STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (12:25): I thank the Senate for the opportunity to make some remarks about the concluding Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in Australia. The context for this royal commission was Australia's worst terrorist attack in December last year at Bondi. For many other Australians that have been to Bondi, it is now a place that is always going to feel different because of what happened there in December last year.

Because of my proximity to Bondi Beach, I was able to spend a lot of time in the weeks after the attack seeing firsthand the incredible contribution by community groups, whether that be the North Bondi RSL, the surf club or many other volunteers across the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in New South Wales. I make the point that the initial reaction of the government was not to hold this royal commission, which was disappointing.

There was some intransigence, and I always thought there were key questions to be asked here. There were key questions, including what actions were taken or not taken by federal ministers. In fact in the advocacy that was evident after the attack it was clear that, if there was to be a proper federal royal commission, there needed to be a proper investigation—an expose—of what was done and what wasn't done.

I reflect very carefully on how many times in the lead-up to these attacks we asked for security briefings because the Jewish community, particularly the eastern suburbs Jewish community in Sydney, had been living with a fear that there would be a terrible attack like this. We weren't able to get access to briefings as the opposition, but I'm confident that there was a significant volume of information provided by the agencies that would have surely flown up to the ministers of the day.

At a most basic level, I would have thought this royal commission would have been able to interview important people like the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs to understand exactly what they knew, what actions they took and what actions they didn't take. If you had told me when this royal commission was announced last summer that it would be concluding without hearing from the Prime Minister and without hearing from Minister Burke, I would have thought you were kidding, because those are key figures in understanding what actually happened here.

The whole point of the royal commission is to understand how this happened, how we had this atrocity—the first religion based massacre on Australian soil—at this Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach. I have to say for the record that I'm very surprised that the commissioner did not call the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs. Similarly, I am surprised that organisations and people that whipped up a lot of the fervent antisemitism during this period were also not called, including the people that were involved with the bridge march where we saw pictures of the ayatollah from Iran bandied around as if he was some great man.

Equally the fact that the commission decided not to hear from former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, I thought, was surprising. I thought it was good that it was able to hear from other Jewish members in the current parliament, including Mr Burns, Mr Dreyfus and Mr Leeser, but I would have thought that the person that had occupied the most senior office of a Jewish Australian in the Treasury portfolio would have been worthy of hearing from.

I think Mr Frydenberg's contribution to public life has been well known and documented, and I thought it was very strange that he wasn't invited to give evidence to this commission. Perhaps the other major concern I have as the commission wraps up is the fact that the hate preachers weren't invited to give evidence either. You think about how Wissam Haddad and the others who had a clear connection to the Akram family members that committed this atrocity were not called.

I think it is very strange, and I think a person with a basic working knowledge of these things would say, 'If ASIO knew that the Akrams were following these hate preachers, then surely that would have been germane to the royal commission itself.' It was good that the royal commission was announced by the Prime Minister. I think that was a good judgement he made after initially not wanting to have one, but, as it concludes, I believe that there are very curious omissions.

The fact that the key ministers in the security agencies and the head of the government, which regrettably oversaw the worst massacre on religious grounds in our history, weren't called is one problem. The fact that we didn't hear from the most senior Jewish Australian to have been in federal public office, AKA Josh Frydenberg, is another problem. I also believe that the failure to call the hate preachers is a glaring omission, perhaps the most glaring omission.

How can you conclude a royal commission into this terrorist attack without looking at the root causes about how these people were in fact radicalised? It is clear from what is known publicly that ASIO was tracking at least one of the Akrams for an extended period of time. The decision not to interrogate these hate preachers, their business model and how they radicalise people, who are our fellow citizens—born Australians in this case—is very worrying and worries me greatly.

We maintain our optimism that this will be the best possible report that could be generated by this royal commissioner, but I believe that, without having interviewed these key people, the royal commission is not going to be the royal commission that we had hoped for when we were advocating this in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Maybe this is the reflection of where we are in Australia, where the Prime Minister's initial instinct not to call a royal commission has led to a royal commission being conducted which is restricted and restrained from going into the areas which may be embarrassing to the government.

It may be embarrassing to the Prime Minister himself and may be embarrassing to the Minister for Home Affairs himself. I don't see any justification for the omission of a very detailed examination of this insidious hate-preaching model, which is turning Australians against one another. This is not something that we can afford to repeat.

We can't turn into a country where we have a repetition of a religious massacre. What has happened at Bondi deserved to be met with a royal commission that would get to the bottom of things and that would leave no stone unturned. There could be no debate and no discussion that this was a thorough examination of the issues and the factors which led to people turning guns on their fellow Australians and targeting them because they were Jewish, and killing them whether they were men, women or children.

It is not something that we can afford to repeat and so we will be very, very careful in reviewing this final report, knowing that there is a risk that not every stone was carefully considered.