Why the Families Are Owed a Royal Commission Into Bondi

 

When Australians hear the words “Royal Commission,” many assume a hunt for culprits. That is a misread of what such inquiries are for, and it obscures the central point in the Bondi case: the families of those killed are not asking for theatre. They are asking for a process capable of establishing the truth. In circumstances where government and agencies cannot credibly verify themselves, an independent inquiry is not an optional gesture. It is the public’s mechanism for restoring trust, and it is the families’ only realistic pathway to answers that are more than assurances.

Several facts are now in the public domain. Jewish community organisations requested police protection during Hanukkah. Chris Minns has confirmed that Jewish security groups warned NSW Police of heightened antisemitic threats weeks before the attack. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has described the attack as “ISIS-inspired,” shifting the event into the counter-terrorism frame and, by implication, into the orbit of Commonwealth intelligence assessments. Meanwhile, victims’ families are calling for a Royal Commission and being told it is unnecessary.

That stance is difficult to defend because it invites an obvious question: if the attack is serious enough to be framed as terrorism, and if credible community warnings existed in advance, why is the government resisting the only mechanism designed to test how those warnings were assessed and acted upon? Without an independent inquiry, the public is asked to accept a set of conclusions without being shown the working. The families are asked to live with permanent uncertainty, while the state protects its discretion behind operational language and classification.

The moral case for a Royal Commission does not depend on proving that any agency acted improperly. It rests on something more basic: when the state claims it has done what was reasonable, it must be willing to demonstrate that claim through a process that can compel evidence and examine it without conflict. That is what “owed” means in a liberal democracy. Not vengeance. Not a presumption of failure. A duty of transparency commensurate with the gravity of the loss.

A coronial inquest may clarify certain facts, but it is not designed to interrogate the full national-security architecture. An internal police review cannot overcome public scepticism because it lacks independence. Parliamentary committees are constrained by politics and privilege. Only a Royal Commission can compel testimony under oath, examine communications between agencies, review risk assessments, and handle sensitive intelligence in closed sessions where appropriate, while still delivering an authoritative public account. This is not a matter of preference; it is a matter of capacity.

There is also a practical reason the families’ demand must be taken seriously. Royal Commissions are instruments of improvement. They expose procedural weaknesses, clarify thresholds for action, and recommend reforms that become institutional memory. They are how mature systems learn. In the aftermath of major events, governments often reach for “lessons learned” language without submitting the lessons to independent verification. That is not sufficient when warning timelines, security requests, and competing public narratives are already in dispute.

The families are owed a Royal Commission because they have been placed at the intersection of two institutional incentives: the natural desire of agencies to defend their judgments, and the natural desire of governments to contain political damage. Those incentives are human and predictable. They are also why independent inquiry exists. If agencies performed appropriately, a Royal Commission can establish that and restore confidence. If they did not, it can identify where the system failed—whether through policy gaps, coordination breakdowns, resourcing decisions, or misjudged thresholds—and recommend changes that prevent repetition. Either outcome is a public good. Both outcomes are owed.

Refusal, by contrast, invites the worst dynamic in public life: the sense that the story is being managed rather than explained. Once that suspicion takes hold, no amount of reassurance can substitute for evidence. The families understand this intuitively. They are not demanding special treatment. They are demanding the minimum a serious country offers after a serious failure or near-failure: a credible accounting.

A Royal Commission is not a verdict. It is the process by which a verdict becomes unnecessary—because the facts are finally known. That is what the families are asking for. And in a democracy that claims to be governed by institutions rather than expedience, that is precisely what they are owed.

~ Charlie Armstrong Adams