The transcript for the opening session of the Antisemitism Royal Commission (ARC) is now online.

The comments included a welcome to Country by Allan Murray and statements by Commissioner Virginia Bell and Senior Counsel Richard Lancaster SC. These latter two figures will play the most important role in shaping the royal commission, so it is worth trying to read the tea leaves of their first public statements.

Bell stated that she would not jeopardise the criminal case against the surviving shooter from the Bondi massacre. Bell made clear that she will not call witnesses to the shooting, meaning that the Bondi massacre will not be explored forensically, though there will doubtless be witnesses who will analyse, or one might say speculate, about the background and causes of the massacre.

Bell will also look at the role of relevant security agencies in the massacre, which may be interesting, but will be limited by the short timeframe demanded.

Police and intelligence are likely to stonewall, delay and respond to requests with a flood of mostly irrelevant documents. Put differently, it will be very difficult to conduct a forensic examination of the strengths and weaknesses of police, intelligence and security actions on the day.

The safe course in this limited timeframe will be that there needs to be more police, more funding of police and intelligence to prevent future massacres, and more power to spy on Australians.

Remarkably, Bell stated that: “Following its establishment, Mr Richardson agreed to continue his work as a special adviser to the Commission. Mr Richardson is uniquely well placed to advise on the material that the Commission should seek from our intelligence and security agencies in order to test the effectiveness of our preparedness for a terrorist attack. Not only as he’s a former director-general of ASIO but he has a deep understanding of the workings of the Commonwealth Government, having served as secretary to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Defence.”

One might conclude from this that he is well qualified. One might equally conclude that he has significant biases indicated by his professional career. Bell’s confidence in Richardson, I think, indicates that she has accepted that the ARC does not need to be too searching in relation to its examination of police and intelligence failures.

The second term of reference “requires it to make recommendations to assist law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to tackle antisemitism. In addressing this term, the Commission will look at the training of officers of those agencies on how they should respond to antisemitic conduct or the risk of that conduct. Importantly, the Commission will review protective security for Jewish places of worship, major sites, educational and cultural facilities, public events and community leaders.”

Note that this includes “border control”, as the term of reference is intended to prevent anti-Zionists from coming to........

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