The need for a federal royal commission is patently obvious
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cannot continue to obfuscate on a royal commission.
Editorial
January 1, 2026 — 5.00am
On Monday, the prime minister released a one-page “terms of reference” for the Richardson review to investigate the terrorist atrocity at Bondi on December 14. It contained not a single reference to antisemitism or Jewish people. This is unfathomable.
Let’s be clear: what happened at Bondi was not some random, opportunistic attack. It was a planned murderous campaign against Jewish Australians.
So when the prime minister announced his limited review on Monday, the same day victims’ families appeared on front pages around the country calling for a Commonwealth royal commission, it was immediately condemned by the Jewish community as wilfully ignoring a key factor in the Bondi attack: antisemitism.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (right) and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on December 19.Credit: Getty Images
When Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke offered the excuse that a royal commission would only serve to platform voices of hate, it was angrily dismissed by Bondi victims’ families. How can you identify and combat hate if you refuse to shine a light on it?
This masthead does not believe the prime minister’s intransigence on this issue comes from a lack of empathy. He has rightly shown compassion for victims of the October 7 attacks, Palestinians in Gaza and our First Nations people. It looks more like a failure to listen – and his flat-footed response to Bondi has made this doubly difficult because large parts of the Jewish community, not least victims’ families, are no longer talking to him.
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He must find a way to sit down with them and work through their anger and grief in the same way Premier Chris Minns has done since December 14. Australian Jews are simply asking that the worst terrorist attack in our history be treated with the same gravitas as robo-debt and the banking industry.
The prime minister discounts a royal commission because we don’t need “division and delay”. Well, the furious rhetoric coming out of Canberra, led by the Coalition, shows we have never been more divided. As for delay, he has now wasted almost three weeks resisting the obvious.
And having done so little on the special envoy to combat antisemitism’s report, the prime minister cannot now shelter behind Jillian Segal’s inquiry.
A NSW royal commission will not cut it either, because antisemitism is not just a state problem. Try telling Victoria’s Jewish community that antisemitism is not an issue in their state, amid firebombings of synagogues and cars over the past 2½ years. They will not forget the vandalism of a Jewish MP’s office, pro-Hamas graffiti and dozens of reports of antisemitic incidents in the state’s schools.
The prime minister is fond of asking people to “turn down the temperature”. He now needs to take his own advice – and the only way to do that is to announce a Commonwealth royal commission that investigates every aspect of the events leading up to Bondi, with the scourge of antisemitism front and centre.
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