All the RC fudging of the truth, could have been prevented by allowing an honest and spontaneous reaction to move forward immediately after the Bondi massacre, and march towards the Western suburbs of Sydney to sort out the actual problem with the immediacy it requires.

In Iran right now, the unhappy locals faced with exactly the same problem, burn down the mosques, clapping and cheering en mass, at the achievement of an honest and practical approach demonstrated in actual time, with a workable solution to evil in their midst.

I am glad that the government finally gave in to the overwhelming public calls for a Royal Commission, but I am concerned that they picked Virginial Bell to lead it. She has a reputation for left-wing judicial activism and appears not to be trusted by many prominent Jewish leaders and organisations. She also was responsible for the Brown v Tasmania decision which found an implied constitutional right of free speech which limits governments’ powers to constrain disruptive protests. This is an issue that the Royal Commission may well need to examine if it wants to consider whether the frequent demonstrations that glorify Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic State, the Iranian dictatorship and other Islamofascists contributed to the growth of antisemitism and normalisation of violence against Jews. She may be perceived to have a conflict of interest here, effectively marking her own homework.

She does, though, have a reputation for a fierce intellect and lots of relevant experience. For now, she is getting the benefit of the doubt. I hope she deserves it.

“ …. doubts about the effectiveness of both NSW police and national security arrangements, and deeper concerns about the drivers of apparent antisemitism”.

Yes. But there are no doubts about the Albanese government's two years of doing nothing about the obvious. That's what Albanese doesn't want discussed.

We can't expect anything much to come of anything the Australian political class does. The country is rooted. Most Australians just don't know it. Only the very naive still think things will get better.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1743599709666388
This explains the way Australia is going too ! Bondi was literally inevitable !

The underlying issue.

https://islamicbeliefsinaustralia.wordpress.com/

Rhian,

You've raised what I think is the strongest concern in the comments section so far, but it rests on a category error.

A judge's prior participation in constitutional interpretation is not a "conflict of interest" in the way that term is normally understood. If it were, no senior judge could ever chair a royal commission, because all would have prior reasoning on adjacent questions.

I appreciate that you've framed this in terms of perception rather than claiming that an actual conflict exists. But if perceptions arising from prior judicial reasoning are treated as disqualifying, then experience itself becomes a reputational risk rather than a qualification.

In politically charged inquiries, adverse perceptions can always be generated, regardless of a commissioner's conduct.

The decision in Brown v Tasmania didn't express a personal preference for protests, it applied established implied-freedom doctrine to a particular statute. Treating that as Bell "marking her own homework" collapses adjudication into ideology and would disqualify judicial experience itself.

It's also worth separating concerns about protest regulation from assumptions about causation. Whether demonstrations contributed to antisemitism is an evidentiary question for the commission, not something that can be pre-loaded by reference to a past High Court judgement.

Experience isn't bias. If anything, constitutional literacy is precisely what's required when free-speech, public-order, and security issues intersect.

But it's curious that judicial restraint is treated as neutral while judicial engagement is treated as ideological, when in modern conditions restraint often embeds legislative failure rather than respecting democratic choice.