The Bondi massacre and dodging accountability

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, and the intelligence coverup it perpetrates

This is Exit From Affco’s first guest post written by Australian journalist William Evans, covering the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, the Royal Commission now established to probe “Antisemitism and Social Cohesion”, and the decision to not properly investigate the failings of Australia’s intelligence agencies in preventing the attack. — Smith K. Stead

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On December 14 last year, a father-son duo of ISIS gunmen attacked a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Beach, an Australian cultural landmark, killing 15 people. The attack was the deadliest since the Port Arthur shooting in 1996. Just hours after the attack, the director of ASIO (Australia’s equivalent to MI5 or the NZSIS), Mike Burgess, addressed a press conference stating that one of the attackers was “known to” ASIO.

A report in the ABC the following morning was able to give detail on what that meant: back in October 2019, ASIO knew that the younger gunman, then-18 year old Naveed Akram, was “closely connected to Isaac El Matari”. El Matari was a 20 year old who fancied himself as the leader of the Australian branch of ISIS, and was sentenced to 7 years in jail for planning attacks in Australia on behalf of the organisation.

However, the Bondi massacre would not be the first time that ASIO’s negligence had violent consequences. Just eight months prior to the Bondi massacre, an episode of Four Corners featured an ASIO whistleblower identified only under the pseudonym Marcus. The whistleblower alleged that the agency, ostensibly meant to protect the Australian public, ignored his warnings about the impending stabbing of a celebrity bishop in Wakeley.

The episode described in detail how Marcus, an imam, was recruited by ASIO to infiltrate a prayer centre and movement headed by a radical pro-ISIS preacher, Wissam Haddad. Haddad is connected to several people convicted of terrorism offences, and his network targets teenagers for recruitment and radicalisation.

Also of note is that Naveed Akram himself was connected to Haddad’s network. After the shooting, photos and video surfaced of Akram participating Haddad’s Street Dawah Movement in 2018 when he was just 17 years old.

In response to the Four Corners episode, ASIO did not get its act together, but instead responded by saying “the insinuation ASIO would not act on intelligence about a terrorist attack is false”, going as far as to call it “offensive to [ASIO] officers who work 24/7 to keep Australians safe.”

It’s not unreasonable to say that after these two incidents, an inquiry into ASIO and the rest of Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement would be warranted.

In the days following the attack, much of the media and commentariat called on the federal government to establish a royal commission, whilst the Albanese government resisted the calls.

However, much of the commentary on this matter missed the forest for the trees, calling for a royal commission on antisemitism, rather than into the incident itself and the behaviour of Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies leading up to it.

Not too long ago, New Zealand, a smaller British colony which neighbours Australia, faced a similar tragedy: a far-right Australian gunman who had moved to New Zealand just 20 months prior shot up two mosques in Christchurch, killing 51 people. To this date, it remains the deadliest attack on New Zealand’s soil since colonisation. Just 10 days after the attack, New Zealand’s government established a royal commission into the massacre.

Many who called for the government to establish a royal commission into antisemitism cited the Christchurch royal commission as an example of what could be done in Australia. For example, The Nightly’s Latika Bourke, a commentator who was at the forefront of calls for a royal commission specifically on antisemitism, referred to the Christchurch royal commission while doing so. Menachem Vorchheimer, a Melbourne activist best known for his efforts to silence critics of Israel, accused both the federal and Victorian government of antisemitism and called for a royal commission into antisemitism, saying Australia should respond to the Bondi massacre the same way New Zealand responded to the Christchurch massacre.

These people seem like they haven’t even read the terms of reference of the Christchurch royal commission, let alone read its report. The inquiry was not focused on the far-right, nor was it focused on Islamophobia. The Christchurch royal commission’s terms of reference mandated it to focus on the perpetrator of the attack himself, along with what New Zealand’s government agencies knew about him, and whether they could have prevented it.

Instead of trying to do a politicised analysis of the social and political environment of New Zealand society, it specifically focused on the attack, whether it was preventable, and how attacks like it could be avoided in the future.

When it was still holding out on establishing any type of royal commission, the federal government announced that it would have Dennis Richardson perform an inquiry into Australia’s intelligence agencies and law enforcement, which would be supported by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The terms of reference for the so-called Richardson inquiry were not too dissimilar to the terms of reference for the Christchurch royal commission. The inquiry would look into what federal government agencies knew about the Bondi attackers prior to their massacre, their information-sharing practices, whether Australia’s federal agencies could have prevented the attack, and what should be done to make sure that Australia’s agencies can prevent such attacks in the future.

