LATIKA M BOURKE: With his inaction on Bondi, Albanese fuelled division and anti-Semites

At last, the Prime Minister finally put down his shovel and reached for the emergency escape ladder instead.

For more than three weeks, Anthony Albanese’s response to calls for a royal commission was a stubborn “no”.

Those advocating for a judicial inquiry represented Australians from every walk of life. They included the families of those slain at Bondi Beach on December 14, Jewish leaders, business leaders, sporting champions and security experts.

Aligned with Mr Albanese were the Labor caucus minus three members, the Cabinet and the Greens party.

Eventually, the Prime Minister recognised the poor political judgement of the company he was keeping, said he had “listened” and was now in full agreement with those he had been rejecting these past weeks.

His climbdown was as inevitable as his opposition to a judicial inquiry was baffling.

As this column predicted in the days after the attack, Mr Albanese would likely be dragged kicking and screaming to this outcome.

But he has made a decent show of trying to make amends.

As the Voice referendum showed, he doesn’t like to admit errors or say sorry.

The Draft Letters Patent set out extremely comprehensive terms of reference for former High Court Justice Virginia Bell to follow.

The inquiry will unequivocally examine the rise of anti-Semitism in the lead-up to the attack, encourage approaches for de-radicalisation, and give a vital platform to Jewish Australians to speak about the anti-Semitism they suffer.

It also does not shy away from asking for recommendations on how immigration and law enforcement can tackle anti-Semitism.

Finally, it will look at any policing and intelligence failures that could have prevented or mitigated the attack.

This is a solid result. Those who campaigned for this should feel satisfied with what their efforts yielded. Former Liberal MP and federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg should, in particular, feel a sense of mission accomplished.

His intervention at Bondi, calling for the PM to answer leadership’s call was the turning point. He has emerged as a formidable campaigner and operator, becoming a one-man media machine over the summer, coalescing various groups of often quiet Australians into backing the Jewish community’s leadership plea.

If he does decide to return to frontline politics, he has credentialed himself as a leadership contender. Although there is a long way to go between now and then.

He needs to copy Tim Wilson’s playbook and slay a teal by winning back Kooyong from Monique Ryan, but also show that the passion and purpose he brought to the royal commission battle can be translated into routine domestic politics.

More immediately, though, Mr Frydenberg needs to avoid overreaching in his pursuit of the Prime Minister now that the royal commission has been called. Questioning Virginia Bell’s credentials and ethics will only expose him to the charge that he is playing politics after all.

Mr Frydenberg’s power has been that he is outside the parliament and was viewed to be serving a higher cause — the deadly pursuit of his fellow Australian Jewish community — above whatever personal ambitions may linger.

It served as a compelling contrast to Mr Albanese’s wooden response. But he will need to recalibrate from here.

Just as the Prime Minister is attempting with this backdown.

His pivot was delivered competently and confidently, but at no point could he bring himself to admit that he got it wrong. As the Voice referendum showed, he doesn’t like to admit errors or say “sorry.”

Labor MPs and Cabinet ministers are confident that the damage done during this episode won’t be lasting. This is likely. It is summer and Australians are forgiving. When someone tries to fix their mistake, they are accommodating.

But Mr Albanese needs to begin asking himself how he got to this point. His judgment failed him. And if there is no political cost to Labor that is not only beside the point but possibly harmful in the long term.

Because he, with his inaction, drew a dividing line in Australia that did not need to be there.

He gaslit Jewish victims repeatedly, casting aside their lived truths and trauma citing flimsy and utterly ridiculous reasons that he ended up kyboshing himself.

Take for example the claim that a royal commission would take too long. Turns out he can ask it to report by the end of the year.

His protestations that royal commissions were not called after Port Arthur and Lindt were problems no more as of the end of this week.

As for the laughable claim he and his Cabinet ally, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, put forward that a royal commission would platform anti-Semites and the Jewish community therefore needed protecting from such a spectacle, lo and behold, they found a way around that too.

“What we have done to alleviate that concern is in the last point before we do the letters patent, which is ‘the necessity for the Inquiry to be conducted in a manner,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ‘which doesn’t undermine social cohesion,’” he said.

This all should have been avoided. The Prime Minister abhors public self-reflection and despises the idea that his critics might ever look like they told him what to do.

But he should do a little soul-searching. Because much of the anti-Semitism that has exploded online post Bondi has fed on his example and regurgitated and amplified all of his now-jettisoned reasons for refusing a royal commission to diminish Jewish Australians and their very valid plea for a hearing.

It is a relief that they were finally heard and the Prime Minister eventually responded to their requests. And the government’s strong terms of reference show they genuinely listened.

But what will linger, is that when faced with the most consequential test of his prime ministership to date, Mr Albanese emerged a follower and not a leader.