Opinion – Courier Mail – 7 January 2026
The Albanese Government’s belligerence in refusing to call a Commonwealth Royal Commission into antisemitism and the Bondi terrorist attack is baffling. Its intractability is being condemned across Australia, with the obvious exception of unions and the Greens. This reflects the Government’s pattern of avoiding accountability and transparency, qualities it campaigned on leading into the 2022 election.
Prime Minister Albanese has made questionable excuses for refusing a Commonwealth Royal Commission. These attempts to dodge responsibility reveal a government determined not to do what is right, but to avoid scrutiny. Why this desperation to avoid such a commonsense measure?
These excuses would appear less disingenuous were it not for Prime Minister Albanese’s track record of undermining transparency.
A primary responsibility of government is to listen, particularly when Australians from all walks of life are speaking in unison. But listening has not been this Government’s approach.
Since the Bondi attack, an expanding coalition of Australians has demanded a Commonwealth Royal Commission. This includes the Jewish community, victim’s families, faith and business leaders, sporting greats, former Chief Justice Robert French, the family of Lindt café victim Katrina Dawson, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, senior barristers and judges, and many others.
I cannot recall another time when such a diverse cross-section of Australians has been so united. It takes a great deal to bring former heads of GetUp and the current head of the Centre for Independent Studies onto the same page, yet both back a Commonwealth Royal Commission, alongside voices that rarely agree on anything. Labor MPs and prominent party members have also broken ranks.
As time passes, Prime Minister Albanese becomes less believable, and it beggars belief that he continues to refuse the obvious course of action. Public scepticism is justified given the Government’s broader pattern of avoiding scrutiny.
After the 2025 election, Prime Minister Albanese cut Opposition and crossbench staffing, arguing that a small decrease in his own staff should be reflected elsewhere. That claim was false.
After securing a supersized majority, the Government increased its own staffing, then cut the Opposition’s ministerial staffing allocation from 21 to 17 per cent. Staff numbers for crossbenchers in the Senate were also reduced. Wherever there is a prospect of accountability, it is undermined.
An even more blatant example was the proposed changes to FOI laws, which would have made it harder for journalists, the Opposition and the public to access information.
Similarly questionable arguments were made to justify these changes, claiming FOI laws were being abused by AI bots seeking sensitive national security information. No evidence was provided to support this claim, and national security matters are already exempt.
That bill has not passed Parliament because it is friendless, much like Prime Minister Albanese’s excuses for not establishing a Royal Commission. Like the arguments for FOI reform, his arguments against a Commonwealth Royal Commission do not pass the pub test.
Initially, Prime Minister Albanese deflected with gun reform. He then reasoned there was no such inquiry after the Port Arthur massacre or the Lindt Café siege, neither of which is an apt parallel.
When the family of Lindt siege victim Katrina Dawson called for a Royal Commission, drawing on painful experience of the inadequacy of the state-based inquiry, their call was dismissed. When families of the Bondi victims later wrote an open letter, Prime Minister Albanese cruelly rejected it, claiming a Royal Commission would platform hate speech.
This ignored the discretion of Royal Commissions to control publication and determine witnesses, and their long history of examining sensitive matters in ways that bring justice and healing.
Besides, anyone scrolling social media or walking through a CBD over the past two years knows this hatred is already right in our faces.
Prime Minister Albanese then announced an independent review into intelligence agencies that excludes the root causes or the Government’s actions. Once again, accountability is avoided.
The most obvious explanation for this resistance is political self-interest. A Royal Commission risks exposing government failures and allegations of systemic antisemitism within the Labor movement. A report delivered close to the next federal election would also be politically “inconvenient”.
But political convenience can never outweigh the loss of 15 Australian lives and many others injured at the hands of radical Islamic terrorism.
In resisting a Commonwealth Royal Commission, Prime Minister Albanese fails to grasp just how tragic it is for our nation that antisemitism has taken root. How a society treats its Jews is a measure of its moral health. If any issue demands the nation’s pre-eminent form of inquiry available, it is this.
Prime Minister Albanese owes it to all Australians to make the moral choice over the political one, and to demonstrate true leadership and accountability. Australians are sick of politics over transparency and tangible outcomes from their leaders, and there has never been a more critical time to listen.
Andrew Wallace MP is the Shadow Attorney-General and Federal Member for Fisher.
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Media Contact: Brendan West – 0402 556 646 – Brendan.west@aph.gov.au