By refusing a royal commission, what is the ALP covering up?

2 months ago 20

Anthony Albanese is very good at politics. His judgment is almost always sound, both as a strategist and as a tactician. Nobody would accuse him of being an inspirational leader like Gough Whitlam, or a big thinker like Paul Keating. But he knows all the moves. He seldom makes mistakes. What he may lack in charisma he makes up for in cunning.

So he would understand better than anyone the damage to his personal standing of his muted response to the Bondi Beach massacre. The contrast with NSW Premier Chris Minns could not be greater, as was evident at the very different receptions they received at the memorial service.

The inadequacy of that response is now defined by Albanese’s stubbornness in refusing to hold a royal commission.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

There is an overwhelming demand for one from all sections of the community. I cannot remember when so many eminent Australians have spoken out with such urgency, in one voice: former governors-general and state governors; hundreds of the country’s senior barristers and judges (including former chief justices of the Supreme Court of NSW and of all three federal jurisdictions: the High Court, the Federal Court and the Family Court); a large cross-section of business and community leaders, including iconic names such as David Gonski; church leaders; sporting champions; nearly every national newspaper (including this one).

Most importantly, of course, the families of the victims have demanded one. If their voices can’t get through to the prime minister, whose can?

Albanese, shrewd politician that he is, knows perfectly well that holding a Commonwealth royal commission would immediately take much of the political heat out of the issue. So why does he remain so determined to resist?

The perplexing nature of his refusal is daily underlined by the weakness of the government’s justifications, which range from the unpersuasive to the frankly absurd.

It claims that a royal commission would take too long. Instead, the government has instituted the Richardson inquiry, which will deliver an interim report as soon as April.

There is nothing wrong with the Richardson inquiry. Denis Richardson himself would have been a fine person to conduct a royal commission (it doesn’t have to be a judge). However, its terms of reference are narrow. It will not hold public hearings. It is essentially an in-house inquiry into gaps in inter-agency co-ordination, particularly between ASIO and state police.

A royal commission could equally look into that question, and it could do so with the greater force of coercive powers that Richardson lacks. Where necessary for national security reasons, it could take evidence in camera. It could produce an interim report on the same issues and on the same timelines as the Richardson inquiry, while conducting a longer examination into the larger issue at the heart of community concern, but beyond Richardson’s scope: antisemitism.

Royal commissions can take a long time because they examine, thoroughly, searchingly and publicly, systemic failures and patterns of misconduct. For instance, the royal commissions into institutional responses to child sex abuse, Indigenous deaths in custody and the banks. The more deep-seated the problem, the longer it takes to expose it in full. Bizarrely, Albanese in effect hides behind the fact that antisemitism is such a widespread problem that it requires long and thorough examination as his excuse not to have a royal commission into it.

It is notable that several of the signatories to the senior lawyers’ letter are themselves former royal commissioners, better placed than anyone to understand a royal commission’s utility.

Albanese next argued that a Commonwealth royal commission is unnecessary because NSW is having one. That excuse is preposterous for two obvious reasons. It concedes the appropriateness of having a royal commission. It simultaneously implies that a NSW inquiry is sufficient. Just ask members of the Jewish community who don’t live in Sydney what they think about that.

Thirdly, last week, Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke introduced a new argument: that a royal commission could “platform” ugly views. What it would do, in investigating the extent to which antisemitism has penetrated sections of the Australian community, is reveal it. That is one of the chief purposes of a royal commission: in investigating a problem, to expose it; to shine a light into the dark corners where the problem exists – and the institutions in which it festers – as the child abuse royal commission did.

The ugly truth is that Albanese and Burke don’t want a royal commission for that very reason: that they are afraid of what it might reveal, of who might be caught in its forensic searchlight.

In a letter to the NSW ALP state secretary written shortly after the Bondi massacre, the Labor Israel Action Committee demanded action to root out antisemitism in Labor’s branches, saying it was “now pervasive in some sections” of the ALP. Its demand that Albanese address the issue of antisemitism in Labor branches was echoed by former Labor MP, now Labor Israel Action Committee president Mike Kelly: “[T]he Labor movement ... has a responsibility to act on antisemitism in its own ranks.”

It would be shameful if, as I very much suspect, an underlying motive for Albanese’s refusal to satisfy overwhelming community demand for a royal commission were to cover up what is happening in some corners of the Labor Party – in particular, its western Sydney branches, which, it should be noted, are Burke’s bailiwick.

Yet, as he flails about offering ever more implausible excuses to justify his refusal to do what the nation is demanding, with each passing day Albanese looks less like someone who thinks a royal commission would achieve too little, than someone who fears that it might reveal too much.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.

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