Andrew L. Urban
It was a former ADF tactical assault group commander, founder of Vigil Australia, former volunteer lifesaver at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club, Sar-El volunteer and a veteran of several Middle East deployments with Australian special forces, Paul Scanlan, who came closest to the bullseye identifying what the Royal Commission is supposed to find by December 14, 2026.
He wrote “Australia did not fail to prevent the Bondi Beach attack because it lacked laws, powers or specialist capability. It failed because political leadership did not act early, speak clearly or fully own the counter-terrorism system it is meant to lead.” (The Australian, Jan. 10, 2026)
It was close to what I wrote the day before, “The road to Bondi, via Albanese’s signposts”: the Albanese government had “laid the groundwork for a national attitudinal environment that tolerated antisemitism as official policy,” listing nearly 20 actions by the Labor government between October 18, 2022 and September 22, 2025.
So I would go further than Scanlan: I’d lay the blame for Bondi, at least 90% of it, on the Labor front bench.
And Scanlan pinpoints the reason: he served within Australia’s domestic counter-terrorism architecture under the National Counter-Terrorism Plan as a commander of an Australian Defence Force tactical assault group. “That framework was designed around prevention, disruption and response. Social cohesion matters within that framework, not as an abstract value but as a leading indicator: when extremist narratives are normalised, tolerated or left unchallenged, the conditions for violence harden long before an attack occurs.”
Isn’t that the perfect diagnosis?
The other 10% can be blamed on irredeemably foolish, reckless, ideologically crazy immigration policies – and not just Labor’s.
To make matters worse, Albanese not only attempted to hide from accountability by refusing to call a Royal Commission, he lied about why. And then he lied about why he lied. That is just stupid. Then he lied by omission about why he was finally establishing one: the Terms of Reference do not include the examination of his Government’s behaviour in the lead-up to December 14. And that is disingenuous, self-serving and cowardly. He was and is keen to avoid being left with egg on his face and blood on his hands.
Antisemitic terrorism grew with the help of fertiliser – the complicity that he and his ministers applied to the seeds of it. I write this now in case the Royal Commissioner falls foul of the silken threads of her loyalty to Albanese which may bind her.
This “handsome boy” as China’s dictator Xi Jinping described him in a smiling put-down, is also a dangerous boy, playing with forces he doesn’t understand and cannot control, Islamic terrorism. Together with his hapless cabinet, Albanese has managed to assist radical Islamists find the stamp of approval to try and turn Australia into a hotbed of Jew hate and division.