Today’s interim report is not the final account. It does, however, put beyond doubt that Bondi occurred in a known and escalating threat environment for Jewish Australians. ASIO had raised the national terrorism threat level to probable. Jewish community security organisations had warned of a high-risk environment. And the Commission has now identified serious questions about how intelligence, policing, event security and national systems worked together. Those questions now need to be tested carefully through the hearings.
The Federal Government’s full acceptance of the interim recommendations is welcome and should now be matched by State and Territory governments, particularly in areas of policing and event security.
Rightfully, the Commission’s work does not stop with those urgent security questions. The hearings now beginning, and the final report to come, will examine the wider reality of antisemitism in Australia: the daily experience of Jewish Australians at school, university, work, online, in cultural life and in public spaces. That broader work is essential, because a serious national response has to protect Jewish Australians not only in moments of catastrophe, but in the ordinary places where hatred, intimidation and exclusion are experienced every day.