Just who is Labor trying to protect? Royal commission avoidance job is sounding like a self-preservation society
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Anthony Albanese on Monday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
That much became clear at Monday’s press conference when Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the reason the Albanese government would not establish a royal commission was that it would involve providing a platform for evil people.
A royal commission in the form proposed by the Coalition would, Burke said, provide a public platform for “some of the worst examples of anti-Semitism”. The government, he said, was “deeply concerned” about social cohesion and unity.
The Prime Minister added insult to injury with this award-winning word salad: “As the minister has just said, the issue there is that royal commissions can be good at deciding facts; what the Richardson review will do is decide facts. Where royal commissions are not as good, is to consider things that are not agreed, where people have differences of views and to enable, which is what it would do, a repetition of some of the worst elements.”
The most charitable thing one can say about these comments from the Prime Minister and the Home Affairs Minister is they will go down as some of the ridiculous responses imaginable by this government to growing calls for a royal commission into the rise and rise of anti-Semitism in this country. Hard-headed people will reach for much less complimentary language.
You don’t improve social cohesion by refusing to expose evil, by letting it fester in terrorist breeding grounds in our suburbs.
Labor’s excuse is so poor, so obviously bogus, that Albanese and Burke must know things we don’t know – there must be something so deep and dark within the Labor government, and the broader Labor Party, that they believe any excuse that can save them from exposure is justified. Whatever it takes, as former ALP senator and powerbroker Graham Richardson would have said.
Many royal commissions deal with deeply disturbing evidence. The tendering of evidence during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse would have been deeply traumatising for the victims and their families. But the greater good was the exposure of evil.
In recent years, we have had royal commissions into defence and veteran suicide; violence, neglect, abuse and exploitation of people with a disability; the Robodebt scheme; and aged care quality and safety. The single unifying feature of each of these royal commissions has been that they produced seriously traumatic evidence – for victims of child sexual abuse, for people with a disability who were abused and neglected, for aged care residents who were abused while in care, and for victims of the appalling Robodebt scheme.
Given that history, the excuse from Albanese and Burke is deeply insulting. Do they think we are complete idiots?
Devastated Jewish families who lost their children, mothers, fathers, husbands, friends, rabbis are not afraid of hearing evidence about the rise of anti-Semitism in this country. For years, they have lived with the growing tide of anti-Semitism. If the victims of anti-Semitism are not afraid of it being “re-platformed” (to borrow Burke’s word) but actually want it to be ventilated again, why are the Prime Minister and his Home Affairs Minister running scared?
A royal commission would necessarily investigate the rise of anti-Semitism, not just in the wider community, not just within arts bodies, not just on university campuses, but also inside our political institutions.
Last week, a few courageous Labor Party members demanded that Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns crack down on widespread anti-Semitism and inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric running rampant within the ALP.
On Monday, as Burke and Albanese continued to refuse calls for a royal commission, The Australian was told by Labor insiders that the Clovelly branch of the party – Clovelly is a seaside suburb close to Bondi – passed a motion last year that included a statement that rabbis called for the murder of Palestinian babies and submitted it to Labor’s federal electoral council for adoption.
No evidence was offered to support the claim. Though the statement was deleted, Labor insiders told The Australian they were deeply troubled by the “avalanche of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish motions coming from some of Labor branches – including Clovelly – in Wentworth”.
Are Albanese and Burke trying to hide from dreadful anti-Semitism within their own party – at the expense of keeping Jews safe?
We gave Morgan D, a high-ranking law-enforcement professional, with decades of frontline experience in Australia and overseas within the Australian Federal Police, an alias to protect him. He told us that the AFP had briefed the government, particularly senior ministers Penny Wong and Burke, repeatedly on the “growing and foreseeable threat” of terrorism. These ministers appear to have done nothing.
We asked on the weekend whether Burke especially faced an irreconcilable conflict in national security matters given the importance of the Muslim community in his electorate – a conflict so potentially serious that it may demand he step down from his role as Home Affairs Minister.
In light of Burke’s insulting excuse this week for not holding a royal commission, we ask again: is the real reason we are being denied a royal commission on these attacks and related matters that it might reveal conversations and briefings that Burke, and maybe Wong and others, would rather not have revealed? Or reveal the rot inside the Labor Party?
What happened to Albanese’s sanctimonious vows about integrity and transparency in government? Albanese was happy enough to make those promises to win office. Now Albanese is determined to break those promises to hold onto power. And where are those apostles of transparency, those evangelists for integrity – the so-called teals? They should be leading the calls for a royal commission, their voices a chorus line of indignation.
The Albanese government’s determination to do no more than scratch the surface is deeply troubling. The Richardson review has a politically convenient narrow remit. It will not explore the rise of anti-Semitism in our country, a dark stain that should, as Mick Keelty argued in The Australian on Monday, warrant the important powers of a royal commission.
Our suspicions are on high alert that the only people Albanese and Burke are trying to save from trauma are themselves and their fellow Labor ministers.
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Sunlight is always the best disinfectant. Unless of course you are the Albanese government with so much to hide and so much to lose from a royal commission into the worst terrorist attack in the history of this country.