Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg has called for a sharp focus on religious extremism when the royal commission on antisemitism starts on Tuesday, as Opposition Leader Angus Taylor seeks to shift the spotlight back to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s handling of the Bondi massacre.
After weeks of inflammatory political debate on immigration and attitudes within the Australian Muslim community, following the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil, Taylor told this masthead that “serious questions need to be answered about warnings, preparedness and response, and why the Albanese government failed to act sooner”.
The former High Court justice running the probe, commissioner Virginia Bell, has in recent weeks met Jewish community leaders and other interested parties before an inquiry that Albanese was initially reluctant to establish after the Bondi massacre in which 15 people were killed.
Major Jewish community groups, including Frydenberg’s Dor Foundation, have come together ahead of the royal commission to co-ordinate on legal strategy.
Bell and the leading lawyer who will question witnesses, Richard Lancaster, SC, will give their opening remarks on Tuesday morning as they race to deliver a final report by the time of the first anniversary of the December 14 attack.
Frydenberg, the former Liberal member for Kooyong who gave an impassioned speech advocating for a royal commission at a Bondi memorial in the days after the massacre, said there was lots of goodwill in the community that the inquiry would “pave a path to a better Australia”.
“We need to rebuild a culture of tolerance in our country with a special focus on the extremists in our midst who want to hurt and do harm to their fellow Australians,” he told this masthead, saying the process would help prevent another terror attack like Bondi.
“[Extremists] can no longer be tolerated if we are going to turn a new page and create a safer and secure Australia for us all.”
The Bondi killings, one of the deadliest attacks on Jews outside Israel in modern history, triggered a national conversation about antisemitism and extremism.
Speaking on this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast earlier this month, Albanese took a swipe at Frydenberg, who had expressed early concern about Bell’s appointment.
Albanese said he did not regret the delay in calling a royal commission and repeated the claim that he was preparing to do so some time before he announced it, even though he was publicly arguing against it at the same time he claimed to be considering it.
“There was an attempt to secure political advantage perceived within 24 hours, and that, to me, is entirely inappropriate,” Albanese said.
“I draw a big distinction between the engagement of some political figures and the response of the local community.”
Support for populist right-wing party One Nation was rising before the attack, but polling for Pauline Hanson’s outfit overtook the Coalition in the weeks after it.
The rise of the Queensland senator was tested last week as she received widespread condemnation for saying there were no “good” Muslims. Hanson’s top recruit, former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, showed signs of pressure trying to defend Hanson while not endorsing her inflammatory views.
Albanese called the comments “disgraceful”. Taylor responded to Hanson’s comments for the first time on Friday, saying: “I don’t agree with Pauline Hanson in what she said.”
At a press conference at Melbourne’s burnt-out Adass Synagogue, which became a symbol of the spate of attacks on Jewish sites over the past two years, Taylor declined to use strong language to criticise Hanson, but distanced himself from her comments.
“What I believe in is that people who don’t adopt and believe in our core values shouldn’t come to our shores, whatever their race or religion,” he said.
Taylor has also been focused on Labor’s management of the potential return of “ISIS brides” who travelled to Syria to join the same movement that allegedly inspired the Bondi attack.
The true extent of Hanson’s support faces real-life tests in South Australian and Victorian elections this year, as well as a federal byelection in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer.
On Friday afternoon, the Australian Federal Police said it had “received reports of crime” in relation to Hanson’s comments. Hanson was found guilty of racially vilifying Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, a Muslim woman born in Pakistan, in 2024 when she said Faruqi should “piss off back to Pakistan”.
The spike in Hanson’s polling has coincided with a surge in social media viewership of her content. Data provided by One Nation showed that in the 28 days to February 18, Hanson’s videos on Facebook and Instagram had been viewed 47 million times. The data from Meta showed viewers aged under 45 were mainly men, and mainly women for those 65 or older.
The royal commission will re-enliven scrutiny on the Albanese government and its intelligence agencies, which will be questioned about their knowledge of the alleged shooters before the December attack, as well as NSW agencies including police whose presence was small at the Hanukkah event.
A question for Bell will be how much time and investigatory capacity she puts into exploring antisemitism in the media, universities and cultural institutions, where those with right- and left-wing views disagree on the nature of the problem.
Whether the pro-Palestine protest movement created a permissive environment for antisemitism is likely to be a talking point, as is the question of whether Israel’s war in Gaza and escalating violence in the West Bank contributed to the rise in antisemitism.
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