Andrew Greene: Intelligence and police failures will be exposed by Bondi probes, say experts

Momentum is growing for a sweeping inquiry into intelligence and law enforcement failures leading up to Sunday’s Bondi massacre, with debate intensifying on whether resources are adequate and properly deployed.

On Friday Anthony Albanese toured the Australian Federal Police and ASIO headquarters in Canberra to thank staff involved with the Bondi investigations, as both organisations face growing scrutiny of their work.

The Prime Minister earlier said security agencies had told the Government there was no unshared intelligence indicating an imminent attack.

But the apparent missed warnings leading up to the mass shootings are in sharp focus; including the accused gunmen’s recent travel to a known Philippines terror hot spot, and how a son, previously on ASIO’s radar, lived with a father holding numerous gun licences.

Former US military intelligence officer John Powers, who was posted to the American embassy in Canberra until 2017, said shortfalls in the Australian system had been badly exposed.

“In fact, I would suggest to you there was less sharing going on in the Australian intelligence community than there was in the US intelligence community before 9/11 – and that was pretty bloody bad.”

“We had a better appreciation what where the gaps and the requirements within the Australian intelligence community than the Australian intelligence community did,” the Canberra-based security consult said.

He said when inquiries are completed into the Bondi massacre, it will confirm vital clues Australian agencies missed or failed to properly assess.

“It’s just speculation on my part but I’ve been doing this a long time, I think the information will be there.”

John Coyne, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, agreed the Bondi attack had exposed potential weaknesses in how information flows between intelligence agencies, state police and administrative systems such as firearms registries.

“Intelligence isn’t a crystal ball. It’s more like being handed four or five pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, at best, without the picture on the box, without knowing how many pieces exist, and being asked to describe the full image.”

“Analysts must make judgements based on fragmentary information, uncertainty and probability. After an attack, when the picture is suddenly complete, everything looks obvious. Beforehand, it rarely is”.

While the 25-year veteran of the security world agreed that scrutiny of intelligence and law enforcement agencies is necessary, he warned the subsequent answers were not easy.

“A Royal Commission could examine not just what went wrong in this case, but how our fragmented risk frameworks can be integrated to prevent similar failures in an era where ideology, technology, and access to weapons are increasingly intertwined.”

Already there is debate inside government over the structure of the super-sized Home Affairs Department, which now encompasses the AFP, and later, ASIO, Australian Border Force, the National Emergency Management Agency as well as other intelligence agencies.

After coming to office in 2022, the Albanese Government initially disbanded the mega department that had been built up under former home affairs minister Peter Dutton and his secretary Mike Pezzullo, by returning ASIO and the AFP to the Attorney-General’s portfolio.

However, after this year’s election, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke reclaimed control of ASIO and the AFP in his large portfolio of responsibilities.

On Friday the Nightly asked the Prime Minister whether Labor had considered improving the mational security community’s structure, to which he responded: “we have continued to engage across government”.

When asked whether he believed a Royal Commission was inevitable and whether he would be prepared to expose his Government to a full examination of its response to anti-Semitism, Mr Albanese declined to answer.

“Our intelligence services are working around the clock to keep our communities safe. And they have our full support as they investigate how the terror at Bondi unfolded,” Mr Albanese wrote online, as he thanked staff for “everything you are doing”.

Yesterday former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus warned that Royal commissions are often very slow, arguing “we need to act and we already know so many things that can be done and more things that can be done”.