The interim report from the royal commission on antisemitism, set up after the Bondi massacre, leaves hanging more questions than it answers.

Perhaps no one should be surprised. The decision to have this report was a case of putting the cart before the horse.

Initially the government planned, after the December murder of 15 innocent people at a Jewish festival, to have a quick inquiry into whether federal agencies had adequate powers, processes and communications arrangements.

That inquiry was to be done by former senior public servant Dennis Richardson.

Later, and reluctantly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was pushed into having a much wider royal commission into “antisemitism and social cohesion” under Virginia Bell. The Richardson review was folded into the commission.

This didn’t go well and Richardson quit in March, declaring he had become a “fifth wheel” and “surplus to requirements”.

The merging of the review, with its end-of-April deadline, into the commission, has meant this interim report has been made before relevant figures have appeared before the commission, which only starts hearing evidence next week.

Given this apparently illogical timing, it would have made more sense to have extended the deadline for the interim report, to enable the commission to gain the full picture on key issues it canvasses.

Undoubtedly the government would have granted extra time if the commission had requested it.

As it is, the interim report is thinner than one would wish, as Richardson predicted it would be when he quit.

Albanese at a news conference on Thursday seized on the commission’s conclusion that no legal or regulatory gap had been found that impeded “the ability........

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