유대인 보안 및 총기 회수가 초점, 본디 권고사항 5개는 비공개 유지

Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell has delivered an interim report into antisemitism in Australia. It raises more questions than it answers.

NSW Police should deploy the same security procedures for “high risk” Jewish festivals and events as used for Jewish High Holy days such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the interim report from the royal commission into antisemitism has recommended.

The commission’s first report since its inception earlier this year was released on Thursday with a focus on the security agencies and possible failures that may have led to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, in which 15 mostly Jewish people were killed on the first night of Hanukkah on December 14.

The report contains 14 recommendations, including five in a confidential section which has not been made public.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the national security committee of cabinet met on Thursday morning and agreed to implement all of Commissioner Virginia Bell’s recommendations.

“I can assure the Australian public that the government will do everything necessary to protect the community in the wake of the Bondi attack,” he said.

He also thanked Bell for “the extraordinary work that she and her team have done”.

Bell has urged the Commonwealth, states and territories to prioritise the proposed national gun buyback scheme, announced in the wake of the terrorist attack, but also said no “urgent or immediate action has been identified” in regards to hindering agencies’ ability to prevent or respond to the Bondi attack.

“No material or advice from any agency identified any gap in the existing legal and regulatory frameworks that impeded the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to prevent, or respond to, an attack of the kind that occurred at Bondi on 14 December 2025,” the report says.

Counter-terror funding fell sharply in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre, prompting Bell to probe whether funding for ASIO and other intelligence agencies should have been increased after the nation’s terror threat level was raised to probable.

In 2022, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said espionage and foreign interference had overtaken terrorism as the nation’s top security concern, reflecting shifting priorities at the spy agency.

The release of the report comes six weeks after former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson quit his role as a special adviser to Bell, saying he felt surplus to requirements.

The former spy boss and US ambassador had finished interviewing heads of the intelligence agencies in mid-January and was focused on delivering a concrete set of recommendations about intelligence and policing failures in the commission’s interim report.

But sources with knowledge of the commission’s workings said Richardson felt his role became untenable when Bell decided the interim report would not contain substantive recommendations or findings.

However, Bell has previously stressed that the commission “must do its work without risking any prejudice” to criminal proceedings involving alleged gunman Naveed Akram, who was charged with 15 counts of murder and 40 of attempted murder after the mass shooting.

Albanese had tasked Richardson with investigating whether key agencies, including ASIO and the Australian Federal Police, had done everything possible to prevent the December 14 attack, and also to understand what they knew about the gunmen.

Announcing his departure, Richardson said he was being overpaid at $5500 a day for essentially being employed as a research officer, and although he praised Bell for her fine legal mind, he made it clear that there was a clash in approach.

“The interim report that will now be done by the royal commission will be a very different document to the one that I would have done when I was doing the review,” Richardson told the ABC after his resignation.

Interim report key recommendations include:

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