The questions that still need to be asked: Intelligence failures and the limits of the antisemitism Royal Commission

The Royal Commission needs to ask the difficult questions of ASIO and its intelligence failures, rather than avoiding accountability and hiding behind the language of “social cohesion”.

The interim findings of the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion have been released with a certain level of caution, containing a series of recommendations that, on the surface at least, appear to be largely uncontroversial – mainly relating to gun control measures and increased resources for policing. Yet beneath that surface is a far more troubling issue: the Commission, at least at this stage, seems reluctant to scrutinise the security institutions whose failures may have contributed to the December 2025 Bondi attack, and the public needs to understand why those failures occurred.

While public attention has been directed towards community tensions, the emotional aftermath of the attack, and this concept of “social cohesion” that we keep being told about, the central question remains – what did Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies know about the Bondi attackers, and why did that knowledge fail to prevent this tragedy?

The nine interim recommendations that have been publicly released, recommend improved coordination between security agencies and police forces, and what appears to be modest reforms to firearms regulations, while also asserting that the existing legal framework is adequate, albeit in need of some level of strengthening. The logical conclusion from this is that if the existing laws are adequate, then the failures are not within the legislation itself – and hopefully the Premiers of New South Wales and Queensland are taking note of this – but in the application of those laws, and how security agencies are using them. And this is what the Royal Commission needs to assess, because all the evidence that we know of, suggests that the warning signs were there, way before the Bondi attacks occurred.

ASIO actually performed a six-month investigation into the alleged perpetrator all the way back in 2019, but even though it was shown that he had links to well-established terror networks, they decided that he wasn’t an “active threat”. Five years later, ASIO was notified by a whistleblower that he was also a supporter of Islamic State, was acquiring weapons – albeit legally – and planned to travel to parts of the world where extremists were active. Why didn’t this this information trigger further investigation by ASIO? By the time the perpetrators went missing in the lead-up to the attack, the opportunity for prevention had already have passed.

Both ASIO and the Australian Federal Police have maintained that there “was no intelligence failure”, a statement that has drawn scepticism from many observers, including the former ASIO boss, Dennis Richardson. ASIO is not beyond reproach – no organisation is – and claims of no intelligence failure needs further examination. Intelligence work, of course, is inherently uncertain and dangerous, and not every threat can be neutralised: the public, more is less, would understand these imperfections, if not necessarily accept them. But when known individuals with established connections to extremist networks proceed to carry out such a large-scale attack, and the warnings were made directly to AISO, then their claim that there was no intelligence failure stretches credibility, as well as the public’s trust in the organisation.

The Royal Commission has withheld five of its 14 recommendations on the grounds of national security and ongoing legal proceedings against Naveed Akram. While the latter is understandable – to jeopardise this legal case would be totally unacceptable – but bringing up national security as a reason to withhold these recommendations raises deeper concerns. For sure, secrecy is necessary in certain contexts, but it can also be used as a bureaucratic shield against public accountability. We not suggesting that all the information that pertains to national security must be released publicly, but at least some direction needs to be provided to the public so they can some gain trust again in the role and actions of ASIO.

And it’s not a case where we haven’t seen these types of failures before: the Lindt Café siege in 2014 exposed similar shortcomings in Australia’s counterterrorism actions, including the challenges of managing individuals or “assets” who exist on the margins of extremist networks, both here and abroad. At the same time, the broader framing of the Royal Commission raises its own set of issues. By placing the inquiry within the context of antisemitism and social cohesion, there is that risk that the focus will shift away from this institutional accountability and the role of security agencies, and into the social narratives that are easier to manage politically, and can be exploited by certain groups to implement their personal agendas.

The grief experienced by the Jewish community following the Bondi attack is real and must be acknowledged, there’s no question about that. But grief, if it is to serve any constructive purpose, needs to be accompanied with a sober examination of the causes of the attack. Blaming the Bondi attack on the people who walked the Sydney Harbour Bridge to voice their opposition to the genocidal actions of Israel in Gaza isn’t acceptable, as has been claimed by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal. The perpetrators of these attacks were not radicalised by public protests or debates about Palestine on university campuses: they were individuals known to authorities whose propensity for violence was not effectively intercepted.

A mature democratic society should be able to understand that it is possible to hold multiple perspectives at the same time – grieving for victims, confronting antisemitism, and engaging in a robust debate about foreign policy, whether it relates to Israel or Australia – without reducing these issues into a single level of blame to those people who are opposed to violence and wish to offer their views on this publicly. The Akrams were responsible for the Bondi attacks, and that’s where the blame should be apportioned.

But the danger is that the Royal Commission becomes a forum of community tensions – the so-called social cohesion – rather than an avenue to reform the security institutions that badly need it. If its ultimate legacy is a set of recommendations that expand protections for one particular group, and not everyone else – without addressing the operational failures of intelligence and law enforcement agencies – then it will have fallen short of its most essential purpose.

What is required now is a shift in emphasis of this Royal Commission. It needs to move from the language of social cohesion – which has now become a set of code words for silencing dissent – and into the much harder territory of accountability. It needs to examine not only what the intelligence agencies knew, but how this knowledge was analysed, interpreted and acted on. It needs to scrutinise the leadership of Mike Burgess at ASIO, Krissy Barret, the head of the Australian Federal Police, and also the responsibilities of the minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke. This is not to reduce any of the responsibility of the gunmen who caused the Bondi attacks and caused immeasurable damage and harm to both the Jewish community and the general public, but ultimately, the credibility of the Royal Commission, and of the institutions that it needs to examine, relies on the willingness of the Commissioner Virginia Bell – if she’s allowed to within the terms of reference that have been given to her – to confront some uncomfortable truths.

The question isn’t about whether Australia’s security agencies can prevent every act of violence: there’s no system in the world that can do that. The question is whether they are prepared to acknowledge when they have made mistakes, and whether there will be enough measures put in place to ensure that such failures are never repeated again or, at the very least, minimised. We hope the Royal Commission will be able to provide the answers, otherwise there won’t be much point to it.

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