dennis Richardson, now I'm not going to give
Speaker 3: you what you want, and he then has to go
Speaker 3: to get the raw commission to give that power. So
Speaker 3: that's a bad news for them in a political sense. Secondly,
Speaker 3: Virginia Bell is not compelled to actually give Dennis Richardson
Speaker 3: that coercive power on a particular innestrying and say no, look,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's not pertinent. It's then open to
Speaker 3: Dennis Richardson to then turn around and say, well I
Speaker 3: think it is, and I'm out of here a disaster.
Speaker 3: So what we're actually looking at here is, instead of
Speaker 3: clear powers ceded to Dennis Richardson, it's a series of
Speaker 3: practical measures that have to take place with coercive threats. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm not casting any aspersions whatsoever on Dennis Richardson or
Speaker 3: Mike Burgess or the head of the AFP or the
Speaker 3: head of the New South Wales Police. All I'm saying
Speaker 3: is these are things the public needs to be reassured
Speaker 3: will be addressed. And yet in the current circumstances, they
Speaker 3: are not necessarily This is why we need the government
Speaker 3: to come out and say we want full cooperation with
Speaker 3: Dennis Richardson. We want him to look at this and this,
Speaker 3: and we're not afraid where he does look, so that
Speaker 3: everyone can say, yes, this is a fair income inquiry
Speaker 3: anti Semitism aside, we want to ensure that Australia's domestic
Speaker 3: security is in the right hands and being handled correctly.
Speaker 1: Coming up why the PM's return to Parliament isn't going
Speaker 1: to plan. When MPs and senators return to canber today,
Speaker 1: they'll convene to debate legislation very different to what the
Speaker 1: government had intended. Labour had proposed a two part omnibus
Speaker 1: bill geared towards curbing anti semitism and preventing another tragedy
Speaker 1: like Bondai, the first part focusing on gun reform and
Speaker 1: the second on Australia's hate speech laws, but the Coalition
Speaker 1: and the Greens weren't on board. Opposition leader Susan Lee
Speaker 1: said her party will progress an alternative approach.
Speaker 4: These changes to legislation will tackle antisemitism head on in education,
Speaker 4: the arts and society more broadly and critically enshrine the
Speaker 4: definition of anti senitism in law.
Speaker 1: Deputy Green's leader Marine Ferruki said her party will come
Speaker 1: to the table on gun laws but won't back the
Speaker 1: government's proposed immigration and hate speech reforms.
Speaker 2: This is the divisive and dangerous legislation which cannot be fixed.
Speaker 1: And that put the government in a tight spot.
Speaker 2: So we'll separate out the bills. The gun laws will
Speaker 2: be separate, and then the laws on hate crimes and
Speaker 2: migration will proceed, but we will not be proceeding with
Speaker 2: the racial vilification provisions because it's clear that that will
Speaker 2: not have support.
Speaker 1: Here's Dennis Shanahan.
Speaker 3: Well, it's self evidently a shambalic mess. I don't think
Speaker 3: anyone can say it's not. The Prime Minister, of course,
Speaker 3: was trying to use politics. He was trying to use
Speaker 3: this omnibus bill which was like an albatross around his neck,
Speaker 3: which was threatening to go down and drag him down
Speaker 3: with it. And yet he and his senior ministers Penny
Speaker 3: Wong and Tony Burke were defending the legislation up until
Speaker 3: Friday evening. They were saying, oh no, it's all the
Speaker 3: oppositions for but in fact what they would do doing,
Speaker 3: and what they have been doing since obviously the October
Speaker 3: seven attack is they have been playing politics. They have
Speaker 3: not addressed the whole issue of anti Semitism, of security failures,
Speaker 3: of security corporation, of growing fears in the community. We've
Speaker 3: seen graffiti attacks and fire bombings, control from overseas. How
Speaker 3: is this happening? And partly because the government has always
Speaker 3: played politics and the Omnibus Bill was about driving a
Speaker 3: wedge between the coalition partners and forcing Susan Lean too
Speaker 3: positioned where she would be seen to opposing the legislation
Speaker 3: she'd been calling for. And this is what they have
Speaker 3: done all along, is they have not grasped the gravitas
Speaker 3: of the security issue involved here, let alone the principle
Speaker 3: of anti Semitism. They have not grasped the breadth and
Speaker 3: the depth of the security threat before Bondai and now
Speaker 3: since Bondai, all they have done is played politics. And
Speaker 3: that's why it turned into a shambalic mess on Saturday,
Speaker 3: Legislation being split, legislation being withdrawn, and a terrible political
Speaker 3: outcome for the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's national editor for all the
Speaker 1: latest from Canberra and around the nation. Visit the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au