While these terms of reference are no doubt a good basis, this inquiry still is a far cry from what is needed. To begin, the government wanted this inquiry done within five months. That is nowhere near enough time. For comparison, the Christchurch royal commission took 20 months to deliver its report. New Zealand has about one fifth the population of Australia. The NZSIS and GCSB, New Zealand’s two intelligence agencies, have less than a thousand employees combined, compared to approximately 1800 at ASIO alone. New Zealand’s intelligence agencies have a combined budget of less than A$300 million, as opposed to ASIO’s A$1.1 billion budget.

This inquiry also does not have the powers traditionally afforded to an inquiry. Instead, it relies on the very agencies it is supposed to scrutinise voluntarily playing ball. It’s also being done under the auspices of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, as opposed to being done by an independent body.

The man doing the inquiry, Dennis Richardson, used to be the head of not only ASIO, but also the Department of Defence. In addition to this, he had a five-year stint as ambassador to the United States during the Global War on Terror from 2005 to 2010. It is completely false to call this independent. The inquiry would be conducted by a man who has spent his entire life working in the government and security state, with the support of a government department that answers directly to the Prime Minister.

This is all moot, because just two weeks after establishing the Richardson inquiry, the Albanese government buckled and finally established a royal commission of its own, not into the attack or intelligence agencies, but instead a “Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion”, which cancelled the Richardson inquiry. Instead, Dennis Richardson will be assisting with the royal commission and its interim report, scheduled for April 2026.

The terms of reference for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion are horrendous, and are a far cry from what the Richardson inquiry was supposed to do. The Richardson inquiry would have investigated what Australia’s government agencies knew prior to the attack, what agencies with information about the attackers did with it, how information was shared between Australia’s government agencies, and how attacks like this could be prevented in the future.

The antisemitism royal commission does none of this. Let’s take a look at what it mandates instead:

(vi) whether relevant [Federal], State, and Territory intelligence and law enforcement agencies performed to maximum effectiveness, including whether they had adequate powers and the right systems, processes, and procedures and whether there was an appropriate authorising environment for information sharing with other [Federal], State and Territory agencies;

(vii) whether relevant [Federal], State and Territory intelligence and law enforcement agencies were prevented from taking prohibitive actions by the current legislative framework and authorising environment;

(vii) identifying any gaps in legal and regulatory frameworks that impede the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to prevent and respond to attacks of this nature at both the state and federal levels;

These terms are premised on the idea that if the agencies tasked with keeping Australia safe did fail, it is because they didn’t have enough laws to give them free reign.

It even trots out the possibility that the lack of an “appropriate authorising environment for information sharing” is to blame for the failure to stop the attack, the same excuse that the US government had for failing to stop the September 11 attacks 24 years ago.

In case you forgot, Australia passed a plethora of counter-terrorism laws after 9/11 and during the Global War on Terror: mandatory metadata retention, powers to allow a minister to strip someone of citizenship, control orders, surveillance laws, just to name a few. Some of these measures that were supposed to be temporary have recently been made permanent!

Australia already has plenty of laws to prevent terror attacks. In spite of this, the aforementioned Four Corners episode demonstrated that attacks don’t need to be prevented with special government powers. Instead, good old fashioned infiltration proved to be effective. So why is the royal commission so keen to find reasons to give security agencies more powers?

We can’t know for certain why, but it’s worth remembering that after ASIO claimed without evidence that Iran was behind the firebombings of Jewish institutions throughout Australia, the Prime Minister boasted that “Australians can […] know they have a government that backs our agencies and says, ‘whatever power you need, we will give you’.”

With the government’s stated eagerness to give ASIO and other intelligence agencies seemingly unlimited power of which there is no oversight, it’s hard not to think that there could be a more cynical motive to this.

Regardless of the motivations though, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion won’t bring justice for the victims of the attack. It seems very likely that ASIO and perhaps other government agencies shoulder part of the blame for the deaths of the 15 victims of the Bondi attack. Not only is the government trying to avoid scrutiny on ASIO and other agencies, but instead they are cynically using this royal commission as an opportunity to give them more power.

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Securely contact William Evans here: https://www.willevans.com.au/tips/