Five months on from the attack, Australia as Jewish community is still grieving, still hurting, still craving answers, and that's why my government set up the Royal Commission on Anti Semitism and Social Cohesion, led by the Honor.
The first reportant of the Royal Commission into Anti Semitism has landed at a volatile moment. Australia's terrorism level is already listed as probable, and the war in Iran is adding new pressure to an already fragile security environment. The risks fueling grievances, flaming extremism and increasing the risk facing Jewish communities in the wake of the Bondai terror attack.
Today, the Government is pleased to receive Commissioner Bell's interim report and I thank the Commissioner for the extraordinary work that she and her team have done.
And I think but the interim report leads some of the hardest questions for later, including whether the warnings before the attack were properly acted on and where the security agencies were on the same page when it came to identifying the threat. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today. Counter Terrorism expert Greg Barton on what the report reveals and why the threat facing Australia may be growing faster than the systems built to stop it.
It's Friday, May one, Greg, thanks for joining us again. The Interim Report recognizes that our counterterrorism capability needs bolstering, making fourteen recommendations about how that should be done.
I can confirm that the National Security Committee has met this morning and we have adopted and will implement all the recommendations of the INUM Report that are relevant to the Comwealth.
Lit All the recommendations in the report have been made public at this stage. Out of the ones that we do know about, which ones resonate with you most at this point.
I think making the counter Terrorism Coordinate a full time and sort of linking that back in with crisis management, so sort of upping the priority for counter terrorism. I think this is a role Commission interm findings into a particular incident, but it also sits in the context of the time in which we live in twenty twenty six, and I think we're unfortunately going to expect more terrorism and more attempts on terrorist incidents rather than less. Variety
of reasons, but both the far right and Giad. Islamist groups are gaining in strength, and of course conditions in the Middle East make it easier for them to recruit than to find somebody to carry out a mission. So all of that is grim, so we need to brace and prepare for it.
There are five confidential recommendations. What do you think they're likely to cover off on?
I think some very specific things about points of failure and how that can be addressed when it comes to the Bondai terror attack, I imagine I'd certainly hope that at least one of those recommendations would cover what is often referred to us countering or preventing violent extremism, which sits alongside counter terrorism. Counter Terrorism is the police led, an intelligence led detection and disruption side of things. So in the case of for the Bondai shooters, the alleged younger
shooter investigate Bayazia twenty nineteen. By twenty twenty, they said he was not a priority. Somebody should have been keeping an eye on him and just checking in with him and the family on a regular basis, and that would generally fall best under countering violent extremism as opposed to counter terrorism. So I'm hoping that there's a discussion of that there, but it does make sense that that would be done quietly and not part of the public recommendations.
So what would more effective counter extremism measures look like.
Well, we've got a good example in Victoria. You've got in the city of Melbourne. You've got four community support groups. They're called innocuous name, but they work with particular communities. A particular concern historically has been Muslim communities just because
of targeting of recruiters. So these work across four areas in the north and West and South of and they provide a way in which community groups are resourced so that if somebody has a concern it's generally about a young person, generally about a young man, not exclusively, they
can voice their concern. That can be expert oversight to say well, okay, we think this is a counseling problem, or we just need some mentoring, or maybe that's just a problem with finding employment, or maybe it's mental health. But they do an assessment so you don't to share anything. In rare cases they find out that there's a likely recruitment from a terrorist or a violent extremist, recruitment, ratialization
going on. Then they check with state and federal police just to check that there's no ongoing operations deconflict and if necessarily sit down and try and work out what the problem is. And if you do that early enough, you can generally help them recognize that what they thought was true is not true and take them in a
different direction. Recruitment is all about social networks friendships, So if you can quit something positive in some young person's life to replace what seems to be arising negative influence, you can cut off at the chase.
You mentioned that the report recommends a full time COUNTI terrorism coordinator. What does that role do and what difference could that make?
Well, you know, go back to the nine to eleven Commission report and we saw that, you know, one of the main takeaways there, and it's a familiar story with similar incidents and reports since is there wasn't adequate communication between the FBI and the CIA, so you need timely and complete information sharing. A coordinator, a counter terrorism coordinator can just facilitate that, partly because that's their dedicated task, but partly because they build trusted relations and they sort
of lean in make sure stuff happens. The particular recommendation and the report is that it's full time. So that suggests that we've sort of had people drifting in and
out of that being their focus. And I think that's often a problem in government work, including insecurity areas, that you know, for a period of time we prioritize something and then it drops in priority, perhaps the funding, you know, the budget changes, and where you're dealing with stuff that's based on people to people relationships and relationships of trust, you can't afford to have any lack of continuity.
One of the recommendations is a review into counter terrorism teams and how they integrate and share information. How important is that and what do you think the review needs to cover well?
Generally that working between counter terrorism teams and agencies in Australia does work well, but clearly it's not perfect and with all of those agencies there are degrees of rivalries. On a good day, you've got trusted individuals who really are comfortable working with each other. On a bad day, you've got people who don't get along and resent as
somebody taking charge. So the best way to overcome that very human, you know, and predictable problem is to have full time counter terrorism coordinator and full time people are signed to support that, so they build trust and they just have continuity because you don't know when something bad is going to happen. If you don't have that continuity, you know, things might go along well for a few years and then there's a bit of a changeover, and
then that changeover Unbeknow it's to you. Something's happening and you're not as sharp as you should be. As an organization or series organizations. No one organization can do this by itself, no one individual. So sharing you timely and complete fashion is the key. And everything you can do in terms of systems to put that in place and give people a chance to build relationships and keep them is important.
