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Did the reprehensible Anthony Albanese set up the Bondi Royal Commission to fail? It’s no secret that Albanese never wanted to peer too closely under the dark pall of anti-Semitism that led directly to the mass-murder of 15 Jewish Australians on Bondi Beach. Mostly because he knows it will expose two of his most critical voting blocs: the left and the Muslim community. When he had finally been dragged, “kicking and scheming” (in Henry Ergas’ unforgettable phrasing), into holding a royal commission, it’s looking more and more like he did all he could to nobble it from the start.
If so, his dirty tricks are already bearing fruit. Just days after it officially launched, the RC started falling apart, as one of its senior members, former Director-General of Security and Secretary of the Department of Defence Dennis Richardson, quit. Richardson, proving that there are still some people with integrity in the public service, stated that his role was simply untenable. Richardson also warned that Australia is at a critical junction, with the Iran war likely to inspire more terror attacks.
The Australian revealed on Wednesday night that Mr Richardson had quit the royal commission because of concerns over its structure and his belief that its interim report due on April 30 was unlikely to include substantial findings on intelligence and law enforcement.
The veteran bureaucrat said on Thursday the public now faced a “slower” process to determine whether the nation’s intelligence agencies could have done more to prevent the attack, and its interim report would be a “very different animal” from the one he would have co-authored.
This is the man, remember, about whom Albanese lied was one of the “actual experts” supposedly advising him to oppose a royal commission into the Bondi massacre. Albanese then stated that Richardson was the “most qualified person” to examine the role of intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the attack.
Now? He’s not saying anything at all. The PM has simply taken his bat and ball and for once in his life fallen utterly silent. Both the gravity of the RC and Richardson’s longstanding reputation frankly deserve better than a fit of sulks from a petulant PM.
The resignation is also, inevitably, reviving questions over former High Court judge Virginia Bell’s fitness to head the RC. It didn’t escape Jewish Australians’ notice, for instance, that Bell’s previous foray into the anti-Semitism crisis was to give the green light to anti-Semitic mobs to spew their hate in Sydney’s streets.
Mr Richardson was originally appointed to head an independent administrative inquiry into security agencies’ knowledge of the Bondi shooters before their December 14 attack that killed 15 people, what judgments they took, and whether they could have prevented the massacre.
His inquiry was rolled into the government’s subsequently announced royal commission, headed by former High Court judge Virginia Bell, who was given the additional brief to examine the role antisemitism played in creating the conditions for the attack.
Mr Richardson said he tried to work with Ms Bell to find a way forward, but continued to feel like he was unable to justify his $5500 daily fee. “Very simply, I felt I was the fifth wheel. It’s a very legally driven process, the way it’s structured and the way it proceeds as such, that means there is not much need for someone like myself,” he told Sky News on Thursday.
Later, he said he had raised the prospect of resigning with Ms Bell a fortnight ago, while praising her as a “very fine person” and insisting they had not had a falling out […]
Though Mr Richardson insisted he did not want to be appointed a co-royal commissioner with Ms Bell, some in the legal fraternity said he was unused to being in a position where his advice might not be accepted. “For someone like Dennis Richardson who has been head of about every significant department, including ASIO, to be left out of the decisions that are taken by people that effectively know nothing about it, that’s pretty hard,” said a former judge with experience managing a royal commission.
Mr Richardson was given carriage over one of the thorniest topics under the inquiry’s remit and was obligated to work around a carve-out that prevented public testimony on evidence directly related to the attack that risked prejudicing shooter Naveed Akram’s ongoing criminal case.
No matter how circumspect Richardson tries to be, the inescapable sense is that this is an RC doomed to fail. Possibly, horribly, by design. Albanese’s only moral compass, if it can even be dignified with such a description, is playing the grubbiest brand of politics. This is the socialist creep, remember, who boasted that his entirely life was only ever about “fighting Tories”. He is the very worst ‘leader’ Australia could possibly have saddled itself with at such a critical time.
There is a nagging doubt that the way the RC was set up was just another one of his sleazy political games.
The price for Albanese’s retreat to accept the royal commission was having Bell fill the role. He was insistent about that. Bell has judicial credentials. But is Bell the right fit for the job? The Richardson fiasco raises these doubts. Relegating Richardson to what he calls “surplus to requirements” diminishes Bell’s capacity and reflects badly on her judgment.
The lawyers in the royal commission, fixated on their procedures, never recognised Richardson’s authority and expertise. There is only one boss in a royal commission and that was Bell, the former judge Albanese had hand-picked.
The notion that Albanese had made a successful pivot from his post-Bondi leadership failures to strike a sound arrangement that incorporated both Bell and Richardson is now in ruins.
And Australians – Jewish Australians, the perennial canaries in the social cohesion coalmine, more than anyone – are at yet greater risk of another Islamic atrocity.
