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.

Albo opposed the RC because there are things to hide and there is a demographic that is vital to ALP's prospects (ie Muslims and anti-semites) who he doesn't want to upset.

Now that he and his flying-monkeys have been forced, kicking and screaming, to accede to an RC, he's done the next best thing from his point of view - appointed a commissioner who can be relied on to not look too closely at the things he'd prefer to keep under wraps and not upset his vital constituency.

No other outcome was ever going to be permitted.

Geez you talk some rubbish mhaze.
Albo signaled an intention to recognise the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism. That makes him arguably both more supportive of Israel and more authoritarian towards his own citizens rights to speak their mind than Donald Trump.

The criticism towards Virginian Bell shows again that when Israel is involved, the rules bend, and the outcome tends to end up being quietly predecided.

If I'm a Jew, I'm asking if Virginian Bell is supportive of Israel or the Palestinians, and if the answer is not Israel, then I'd oppose her appointment, simple.

You cant have an RC on Bondi without seeking the perpetrators motive,
and you can't have an RC into anti-Semitism without looking at whether peoples dislike, resentment, anger, frustration, criticism or even animosity towards Jews and Israel are reasonable on a basis of their own merits.

- This is the truth, regardless of whether or not these inconvenient and uncomfortable truths are offensive to Jews and Israel and increase their fear of non-Jews.

What's the bet we go through this entire three ringed circus for a year, and still there will be no answer as to the perpetrators motive.

If that happens, then this was a witchhunt, not a search for truth and answers.

MOTIVE! OR STOP WASTING EVERYBODY'S TIME

John, I agree that senior and experienced lawyers called to lead a Royal Commission will often have heard some cases relevant to the Commission’s subject. But how “adjacent” the question is, matters. It would raise eyebrows if, for example, a judge who had been part of the high court ruling that the Catholic Church is not vicariously liable for child sex abuse by its clergy was subsequently appointed a royal commissioner examining institutional sex abuse.

And the lack of confidence by parts of the Jewish community is not only related to the possible conflict of interest. Bell is perceived to be a left-wing activist whose senior appointments were all made by Labor governments, including heading the inquiry into Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries. There’s nothing wrong with any of that – I think it’s good to have a diversity of views in the judiciary, and Morrison deserved to be excoriated for his conduct. But it means she may not be the best person to lead this Royal Commission. She will not be the unifying figure we need at the moment, and will be susceptible to allegations of downplaying the government’s possible negligence in the lead-up to Bondi and the left’s role in rising antisemitism.

It’s a bit like Tony Abbott’s appointment of Dyson Heydon to head the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption in 2014. Heydon’s legal credentials were impeccable, but he was the wrong choice.

Rhian,
A conflict of interest for a judge who had been part of the high court ruling that the Catholic Church is not vicariously liable for child sex abuse by its clergy would be if that judge WAS a Catholic.

There is no conflict of interest here, seems to me that's what the Jewish groups problem is, a lack of one.

Jewish groups WANT a conflict of interest.
They want someone already known to support Israel.
They are trying to put the fix in ahead of time.

All of this 'Zionist interference' has gone too far in my opinion.

Take the Adelaide Writers Festival which is now discontinued due to incessant Jewish control freaks endless whining...

Festival chair, board members quit after author's cancellation from Writers' Week
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-11/fallout-amid-writers-week-cancellation-of-randa-abdel-fattah/106217646

>>On Friday, Jewish Community Council of South Australia public and government liaison Norman Schueler said the council had sent a letter to the board requesting the removal of Abdel-Fattah from the Writers' Week program.

"The board [has] completely, appropriately dis-invited her," Mr Schueler said.

"Personally, I'm very, very surprised it appears a large cohort of people have decided to support her."

Ex-Adelaide Writers' Week director Jo Dyer is among 11 former Adelaide Festival leaders who have urged her reinstatement, and said the resignations of three of its members left the board's current position in limbo.

Ms Dyer earlier said literary festivals were designed "to allow civilised debate to take place on a range of different issues".<<

Israel, don't want an open debate, they don't want to face criticism, they want to blame others and want to cancel any discussion at all whilst screaming Anti-Semitic.

What the hell are they frightened of, that someone might actually agree with her?

'the left’s role in rising antisemitism'.

The left aren't really guilty of rising anti-Semitism.
More to the point, the right are indirectly complicit in Israel's genocide, with silence so deafening you can hear a pin drop.

The left, by voicing their disdain and objections to Israels actions are doing what civilised human beings are supposed to do, defend the life and dignity of other human beings.

It's human nature to oppose harm done to other human beings,
- Especially kids and even more so when it's deliberate..
The soulless whining Jewish groups can't seem to comprehend this from their own hate filled cancel-cultured echo chambers.

You can be anti-Chinese, anti-Russian, anti-Venezuelan, anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim, no problem, but heaven help you if you dare to criticise a disgusting child murdering nation that holds pro-rape protests, as they will label you anti-semitic.

Anti-Semitic means 'You're not allowed to criticise the baby killers'

Individual

And from a Jewish voice commenting on the situation in Australia, and its implications with the Bondi massacre, the following shock horror.

http://fb.watch/EAyBNv_zll/?fs=e

And this is exactly what Albanese is running from; his lifelong love affair with radical causes has caught up with him!

Rhian,

I agree with you on two important points upfront: adjacency can matter, and legitimacy in the eyes of affected communities is not trivial. Where I still differ is in how far those considerations can reasonably be taken without undermining the very pool of people qualified to run such inquiries.

The Catholic Church hypothetical involves direct institutional liability of the same body under examination. Bell's prior work, including Brown v Tasmania, is adjacent only at a high level of abstraction and does not pre-judge factual or causal questions about antisemitism, violence, or state negligence.

On the question of legitimacy, I'm wary of "unifying figure" becoming a de facto veto exercised by whichever groups are most distrustful of prior constitutional reasoning. In polarised environments, any judge who has decided hard cases will be perceived as "aligned" by someone. That can't, on its own, be disqualifying without incentivising judicial invisibility.

I take the Heydon comparison seriously, but I think that failure had more to do with inquiry design and overt political signalling than with mere perception of prior views. The safeguard here, in my view, lies less in biographical neutrality and more in transparent process, multi-member composition, and evidentiary discipline.

We may ultimately disagree on Bell herself, but I think the harder institutional question is how far we allow perceived alignment, rather than demonstrated conduct, to narrow the field of those we trust to do this work.

Murdoch tries to control Bondi RC with his boy Justice Michael Lee
http://youtu.be/5Tu2KvSkUX8