2 days ago
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As public pressure mounts on the Albanese government to establish a royal commission into the killings at Bondi Beach, a familiar assumption has resurfaced in Australian political debate: that only a royal commission can deliver truth, accountability and justice when matters of public concern are grave enough.
This assumption is widespread – and understandable – but the academic evidence suggests it is only partially correct.
Royal commissions are not inherently better at uncovering truth or delivering reform than other forms of inquiry. Rather, they are a specialised political instrument, effective in particular circumstances and distinctly inefficient in others.
Pat Rafter, Jess Fox, Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett are among prominent Australian sportspeople to sign an open letter calling for a royal commission into antisemitism.Credit: Composite image
Royal commissions derive their prestige from perceived independence. Typically chaired by senior judges and armed with coercive powers, they can compel testimony, override institutional secrecy and create a public record that is difficult to dismiss. This makes them especially valuable where government agencies themselves are implicated or where public trust has collapsed.
As Australian public administration scholar Scott Prasser has observed (in “Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries”), royal commissions “are most effective when the central problem is a deficit of legitimacy rather than a deficit of information.” In other words, they are best deployed when the public no longer believes the state can investigate itself.
This explains why royal commissions have been so powerful in areas such as police corruption, institutional child abuse, and financial misconduct – cases marked by entrenched power imbalances and systemic denial.
However, decades of research also demonstrate what royal commissions do not reliably deliver: implementation.
Comparative studies of Australian, British and Canadian inquiries consistently find that royal commissions do not achieve higher rates of policy uptake than departmental reviews, parliamentary committees or statutory inquiries. Governments regularly delay, dilute or selectively adopt recommendations, regardless of how exhaustive the inquiry has been.
Halliday, McLean and Prasser note (in “State of Inquiry”, 2013) that while commissions “produce authoritative narratives of failure, they have no authority over political will”. In practical terms, their influence ends when the final report is tabled.
Royal commissions are also slow and expensive. They can take years to conclude, during which time governments are insulated from pressure to act. Scholars have long warned that inquiries can function as instruments of political management – absorbing public anger while postponing decisions.
As Prasser puts it in his book: “Governments often use inquiries to buy time, not to buy change.”
In urgent situations – where public safety, regulatory failure or operational reform is the primary concern – departmental or statutory inquiries may be faster, more targeted and closer to the levers of implementation.
So, when is a royal commission justified? The research points to a clear conclusion: royal commissions are most appropriate when the overriding issue is public confidence, not administrative efficiency.
If the Bondi killings raise credible questions about systemic failure, institutional culture, or state responsibility – and if existing agencies lack the trust required to investigate those questions – then a royal commission may well be justified.
But if the core task is to identify operational failures, improve threat assessment or reform service coordination, the academic evidence suggests that other inquiry models may deliver answers more quickly and just as effectively.
The danger lies in treating royal commissions as a gold standard rather than a contextual tool. Their moral authority is real, but so are their limitations. Elevating them to a default response risks confusing symbolic reassurance with practical reform.
As the scholarship makes clear, the hardest part of any inquiry is not uncovering the truth; it is acting on it.
John Wallace is executive director of the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre. He developed a research interest in inquiry processes when he was media adviser to Australia’s first inquiry into print media ownership, a departmental inquiry, set up in 1981 by Victorian Liberal premier Rupert Hamer.
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