“Australians are not being investigated for hating Jews. They are being investigated for objecting to a genocide.” Andrew Brown on the Royal Commission into Antisemitism.
Apparently antisemitism simply fell from the sky. Fully formed. Immaculately conceived. Entirely unrelated to anything happening in Gaza. That is the finding Australia has pre-purchased for $131.1 million, confirmed at Senate Estimates in February, with $91 million alone for staffing, property, lawyers and security.
Every single dollar buys theatre.
Measure the obscenity. The banking royal commission, which gutted an entire industry’s misconduct, cost $75 million. Aboriginal Deaths in Custody cost $50.2 million.
This inquiry outspends both combined. Meanwhile there is no royal commission into the domestic violence killing a woman most weeks, none into Islamophobia, now soaring. Australia found $131 million for the one inquiry designed never to ask an obvious question.
Blame where it belongs. Anthony Albanese wrote the answer into the question. His Letters Patent instruct the Commission to find the drivers of antisemitism in extremism and radicalisation, the war deleted from the terms of reference before Virginia Bell was even sworn in.
The Albanese government wrote the verdict into the terms of reference, then spent more than the banking royal commission to have a judge read it back. Here is what the money is buying.
Commissioning an alibi
Albanese promised the inquiry would deliver, in his own words, the right outcome. A Prime Minister announcing the right outcome in advance is commissioning an alibi.
This is the government that will gesture at recognising Palestine while refusing to utter the word genocide, that ships F35 components into the supply chain of the slaughter, that sanctions two Israeli ministers and calls it courage. It needed a grand national explanation for collapsing social cohesion that never once mentions its own complicity.
For $131 million, it has bought one.
The process delivered. In the first three days of hearings, 23 of 36 witnesses characterised criticism of Israel, opposition to Zionism or Palestine advocacy as antisemitic. Jewish organisations opposed to Zionism were refused leave to appear. Palestinian voices were excluded for lacking a direct and substantial interest.
The accused were barred from the courtroom so the prosecution could run unopposed at public expense.
The grievance parade
And the substance? A grievance parade.
The ABC and SBS hauled in to answer for Jillian Segal’s strong perception, her phrase, that their Gaza coverage lacks balance, then interrogated for declining the contested IHRA definition Bell waved through as uncontroversial.
Keffiyehs, flags, watermelon art, chants of Free Palestine, student encampments and fundraisers for maimed children tendered as exhibits of hate. Protest. Tents. Journalism. Every place an ordinary Australian expressed solidarity with a people being exterminated, recast at public expense as a crime scene. Australians are not being investigated for hating Jews.
They are being investigated for objecting to a genocide.
The complainants were welcomed like royalty. Alex Ryvchin of the ECAJ, who called the anti-Israel movement indistinguishable from neo-Nazism, testified at length while his silk objected to opposing counsel merely uttering the word genocide, a finding the International Court of Justice considered plausible back in January 2024.
Robert Gregory of the self-appointed Australian Jewish Association, which the ECAJ itself calls unrepresentative, told the Commission the government egged on antisemitism, fresh from blaming Bondi on visas for Palestinians fleeing the bombs.
Sky’s the limit
Sky News completes the circuit, wheeling Gregory out to demonise protesters, then feeding its own segments back into the panic as evidence.
The outcomes are as predetermined as the terms.
Come 14 December, expect IHRA stamped across the public service and pushed onto civil society, work Segal has begun. Expect ABC oversight its own ombudsman rejected. Expect protest reframed as policing, and regulators monitoring speech the way AHPRA already does, having admitted under oath it watches nurses and doctors for criticism of Israel after Segal’s pressure.
Expect everything blamed but the war.
And expect antisemitism not to fall, because you cannot cure what you refuse to diagnose. Every recommendation will manufacture the resentment it claims to fight, and Labor will call the wreckage cohesion.
For almost three years the world has watched a genocide live-streamed by a state claiming to act in the name of the Jewish people, while its Australian cheer squad defended, excused or denied every atrocity.
Now they ask why anger grows.
None of this excuses antisemitism. Not one word of it. The Bondi gunmen murdered Jews for being Jews, and the law should fall hard on every bigot who follows them. Fifteen dead Australians deserved a fearless inquiry. They got a pantomime, their graves deployed as a shield for a foreign state and the government that armed it.
The elephant is blocking the doorway and eating $131 million of paperwork, yet everyone keeps peering around it, declaring there is nothing to see.
This Commission will not defeat antisemitism. It will deliver the most expensive whinge in Australian history, commissioned by a government purchasing its own absolution with public money.
Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist