Speaker 1: Just twenty five days ago, two gunmen armed with high
Speaker 1: powered weapons went to Bondou Beach on the first night
Speaker 1: of Harnaka, and they murdered fifteen innocent people. They wounded
Speaker 1: dozens more.
Speaker 2: Last week, Anthony Alberezi announced a Royal Commission, something he'd
Speaker 2: spent nearly a month arguing against.
Speaker 1: I've taken the time to reflect, to meet with leaders
Speaker 1: in the Jewish community, and most importantly, I've met with
Speaker 1: many of the families of victims and survivors of that
Speaker 1: horrific attack.
Speaker 2: Now, former High Court Justice Virginia Bell will lead an
Speaker 2: inquiry into the Bondai terror attack and the rise of
Speaker 2: anti Semitism in Australia. It's a major shift the Prime Minister,
Speaker 2: one that raises questions about how he makes decisions and
Speaker 2: how he handles pressure. I'm Daniel James and you're listening
Speaker 2: to seven AM today Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton on
Speaker 2: the scope of the Royal Commission, the political fall out
Speaker 2: of the PMS reversal, and the risk that it all
Speaker 2: could lead to deeper division. It's Monday, January twelve. Karen,
Speaker 2: good to see you again. Let's start with the scope
Speaker 2: of the Royal Commission. What will it look like and
Speaker 2: when will it report back?
Speaker 3: Well, it's broad, Daniel, it's very broad.
Speaker 4: It's going to look at anti Semitism in Australia and
Speaker 4: it's causes in institutions and society, So broaden that as
Speaker 4: widely as you like.
Speaker 1: This Royal Commission will cover four key areas I set
Speaker 1: out in the terms of reference that I am releasing today.
Speaker 1: One tackling anti Semitism by investigating the nature and prevalence
Speaker 1: of any Semitism, examining its key drivers in Australia, including
Speaker 1: religious and ideologically motivated extremism and radicalization.
Speaker 4: It's going to look into institutions, the government, how much
Speaker 4: resourcing there's been for agencies, law enforcement and.
Speaker 1: Security, including through improvements to guidance and training within law enforcement,
Speaker 1: border control, immigration and security agencies to respond to any
Speaker 1: Semitic conduct.
Speaker 4: And it's going to see if decisions that were made,
Speaker 4: see if anything more is needed to prevent these kinds
Speaker 4: of things happening.
Speaker 1: Again, and for make any other recommendations arising out of
Speaker 1: the inquiry for strengthening social cohesion in Australia and encountering
Speaker 1: the spread of ideological and religiously motivated extremism in Australia.
Speaker 4: What the Prime Minister has done is effectively combined this
Speaker 4: Federal Royal Commission with the Agency examination that he had
Speaker 4: already announced, So that was the one that former ASO
Speaker 4: chief Dennis Richardson was doing. He will now work with
Speaker 4: the new Commissioner, Virginia Bell on her commission, so he
Speaker 4: will report his part and they will decide how to
Speaker 4: give you those responsibilities up by April thirty of this year.
Speaker 4: That's considered as an interim report of the Commission, and
Speaker 4: then she will have to hand down her final report
Speaker 4: by the fourteenth of December this year, which will be
Speaker 4: the first anniversary of the Bondi attacks.
Speaker 2: And as you said, it'll be run by a former Justice,
Speaker 2: Virginia Bell. What considerations would the government have made when
Speaker 2: picking her as Commissioner.
Speaker 3: Well, she's done a review for them before.
Speaker 4: Remember when they took office and it was discovered that
Speaker 4: former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had held multiple ministries. Anthony Albanizi,
Speaker 4: as Prime Minister, appointed Virginia Bell to examine how that
Speaker 4: all came about, and she handed that report to the
Speaker 4: government in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Virginia Bell is an eminent individual with an extensive and
Speaker 1: diverse legal career as a community lawyer, a barrister, a
Speaker 1: law reform commissioner, a Supreme Court as well as Court
Speaker 1: of Appeal judge before assuming her high office in the
Speaker 1: High Court of Australia.
Speaker 4: So they have selected her despite some criticisms from within
Speaker 4: sections of the Jewish community, including Josh Bridenberg, the former Treasurer,
Speaker 4: had suggested that she would not be the best choice.
