Governance lessons for everybody in recommendations of Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion

The Royal Commission’s interim report was released on Thursday so that urgent recommendations could be implemented while hearings are ongoing. The Royal Commission was established in the wake of the Bondi massacre that targeted a Jewish event and killed 15 people in December last year. Its final report will be presented to the Governor-General at the end of the year.

Of interest to the community sector, the Royal Commission has responded to concerns for the physical safety and life experience of thousands of staff, volunteers, board members, not-for-profits, social enterprises and charities as well as school children and university students.

Stowe-Lindner said three of the interim report’s recommendations had the potential to affect community institutions. “Those who have attended governance training with the Institute of Community Directors Australia will not be surprised that these were identified by the Royal Commission,” she said.

Recommendation 2 relates to how much human resources time should be dedicated to each component of an organisation’s remit, and it specifies that the role of Commonwealth Counter Terrorism Coordinator needs to become a full-time role.

The thinking behind this could be applied to the third sector, Stowe-Lindner said. “The scope of a role must always be matched by the time allocated to fill it, and counter-terrorism leadership is no exception to a principle that applies equally to every board chair, CEO and committee member in the community sector,” she said.

Recommendation 3 focuses on role clarity, saying: “If the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee (ANZCTC) is to be used again as a crisis committee, the ANZCTC should be included in the Australian Government Crisis Management Framework so its role is clear.”

Stowe-Lindner noted that “role clarity in community organisations and in the government is less about bureaucratic tidiness and more about the foundation on which effective crisis response is built.”

Recommendation 4 is about updating handbooks and policies, stating, “The Counter-Terrorism Handbook should be updated promptly and then at least every three years in coordination with updates to the Counter-Terrorism Plan and the ANZCTC triennial review.”

This was essential for all policies in the community sector, Stowe-Lindner said. “A policy that is not regularly reviewed is a policy that has quietly stopped reflecting reality. Governance documents are only as useful as they are current.”

She said that preventing problems was preferable to reacting to them, and that it was heartening that the interim recommendations were focused on how the government can prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

Recommendations about improved clarity, documentation, review and reporting, as well as those focused on reforming gun laws, were critical to protect Australians, she said, although she observed that the majority of antisemitic attacks over the past three years have been carried out without the use of guns – in both Australia and the UK, which has stricter gun laws than here.

The full report at the end of 2026 is expected to make recommendations for improving social cohesion in Australia to prevent a social climate that could continue to sow the seeds of attacks.