Coming up, is the Royal Commission moving too slowly in a time of war. If we pull out a bit, greg, we're about to go on to two weeks of hearings about anti Semitism. Is there a chance that Islamic State could exploit this Royal Commission? Could it actually give it more material to try and recruit Australians to its cause.
Yeah, I'm not so worried about Islamic State exploiting this Royal Commission. Process. I'm more worried about the way that we talk about the findings and the process that we don't give any advantage to Islamic State or al Qaida, or a far right group or any other group. We need to recognize is that we're dealing with two separate but interacting problems. One is anti Semitism, so just racist bigotry, hate, and that can be just at a level of personal animosity.
You know, human beings are very susceptible to this, even more so when they're in groups, So your group identification can lead you to sort of taking a racist, anti
Semitic stance. But violent extremist groups like al Qaeda, Islamic State, the far right neo Nazi groups do this at a much higher level and well often with a much more direct focus on violent attacks, and they will use global affairs, what's happening in the Middle East, what's happening around the world, to make it easier for them to spin a narrative which helps them to recruit, but intersects with general anti semitism,
but it's a quite separate thing. We need to be clear to look at both things at once, unless we do harm to efforts on one side by focusing on the other. So what we know is that theos in Israel, the actions of the Netnahu government have led to a greatly diminished sense of confidence in that government in clearly across Jewish communities North America. It's very dramatic, but Europe,
and that doesn't automatically generate anti semitism. And if we refer to every criticism of the Israeli government under Nanna who as anti Semitic, then we're sort of undermining the ability to fight anti semitism. But it does give an opportunity space for both bigots and for terrorists while and extremists to step in and try and persuade others to
join them. So we need to sort of just have a very mature public conversation about this, recognizing that it's nuanced and that we're going to find people with very different opinions than our own, that they're not necessarily working against us. The temptation is to say, if you don't agree with me, you're part of the problem, and then we can very easily use the label anti semitism, and that could actually do damage to trying to find anti semitism.
It's even given the current political environment that we'll make sure enough to have this conversation.
Greg, Yeah, I believe if we are in Australia. But it's one of these things where we've got to lean into a sense of confidence in what we've achieved in the multicultural society, one of the most successful in the world, but not perfect. And I think particularly we've got a sort of lean into the political discourse and when somebody strays a bit, say just you know, politely, say that's not helping. That's adding nothing to the quality of our politics.
It's certainly nothing to the quality of our public life. There's enough people with goodwill and wisdom for this to work. But of course there are others who will, for short term political gains or for just genuine ignorance, end up making a contribution which undermines those good efforts. But yeah, I'm confident in Australia that we can do this because we have done it in the past, and we continue,
you know, for the most part, to succeed. The fact that we sometimes fail, and sometimes fail very badly, doesn't mean we should give up and say it's hopeless.
Commission About says key questions, including whether there was a failure to identify and act on intelligence before the attack, and with the police resources for the Huniker event, we're adequate will be dealt with later in hearings. Is there a risk that those issues won't be dealt with quickly enough?
Though?
If we're waiting until the end of the year for the real Commission report to be handed down.
I suspect that many of those details are already contained in the interim report in the redacted sections. I think anyone can tell, just from common sense if you're paying attention that if we look backwards and say worthy security settings for the Hunaker's celebration sufficient, clearly they weren't. There's
lots of things where it's clear that we failed. This was a high profile, you know, joyous event that was going to withdraw the attention of actors who would try and at the very least protest, if not use violence against it. So all of those things I think are pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. So I'm sure that they're being discussed and it acted on immediately, because we can't afford, as you're right, you can't afford to wait
to next Tunaker to act on these things. You know, there are a series of Jewish holidays and important events. There are other opportunities, and there are just opportunities that arise through circumstance. Is we can't afford to take months to get this. We've got to put these things into place beginning this week, and I'm confident that's the case behind the scenes.
How much more complicated is the war in Iran making things in terms of responding to potential security threats here at home.
I think the best way to describe it is as adding energy to the system. One thing we do know is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Core in Tehran has a history of state sponsored terrorism. In the case of the IIGC, they use elements linked to them to launch attacks, sometimes false flag but you know they've got a long history of this. But we also have other groups that are in no ways under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core regime, but in sometimes our even rivals,
but will choose to act and even within Iran. In Iran, we've got the sense that these thirty one distinct districts are operating semi autonomus leakers, They're und the stress and that somebody may issue in order at a lower level to do something which you know could haveble consequences. So that's Iran, but groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda will also try and step into the opportunity space, so it's impossible to be confident we know all the vector's
angles from which our threat may arise. The incident at the White House Press cor Gala dinner with the President, you know, speaks to how something can catch your left field and how even when you think you've got things secure, you can realize of a weakness. So I think we need to be realistic that we live in a world where the risk has gone up, the energy in the system has gone up, and therefore we need to put more resources into being ready to stop any attempt at attacks.
Greg, thanks so much for joining us again, it's been a pleasure.
Thanks very much.
Also, in the years riots of erupted in Alice Springs after the arrest of accused Chilcula Jefferson Lewis, police fight rubber ballots and tear goes into the angry crowd of four hundred protests who gathered at Alice Springs hospital where Lewis was being held, trying to get to him as
they demanded payback. Lewis was arrested last night for the alleged murder of a five year old girl, whose family have asked to be referred to as Come and Joe, a little baby and Mark Latham has been ordered to pay following New South Wales MP Alix Greenwage one hundred thousand dollars in compensation. The former One Nation MP was found to have villified and sexually harassed Greenwach based on his sexuality. Latha made a series of tweets in twenty
twenty three too offensive to repeat. He's been ordered to delete the social media posts in the next twenty four hours. I'm Daniel James. You've been listening to seven Am. We'll be back tomorrow.