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- [00:01]
A
Five months on from the attack, Australia's 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 Honourable.
- [00:16]
B
The first report into the Royal Commission into Anti Semitism has landed at a volatile moment. Australia's terrorism level is already listed as probable and the war on Iran is adding new pressure to an already fragile security environment that risks fuelling grievances, flaming extremism and increasing the risk facing Jewish communities in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.
- [00:37]
A
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.
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B
But the interim report leaves some of the hardest questions for later, including whether warnings before the attack were properly acted on and whether security agencies were on the same page when it came to identifying the threat. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7:00am today. Counterterrorism 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 1st. Greg, thanks for joining us again. The interim report recognises that our counter terrorism capability needs bolstering, making 14 recommendations about how that should be done.
- [01:39]
A
I can confirm that the National Security Committee has met this morning and we have adopted and will implement all the recommendations of the interim report that are relevant to to the Commonwealth.
- [01:54]
B
Not 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 the most at this point?
- [02:02]
C
I think making the counterterrorism coordinator full time and sort of linking that back in with crisis management, so sort of upping the priority for counterterrorism. I think this is a Royal Commission interim findings into a particular incident. But it also sits in the context of the time in which we live in 2026. And I think we're unfortunately going to expect more terrorism, more terrorist attempts on terrorist incidents, ra for a variety of reasons, but both the far right and jihadi Islamist groups are gaining in strength and of course, conditions in the Middle east make it easier for them to recruit than to, you know, find somebody to carry out a mission. So all of that is grim. So we need to brace and prepare for it.
- [02:41]
B
There are five confidential recommendations. What do you think they're likely to cover off on?
- [02:47]
C
I think some very specific things about points of failure and how that can be addressed when it comes to the Bondi terror attack. I imagine, I certainly hope that at least one of those recommendations would cover what is often referred to as countering or preventing violent extremism, which sits alongside counterterrorism. Counterterrorism is the police led and intelligence led detection and disruption side of things. So in the case of the Bondi shooters, the alleged younger shooter investigated by ASIO 2019, by 2020 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.
- [03:37]
B
So what would more effective counter extremism measures look like?
- [03:41]
C
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 the 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 Melbourne 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. There can be expert oversight to say, well okay, we think this is a counselling problem or we just need some mentoring or maybe there's just a problem with finding employment or maybe it's mental health, but they do an assessment so you don't have to share many thing. In rare cases they find out that there's likely recruitment from a terrorist or a violent extremist recruitment radicalization going on. Then they check with state and federal police just to check that there's no ongoing operations deconflict and if necessary sit down and try and work out what the problem is. And if you do that early enough, you can generally help them recognise 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 put something positive in some young person's life to replace what seems to be a rising negative influence, you can cut it off at the chase.
- [04:59]
B
You mentioned that the report recommends a full time counter terrorism coordinator. What does that role do and what difference could that make?
- [05:06]
C
Well, you know, go Back to the 911 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 can, terrorism coordinator can just facilitate that, partly because it's their dedicated task, but partly because they build trusted relations and they sort of lean in, make sure stuff happens. The particular recommendation in 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 in security areas that, you know, for a period of time we prioritise 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, you can't afford to have any lack of continuity.
- [06:00]
B
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?
- [06:10]
C
Well, generally that working between counterterrorism 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 somebody taking, taking charge. So the best way to overcome that very human and predictable problem is to have full time counterterrorism coordinator and full time people assigned 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, things might go along well for a few years and then there's a bit of a changeover. And in that changeover, unbeknownst to you, something's happening and you're not as sharp as you should be as an organization or a series of organizations. No one organization can do this by itself, no one individual. So sharing in a 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.
- [07:21]
B
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 into 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?
- [07:47]
C
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 so that we don't give any advantage to Islamic State or Al Qaeda or a far right group or any other group. What 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, like Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the far right neo Nazi groups, do this at a much higher level and 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 easy for them to spin a narrative which helps them to recruit that intersects with general antisemitism. But it's a quite separate thing. We need to be clear to look at both things at once, lest we do harm to efforts on one side by focusing on the other. So what we know is that the politics in Israel, the actions of the Netanyahu government, have led to a greatly diminished sense of confidence of that government, including 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 Netanyahu 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, violent 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, recognising that it's nuanced and that we're going to find people with very different opinions than our own, but 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 antisemitism and that can actually do damage to trying to find anti Semitism.
- [09:54]
B
Do you think, given the current political environment, that we're mature enough to have this conversation, Greg?
- [09:59]
C
Yeah, I believe 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 a multicultural society, one of the most successful in the world, but not perfect. And I think particularly we've got to sort of lean into the political discourse and when somebody strays a bit, say, just, you know, politely say, look, that's not, that's not helping. That's adding nothing to the quality of our politics, 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, succeed. The fact that we sometimes fail and sometimes fail very badly doesn't mean we should give up and say it's hopeless.
- [10:51]
B
Commissioner Bell says key questions, including whether there was a failure to identify and act on intelligence before the attack and whether police resources for the Hunukah event were 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 Royal Commission report to be handed down, I suspect that
- [11:14]
C
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, were the security settings for the Hanukkah 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 draw 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've been discussed and they're acted on immediately because we can't afford, as you're right, you can't afford to wait to next Hanukkah to act on these things. You know, there are a series of Jewish holy days and important events. There are other opportunities and there are just opportunities that arise through circumstances. We can't afford to take months to get this right. We've got to put these things into place, you know, beginning this week. And I'm, I'm confident that's the case behind the scenes.
- [12:09]
B
And how much more complicated is the war in Iran making things in terms of responding to potential security threats here at home?
- [12:17]
C
I think the best way to describe it is it's adding energy to the system. One thing we do know is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran has a history of state sponsored terrorism. In the case of the irgc, 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 Corps regime, but in sometimes are even rivals but will choose to act. And even within Iran, we've got the sense that these 31 distinct districts are operating semi autonomously because they're under stress and that somebody may issue an order at a lower level to do something which, you know, could have terrible 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 vectors, angles from which a threat may arise. The incident at the White House Press Corps gala dinner with the President, you know, speaks to how something can catch you left field and how even when you think you've got things secure, you can realise there's 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 attempted attacks.
- [13:35]
B
Greg, thanks so much for joining us again.
- [13:37]
C
It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much.
- [13:49]
B
Also in the news, riots have erupted in Alice Springs after the arrest of accused child killer Jefferson Lewis. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the angry crowd of 400 protesters 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 dry little baby. And Mark Latham has been ordered to pay fellow New South Wales MP Alex Greenwich $100,000 in compensation. The former One Nation MP was found to have vilified and sexually harassed Greenwich based on his sexuality. Latha made a series of tweets in 2023 too offensive to repeat, he's been ordered to delete the social media posts in the next 24 hours. I'm Daniel James. You've been listening to 7am we'll be back tomorrow.