Speaker 5: You would have thought, after two and a half years
Speaker 5: of this unbelievably bad behavior we've seen in our country
Speaker 5: towards the Jewish community, that the Prime Minister would have
Speaker 5: got the support of the Jewish leadership for his choice
Speaker 5: before putting that name out into the public realm. Unfortunately
Speaker 5: that didn't happen.
Speaker 4: But I think there's now support that the Royal Commission
Speaker 4: has been called.
Speaker 2: Our Royal Commission was not the way Anthony Alberanezi wanted
Speaker 2: to handle this. In the week after the attack, he
Speaker 2: announced a more targeted response, as you've referred to an
Speaker 2: independent review of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. So
Speaker 2: where does that announcement leave that plan specifically?
Speaker 3: Well, that is.
Speaker 4: Really What's a bit unclear now that because he's combined
Speaker 4: these two reviews, the Commissioner and Dennis Richardson will have
Speaker 4: to work out how the labor is divided up. It's
Speaker 4: possible they would do something like have Dennis Richardson focus
Speaker 4: on the operational side of security law enforcement agencies in
Speaker 4: relations specifically to the Bondi attack, what resources they had,
Speaker 4: what recommendations they made that were or were not acted upon.
Speaker 4: Virginia Bell could do the broader questions of whether the
Speaker 4: law as it stands has been adequate to prevent anti
Speaker 4: Semitic attacks or anti Semitism spreading, and this commission can
Speaker 4: also look at border protection policies, immigration policies, the whole
Speaker 4: of society. So they do have to divide those responsibilities
Speaker 4: up and they will need Dennis Richardson's remit to be
Speaker 4: reasonably focused in order.
Speaker 3: For him to get his report in by April.
Speaker 2: The Prime Minister has previously argued that a Royal Commission
Speaker 2: would platform the worst of anti semitism. What is he
Speaker 2: said now about how he's going to stop that from happening.
Speaker 4: Well, he has issued instructions to Virginia Bell to ensure
Speaker 4: that the Royal Commission does certain things, but also doesn't
Speaker 4: do certain things. Now it's not allowed to impede the
Speaker 4: progress of criminal proceedings against the man that has been
Speaker 4: accused of these murders, bearing in mind that one of
Speaker 4: the alleged terrorists was killed during the exchange of fire
Speaker 4: with police on the fourteenth of December last year. They
Speaker 4: don't want her to do anything or conduct an inquiry
Speaker 4: that will impede national security and they don't want it
Speaker 4: to impede social cohesion. So making sure that this does
Speaker 4: not become a platform for further prejudicial comments anti Semitic
Speaker 4: or otherwise that divides the community rather than bringing it together,
Speaker 4: because the theme the Prime Minister has really emphasized has
Speaker 4: been unity, and when he announced his reversal of his
Speaker 4: decision on a Royal commission, one thing he said was
Speaker 4: that it had become clear to him in the three
Speaker 4: and a half weeks since the attacks that saying no
Speaker 4: to a Royal commission was not going to achieve unity,
Speaker 4: and that was a big part of the reason he
Speaker 4: changed his mind.
Speaker 2: The Special Envoy for Randy Semitism, Dellian Siegel's with the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister as he announced the Royal Commission. She said
Speaker 2: that he had listened to the Jewish Australians and had
Speaker 2: made the right call. How significant was that in your view?
Speaker 4: I think that was very significant. We'll remember that in
Speaker 4: the first couple of weeks after the Bondai attacks, the
Speaker 4: government finally made its formal response to Jillian Siegel's report
Speaker 4: earlier in the year, and there was criticism of the
Speaker 4: government for taking too long to do that. Jillian Siegel
Speaker 4: stood beside the Prime Minister at Parliament House and made
Speaker 4: that announcement and welcomed the response, although she did emphasize
Speaker 4: she thought it should have come sooner. She has done
Speaker 4: that again with the announcement of the Royal Commission. The
Speaker 4: Jewish community and the broader Australian community have been calling
Speaker 4: for a.
Speaker 3: Process of this sort of authority.
Speaker 4: And it's very important that those calls have been heard.
