‘We dropped the ball’: Former spy boss calls for debate on radical Islam

Former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson has called for an open discussion about the role of extremist Islamists in promoting antisemitism as he warns against political correctness shutting down important national security debates.

Richardson, who abruptly quit his role as a special adviser to the antisemitism royal commission in March, said the nation had failed to respond with appropriate vigour as attacks on Jewish Australians soared following the October 7 attacks and war in Gaza.

“I tend to agree with those who argue that, following 7 October, we dropped the ball and failed to draw a line,” Richardson said in a speech to the Lowy Institute on Wednesday night.

“I am not implying a straight-line connection to the Bondi terrorist attack, as the ingredients that gave rise to that terrible incident are more complex.

“I do believe, however, that a more forceful and consistent response to the blatant antisemitism we saw in the immediate aftermath of 7 October may well have set a different tone and drawn a clearer line between the acceptable and the unacceptable.”

The veteran public servant, who led the Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the sources of antisemitism “must be addressed in a sensible and mature way, including open discussion about extremist Islamists, without Australian Muslims as a whole feeling targeted”.

“Mainstream Muslim leaders should have a central role in any such discussion,” he said.

“Pretending the issue is not there simply leads to conspiracy theories and plays into the hands of other extremists at the other end of the spectrum.”

Liberal frontbencher Julian Leeser has questioned why Bell did not call controversial Muslim clerics such as Wissam Haddad and Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun to give public evidence at the commission.

Some commentators also accused Bell of failing to sufficiently examine the role of radical Islam in the royal commission’s interim report and expressed concerns the issue would be glossed over in the final report.

Richardson contrasted the saturation media coverage given to prominent footballer Israel Folau when he made homophobic comments on social media to the muted response in 2023 when Haddad posted inflammatory comments about Jewish people.

While Folau was “almost run out of town” in 2019, Richardson said Haddad’s comments had “received barely any media attention at all” when they were posted.

A Federal Court judge last year found Haddad’s comments to be “fundamentally racist and antisemitic, and devastatingly offensive and insulting”.

Richardson said there would be a “stain on Australia’s social cohesion and multicultural tradition” as long as Jewish Australians needed special security in order to worship, attend school and play sport.

“The royal commission led by Virginia Bell has already done an enormous public service by putting the spotlight onto the experiences of Jewish Australians because of the antisemitism which has taken root in sections of the community,” he said.

“But I still do not understand why it took a royal commission to bring into the public consciousness the fact that some Australian kids have to experience their schooling, sporting and religious life behind the sort of security you would expect to find in a strife-torn country.

“This is not something which, as a society, we should be prepared to accept.”

Richardson said media outlets had not provided enough initial coverage of attacks on politicians’ offices over the war in Gaza because of misguided fears it would promote social division.

He also said much of “the media focus on the 9 October demonstration at the Opera House was on the precise words used by the mob, instead of on the appalling purpose and nature of the demonstration per se”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed Richardson to conduct an inquiry into potential security failures following the December 14 terror attack in Bondi.

His probe was then rolled into the royal commission after Albanese bowed to pressure to hold a wide-ranging inquiry, but Richardson and Bell had insurmountable differences about how the royal commission should work.

Richardson said he felt he was being treated as a “highly paid researcher” and expressed concern the royal commission would not include substantive recommendations about intelligence and policing in its interim report.

“I reached a view that, rightly or wrongly, my voice was not going to carry much weight at all,” he told this masthead this year.

Bell will hand down her final report on December 18, just four days after the first anniversary of the worst terror attack in the nation’s history.

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