PM refuses to admit he may have made a mistake resisting royal commission

Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns said he had been advocating internally for a royal commission for weeks, but would not say whether he thought Albanese had taken too long to make the call, saying what mattered was what the inquiry would do.

“He took the time as we expect him to do. And all this hard, all this is not ideal. It’s been terrible, but we got the right outcome, and the terms of reference are really strong.”

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said she wanted to see “ministers be effectively in the dock” during the royal commission, questioned over decisions that the government had made that would have contributed to the circumstances that led to the Bondi killings.

The prime minister, while defending former High Court judge Virginia Bell as his choice to lead the inquiry, said it was crucial that any criminal trial would not be compromised by the royal commission.

Surviving Bondi gunman Naveed Akram has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 murders and committing a terrorist act, which will be prosecuted through the NSW court system while former High Court justice Virginia Bell, AC, conducts her investigation into antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia.

“What you do not want, and I don’t think anyone would want, is for there to be a disruption of that trial,” the prime minister said on Friday, adding that Bell was the best choice of more than a dozen candidates to run the inquiry because of her experience in criminal law and serving more than a decade on the nation’s highest court.

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The legal rule of “sub judice” is designed to prevent prejudicial information that could sway the opinions of a jury from being publicised, with those that do so charged with contempt of court.

“This is quite a complex issue,” Albanese said. “There hasn’t been a royal commission before while a legal case was going on. I suspect that might have been one of the reasons why there wasn’t a royal commission into what happened at the Lindt cafe [siege in 2014].”

University of Sydney law professor David Rolph, author of a 2023 book on contempt of court, said the risk to the Akram case was manageable.

“Because the terms of reference for the royal commission are broad, and the commissioner has powers as to what she inquires into at any given point in time, the royal commissioner will be able to minimise or avoid risks of sub judice contempt,” Rolph said.

He also pointed to Bell’s experience presiding over murder trials as a former judge of the NSW Supreme Court.

Akram is expected to front court in April, just as former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson is due to release his report into intelligence failures.

Bell has been given a deadline of December 14, 2026 to return her findings.

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