The manifold failures of 26 Australian Royal Commissions since 1980 to do anything much about the underlying sins, wickedness, and malfeasance that they were supposed to address should caution us against a repeat with the Bondi shootings.

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However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who promised accountability and transparency, has delivered too much secrecy and opacity over the past four years. Voters are seeing right through that opacity, and a cornucopia of concerned citizens have joined the call for a royal commission as a cleansing act and panacea.

Their only really valid point is that past form suggests the Albanese government would not be open about anything that would suggest even the slightest failure on its part and would use the "national security" smokescreen to its advantage.

Nor could it be trusted to implement any recommendation that might erode its voter or financial base. Examples are the ignoring of many of the recommendations of the special envoy to combat anti-Semitism Jillian Segal and those of the joint committee on gambling harm.

But before we say "Here we go again", it might be worth looking at just what we might expect of a royal commission, based on the 26 we have had since 1980.

A Bondi royal commission would include an inquiry into security and intelligence services. Well, since 1980, we have had four royal commissions into aspects of those services, and some before that. The results have not been stellar, as the events of December 14, 2025, attest.

A Bondi royal commission would inquire into anti-Semitism, but also into how vulnerable communities are discriminated against and mistreated.

Since, 1980 we have had six royal commissions on those sorts of things: aged care; deaths in custody; child sexual abuse; child detention; veterans' suicides; disability; and two into false accusations against welfare recipients.

They all fit into one or both categories of telling us what we already know or not doing much to stop future abuse of the weak and vulnerable, especially with deaths in custody.

Then we have the royal commission into financial services, established........

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