By Dr Samantha Jones, Lecturer in Criminology in the Charles Sturt University Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security in Canberra.

The Bondi terrorist attack in Sydney on Sunday 14 December 2025 was a moment of despair, anger and conflict at a time that was meant to bring joy and love to families and a community.

The attack, planned with research and training by Naveed Akram and his father Sajid Akram, killed 15 people and injured 40 people, and was witnessed by the hundreds of people present and by millions around the world via media reports. It will forever scar the Jewish community and Australia at large.

Following the attack, the national debate tried to fathom the complacency to a terrorist attack reaching Australian shores, despite warning signs amid the fraying of the social cohesion of Australian society.

The Australian Government established the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, and on Thursday 30 April 2026 the interim report was released. It listed 14 recommendations, five of which are confidential.

The Royal Commission highlights four key areas, however the interim report only covers point three:

• Examining the circumstances surrounding the antisemitic Bondi terrorist attack on 14 December 2025.

The interim report argues that the increase in attacks over the past two-and-a-half years corresponds with events in the Middle East, although attacks have been rising for almost a decade and correspond with multiple issues nationally and internationally and not solely of the Middle East.

The report considers the National Gun Buyback Scheme without noting that several states and territories have stated that it will not be implemented, in part due to the significant cost of such schemes.

What is clear across the available recommendations is that it does not consider social cohesion, extremism or antisemitism directly, which are significant aspects of the Royal Commission.

The focus that this interim report takes is identifying gaps in legislation and operations to build institutional confidence.

Core points are addressed in terms of intelligence sharing and coordination, training and system upgrades and while there has been improvement, ongoing development is still required to make it more effective.

The interim report does highlight that the national intelligence community’s cooperation in relation to counterterrorism is particularly well developed, however this is not consistent with evidence in the report.

The report also discusses the Australian and New Zealand Counter Terrorism Committee (ANZCTC), although this committee’s purpose has no power and is an advisory committee, which further increases the workloads of organisations that may not have the resources.

This also risks creating unnecessary layers of administration and can in fact slow processes detrimentally during heightened terrorism risks.

While the report examines the events of the Bondi attack, and comments on national increases in antisemitism, there is minimal critical analysis of antisemitism’s impact and how the report’s information can be appropriately linked to create recommendations.

Furthermore, while the interim report has a focus on deconstructing the events, it takes a localised review of NSW especially in terms of protecting the Jewish community but does not take a nationwide approach.

Since other recommendations take a nationwide approach, it is unclear why Jewish communities across Australia are not represented for protection.

While the report had a quick turnaround, it appears that efficiency has outweighed expertise on the production and management of terrorism in Australia.

Additionally, the expertise of those that came before the Royal Commission from across academia has not been utilised to a high degree, for the most part.

As it stands, this report is limited in utility and in providing significant steps forward on antisemitism and Australian community cohesion, even from an operational perspective.

What it does appear to do is provide financial reforms with uncertain preventative outcomes.

The overarching discussion in the interim report leads to the point that no urgent legislative gaps or failures prevented agencies from acting prior to the Bondi attack, even though evidence in the report would suggest otherwise.