Speaker 4: So she is playing a representative role, I guess with
Speaker 4: the Jewish community in some respects. She was by the
Speaker 4: Jewish community leadership broadly as the Special Envoy when she
Speaker 4: was chosen, and so she's really, I think, trying to
Speaker 4: play a mediating role in that sense, and her standing
Speaker 4: beside the Prime Ministry was saying, yes, we wanted a
Speaker 4: royal commission. Yes we had to put hard for it.
Speaker 4: It's taken maybe too long. We would have liked it
Speaker 4: to happen faster and in a different way, but we're glad
Speaker 4: this decision has been made and we're going to support
Speaker 4: this process.
Speaker 3: So I think it was very important that she.
Speaker 4: Was there.
Speaker 2: Coming up. Lord Albanese's reversal tells us about his leadership, Karen.
Speaker 2: This announcement comes after almost a month of pressure from
Speaker 2: some of the media, from Jewish groups, the opposition, sporting
Speaker 2: grades and others. I suppose, so is this an admission
Speaker 2: of failure by the Prime minister.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good question.
Speaker 4: The Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi doesn't like to admit failure
Speaker 4: or apologize or anything like that broadly speaking, and he
Speaker 4: is certainly not admitting failure. But you have to say
Speaker 4: that when an attack occurs that kills fifteen people, then
Speaker 4: there has been a failure of government at every level
Speaker 4: and agencies to keep people safe, which is the fundamental
Speaker 4: job of all governments. The question is whether that was
Speaker 4: a preventable failure or not. And then there's been the
Speaker 4: debate about whether there's been a subsequent political failure in
Speaker 4: the way the Prime Minister has chosen to respond in the.
Speaker 3: Three and a half weeks since.
Speaker 4: There are certainly some critics in particularly in the opposition,
Speaker 4: who say it's taken far too long, and Opposition leader
Speaker 4: Susan Lee is saying that it's a sign of weak leadership.
Speaker 4: Australias deserve honesty, they deserve answers, they deserve leadership. But
Speaker 4: he is saying it's a sign that he has listened,
Speaker 4: that he has acted, and he's in fact now saying
Speaker 4: that this Royal commission was called in record time if
Speaker 4: you look at history and how long royal commissions have
Speaker 4: taken to be mobilized. So he's trying to suggest that
Speaker 4: he has been spending this time thinking carefully and drafting
Speaker 4: these terms of reference and planning.
Speaker 3: I mean, the truth is they were saying very strenuously they.
Speaker 4: Didn't want to have one and they weren't going to
Speaker 4: have one right up until just a week or two ago.
Speaker 3: So the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: Is there a risk that by not holding his original
Speaker 2: position and being willing to hold his ground, that he's
Speaker 2: actually going to end up hurting himself politically even more.
Speaker 4: Well, I think this whole process has hurt him politically.
Speaker 4: It's very difficult to try and extricate the politics and
Speaker 4: the party politics from the substance of the concerns around
Speaker 4: the attacks at Bondai, because there's been a degree of
Speaker 4: partisanship in responses to this whole issue going back to
Speaker 4: certainly to the October seven attacks of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: and so it's all bound up together and I think
Speaker 4: it's become very hard to disentangle. But the Prime Minister
Speaker 4: has been the focus of severe criticism for the way
Speaker 4: he has responded to this attack.
Speaker 3: Certainly the Jewish community were.
Speaker 4: Very forceful in their expression of view that the government
Speaker 4: didn't listen to them when they said they were scared
Speaker 4: of this kind of thing occurring in the wake of
Speaker 4: October seven.
Speaker 6: To have to think that here in Sydney, Australia, I
Speaker 6: have to have security full time at my synagogue, My
Speaker 6: children go to school where they're told not to wear
Speaker 6: their uniforms outside, and now twelve of our best are
Speaker 6: gone down. So I mean, there are no words.
Speaker 3: So it has certainly left him politically diminished.
Speaker 4: If you look back to just May of last year
Speaker 4: where he had won this incredible victory with his labor colleagues,
Speaker 4: a huge majority in the House of Representatives, unexpectedly large
Speaker 4: and was seen as unassailable. I'm not sure that you
Speaker 4: could reflect on his position as being anywhere near as
Speaker 4: secure as it was Karen.
