Police told ‘no need to stay’ for Bondi Hanukkah event, report reveals

NSW Police should deploy stricter security procedures for “high risk” Jewish festivals after the royal commission into antisemitism revealed local officers were told to send a “car crew or two” to the December 14 Bondi Hannukah celebration but did not need to stay for the whole event.

The commission’s first report since its inception earlier this year was released on Thursday with a focus on NSW Police, security agencies and possible failures that may have led to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, in which 15 mostly Jewish people were killed on the first night of Hanukkah.

The report contains 14 recommendations, including five in a confidential section which has not been made public.

A focus of the report was the communications between the Community Security Group (CSG) – the volunteer-led Jewish organisation that arranges security for synagogues, religious schools and community events – and NSW Police in the lead-up to the Bondi Hanukkah event.

The report said that CSG NSW emailed NSW Police in late November with a “Jewish Festival Calendar Notification – Chanukah, 2025”, with the correspondence starting with a request for assistance with “any policing measures that the command may deem appropriate”.

CSG’s email stated that the security level alert for the NSW Jewish community is “HIGH”. “A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification,” the email, cited in Bell’s report, said.

The report said the command’s response was to send a “car crew or two” to “ensure the community feel safe” and provide a high-visibility policing presence, but noted “that there was no need to stay the entire duration” of the event.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the national security committee of cabinet met on Thursday morning and agreed to implement all of Commissioner Virginia Bell’s recommendations.

“I can assure the Australian public that the government will do everything necessary to protect the community in the wake of the Bondi attack,” he said.

Asked how long it would take for the initial recommendations to be implemented, Albanese said, “we’re not sitting back and just reading this document, we’re acting on it”.

Bell has urged the Commonwealth, states and territories to prioritise the proposed national gun buyback scheme, announced following the terrorist attack, but also said no “urgent or immediate action has been identified” regarding hindering agencies’ ability to prevent or respond to the Bondi attack.

“No material or advice from any agency identified any gap in the existing legal and regulatory frameworks that impeded the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to prevent, or respond to, an attack of the kind that occurred at Bondi on 14 December 2025,” the report says.

Bell found that, while funding for intelligence agencies increased from 2020 to 2025, investment in counter-terror fell sharply over that period. Bell said she would now probe whether funding for ASIO and other intelligence agencies should have been increased further after the nation’s terror threat level was raised to probable in 2024 amid a surge in antisemitic attacks.

In 2022, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said espionage and foreign interference had overtaken terrorism as the nation’s top security concern, reflecting shifting priorities at the spy agency.

Bell said she would examine whether enough action was taken in response to ASIO’s decision to raise the terror threat level to probable in 2024.

“It will be necessary to investigate whether and how ASIO and other Commonwealth and state intelligence and law enforcement agencies understood and acted on those assessments of a probable attack, and to consider the adequacy of what was said to be ASIO’s ‘full use of our capabilities and powers’ in the context of ongoing antisemitic attacks,” she wrote.

“These are matters that will be explored in hearings.”

Bell also noted that neither the Australian Federal Police nor NSW Police had given unqualified support for the way the state’s joint counter-terror team was functioning as she called for a review of the current arrangements. “It is clear that the agencies involved consider there may be room for improvement, in particular in respect of information management and sharing,” she said.

The release of the report comes six weeks after former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson quit his role as a special adviser to Bell, saying he felt surplus to requirements.

The former spy boss and US ambassador had finished interviewing heads of the intelligence agencies in mid-January and was focused on delivering a concrete set of recommendations about intelligence and policing failures in the commission’s interim report.

But sources with knowledge of the commission’s workings said Richardson felt his role became untenable when Bell decided the interim report would not contain substantive recommendations or findings.

However, Bell has previously stressed that the commission “must do its work without risking any prejudice” to criminal proceedings involving alleged gunman Naveed Akram, who was charged with 15 counts of murder and 40 of attempted murder after the mass shooting.

Albanese had tasked Richardson with investigating whether key agencies, including ASIO and the Australian Federal Police, had done everything possible to prevent the December 14 attack, and also to understand what they knew about the gunmen.

Announcing his departure, Richardson said he was being overpaid at $5500 a day for essentially being employed as a research officer, and although he praised Bell for her fine legal mind, he made it clear that there was a clash in approach.

“The interim report that will now be done by the royal commission will be a very different document to the one that I would have done when I was doing the review,” Richardson told the ABC after his resignation.

Interim report key recommendations include:

• The procedures adopted by NSW Police in respect to Operation Jewish High Holy Days should apply to other high-risk Jewish festivals and events, particularly those that have a public-facing element.
• The Commonwealth and states and territories should prioritise efforts to finalise and implement an updated and nationally consistent National Firearms Agreement and National Gun Buyback Scheme.
• The Australian government should consider whether National Security Committee ministers, including the prime minister, should participate in a counter-terrorism exercise, along with all national cabinet members, within nine months of each federal election.
• Consideration given to making the counter-terrorism co-ordinator’s role full-time.
• The Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee should provide direct advice in the form of a written and/or oral briefing, at least annually, to national cabinet.

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