Bushfire inquiry’s top silk says royal commission essential for harmony
“Why this happened and how we prevent it in the future, I think, is of the utmost importance for our nation,” Jack Rush told this masthead.
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The senior counsel for the Black Saturday bushfire royal commission says the nation’s highest form of inquiry is essential not only to seek the answers Australia’s Jewish community needs after the Bondi Beach massacre, but to protect what the country stands for.
Jack Rush, KC, a former Victorian Supreme Court judge and one of the nation’s most eminent barristers, said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s reluctance to address the “fundamental issues” of the attack had pushed him to add his name to an open letter calling for the inquiry, which now bears more than 200 signatures from Australia’s judges and barristers.
Former Victorian Supreme Court judge and senior counsel for the Black Saturday bushfires royal commission, says a national inquiry into antisemitism is essential.Credit: ABC
“Antisemitism has festered disastrously, but I feel a royal commission is not only overdue for our Jewish community. I think the massacre and antisemitism is an attack on our national ethos, what we believe in, what we stand for,” Rush told this masthead.
“Why this happened and how we prevent it in the future, I think, is of the utmost importance for our nation.”
Calls for the government to establish a royal commission into the killing of 15 innocent people at Bondi Beach have entered a third week, despite Albanese’s efforts to waylay criticism with a review into federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
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Rush dismissed the government’s arguments against holding the nation’s highest form of inquiry as nonsensical, and said his experience leading the questioning at Victoria’s royal commission into the deadly 2009 bushfires had shown the value in listening to victims.
“Every day that [the bushfires] royal commission sat, the royal commission called a person that had been impacted or lost loved ones in those fires, and that evidence was often emotional, but without exception, it was cathartic,” he said.
“It brought people together, and it absolutely kept everyone involved in the royal commission on task because of the importance and appreciation of what we were doing. It can get lost in the documents, but bringing it back to people was very important.”