Speaker 2: Setting aside the politics of how we've ended up here,
Speaker 2: we now have a Royal Commission. So what will that
Speaker 2: mean in practical terms? What can the public expect to
Speaker 2: find out from this process?
Speaker 4: Well, that's the big question. The Commission's got to work
Speaker 4: out the structure. I think there's an expectation of public hearings.
Speaker 4: I think there would be an outcry if there weren't
Speaker 4: public hearings, So she has to work out the balance
Speaker 4: between public hearings and in camera or private hearings. There
Speaker 4: may be a case for private hearings where security agencies
Speaker 4: and secret information and operational details are concerned, so we
Speaker 4: should expect that there will be some of that. But
Speaker 4: I think the emphasis in the terms of reference is
Speaker 4: that this gets underway very quickly and is as.
Speaker 3: Expeditious as possible.
Speaker 4: So she's got to find a structure that is going
Speaker 4: to be efficient but also draw as much information out
Speaker 4: of people as possible and satisfy the public expectation of
Speaker 4: of public accountability, because I think that was where the
Speaker 4: government went wrong. There was a sense that it had
Speaker 4: not properly responded to the demands for public accountability and
Speaker 4: facts to be laid on the table.
Speaker 3: And the personal experience of the Jewish community.
Speaker 4: So she's got you know, it's a tough job because
Speaker 4: part of this is going to be the importance of
Speaker 4: the process of allowing Jewish Australians to tell their stories
Speaker 4: and other Australians who may have been subjected to prejudicial
Speaker 4: treatment in the same context, and also extract information about
Speaker 4: this particular attack and the circumstances around this attack more
Speaker 4: broadly that are creating this problem in Australia.
Speaker 2: And finally, Karen, I guess the question that a lot
Speaker 2: of people are really concerned about at the moment is
Speaker 2: what is the risk that this Royal Commission will actually
Speaker 2: deepen divisions further.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's always a risk. This issue has
Speaker 3: a lot of emotion with it.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of people in Australia with deep
Speaker 4: personal ties to both Israel and Gaza and the Palace
Speaker 4: Inian territories. More broadly, and so this has long been
Speaker 4: a very difficult issue for a lot of people in Australia.
Speaker 4: Then we have the October seven, twenty twenty three attacks,
Speaker 4: which have escalated all of that feeling, and then the
Speaker 4: international politics that have gone with that. We see attacks themselves,
Speaker 4: and then the Israeli response, and we've heard calls from
Speaker 4: the government to try and separate feelings about the Israeli
Speaker 4: government in its actions and ordinary Jewish Australians and Palestinian
Speaker 4: Australians and other Australians of Muslim background to try and
Speaker 4: separate all of that. So there is a huge risk
Speaker 4: that this becomes a full crimp for everybody's prejudices, and
Speaker 4: so the Royal Commissioner has challenged to try and traverse
Speaker 4: that in a way that this becomes a positive experience,
Speaker 4: that people telling their stories enables the rest of the
Speaker 4: country to understand things from a point of view that
Speaker 4: perhaps they don't experience in their own life personally.
Speaker 3: And we know that's how prejudice works.
Speaker 4: It's really often only seen by the person experiencing it.
Speaker 4: So we want that process, but we don't want it
Speaker 4: to further entrench the divisions and hatreds and then have
Speaker 4: the opposite effect of intent.
Speaker 2: Karen, thanks so much for speaking with this.
Speaker 3: Thanks Daniel.
Speaker 2: Also in the news, Victoria Police have confirmed the death
Speaker 2: of one person as a result of the Longwood bush
Speaker 2: fire in central Victoria. There are still several bushfires out
Speaker 2: of control across the state and hundreds of buildings have
Speaker 2: been destroyed. Authorities say bushfires could burn for weeks and
Speaker 2: a state of emergency remains in place, and the United
Speaker 2: States has told American citizens to leave Venezuela amid reports
Speaker 2: armed militia are targeting them. The State Department issued a
Speaker 2: security alert on Saturday that's grubbing reports of armed Progene
Speaker 2: collectivos setting up roadblocks and searching cars for evidence of
Speaker 2: links to America. The warning said Americans should remain vigilant
Speaker 2: and exercise caution while traveling via road, and leave the
Speaker 2: country as soon as possible. I'm Daniel James. This is
Speaker 2: seven am. Thanks for listening.