Bushfire inquiry’s top silk says royal commission essential for harmony

The senior counsel for the Black Saturday bushfire royal commission says the nation’s highest form of inquiry is essential not only to seek the answers Australia’s Jewish community needs after the Bondi Beach massacre, but to protect what the country stands for.

Jack Rush KC, a former Victorian Supreme Court judge and one of the nation’s most eminent barristers, said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s reluctance to address the “fundamental issues” of the attack had pushed him to add his name to an open letter calling for the inquiry, which now bears more than 200 signatures from Australia’s judges and barristers.

Former Victorian Supreme Court judge and senior counsel for the Black Saturday bushfires royal commission, says a national inquiry into antisemitism is essential.Credit: ABC

“Antisemitism has festered disastrously, but I feel a royal commission is not only overdue for our Jewish community. I think the massacre and antisemitism is an attack on our national ethos, what we believe in, what we stand for,” Rush told this masthead.

“Why this happened and how we prevent it in the future, I think, is of the utmost importance for our nation.”

Calls for the government to establish a royal commission into the killing of 15 innocent people at Bondi Beach have entered a third week, despite Albanese’s efforts to waylay criticism with a review into federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

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Rush dismissed the government’s arguments against holding the nation’s highest form of inquiry as nonsensical, and said his experience leading the questioning at Victoria’s royal commission into the deadly 2009 bushfires had shown the value in listening to victims.

“Every day that [the bushfires] royal commission sat, the royal commission called a person that had been impacted or lost loved ones in those fires, and that evidence was often emotional, but without exception, it was cathartic,” he said.

“It brought people together, and it absolutely kept everyone involved in the royal commission on task because of the importance and appreciation of what we were doing. It can get lost in the documents, but bringing it back to people was very important.”

On Monday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Bourke warned that a royal commission would provide a public platform for “some of the worst statements and worst voices”, and risked Jewish Australians reliving horrific examples of antisemitism during the past two years.

Burke said the government needed “the sort of inquiry that keeps Australians safe and that does not provide a platform for the worst voices; the Richardson inquiry does exactly that”.

Rush praised the credentials of former ASIO chief Dennis Richardson, who will lead the inquiry into federal agencies, but said the investigation’s focus was too narrow, while the NSW royal commission would not have the same clout as a federal inquiry, making the response insufficient.

“Without a proper, forensic investigation into the issues around antisemitism and hate speech, I don’t think we get those answers, and we don’t properly address it,” he said.

A commissioner would have the power to draft an inquiry’s scope and timeline, Rush said, and an effective and efficient investigation could be completed in 12 to14 months, with an interim report in six.

He said the government’s assertion that a former judge would not be as well-placed to head an inquiry as a national security expert was “nonsense”, pointing to the judge-led bushfire commission “hailed as an outstanding success”, and added he had not needed to be a police officer to lead an inquiry into the senior command of Victoria Police in 2013.

Former attorney general and UK high commissioner George Brandis and former Victorian Supreme Court judge Betty King, who presided over many of the Melbourne gangland trials, have also added their names to the open letter since it was first published last week.

This week, 17 families connected to the victims of the Bondi massacre also filed an open letter pleading for a royal commission into antisemitism, with the niece of victim Boris Tetleroyd calling Albanese a coward for his steadfast refusal to hold one. Jewish organisations nationwide, the Coalition, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, former governor-general Peter Cosgrove and past and present Labor MPs have also backed the calls for a federal royal commission.

Former NSW Supreme Court justice George Palmer also signed the bar’s petition, and pointed to Labor’s Voice to parliament referendum as an example of public debate that provoked hate speech towards minorities, but was held anyway.

“The government’s principle argument against this whole royal commission is refuted by its very attitude to calling the Voice referendum,” he said.

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Palmer said royal commissions were not an ultimate remedy for the issues they investigated, but served a vital role in allowing opinions to be expressed and scrutinised.

“In this country, still, we believe that grossly divisive issues can be ventilated properly and some sort of solution or way forward found by rational examination through public debate and the application of some sense or reason,” he said.

One of the country’s most prominent criminal defence silks, Robert Richter, KC, on Tuesday argued against calling an urgent royal commission, saying the Bondi tragedy was the fault of federal agencies, and a royal commission would be mired in endless debate over definitions.

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