Government confirms bid to hide counter-terror details from royal commission

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s department has sought to block royal commissioner Virginia Bell from considering whether the government directed intelligence agencies to reduce counter-terrorism resources in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre, a senior minister has confirmed.

ASIO officials told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday night that they had not sought to prevent the royal commission from accessing the relevant material, backing up a written statement by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess to the royal commission.

Burgess said in his statement that the Commonwealth had made several public interest immunity (PII) claims to block public release of documents, including a cabinet memorandum.

Asked about the matter on Thursday night, Environment Minister Murray Watt said the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had made a public interest immunity claim regarding cabinet documents.

“All I can say is that the PII claim was made by the Commonwealth on advice from Prime Minister and Cabinet Department to protect cabinet process, but of course the royal commissioner makes the final decision on all PII claims,” he told Liberal senator Jonno Duniam.

“Indeed, and as you would know, cabinet confidentiality is not exactly a new concept.”

Asked whether ASIO had sought a public interest immunity claim relating to the cabinet deliberations, senior ASIO official Lisa Alonso Love said: “No, I’m not aware that ASIO has asked for that.”

Burgess did not appear at Thursday’s hearings because he was ill.

On Friday, Watt denied that the move to block the release of cabinet documents undermined the purpose of the royal commission, and said the government was “actively supporting” the inquiry.

“It has been a longstanding convention that governments do not need to reveal cabinet discussions to royal commissions,” Watt told reporters in Canberra.

“But the royal commissioner is totally within her rights to reject the public interest immunity claim that the government has made, and that will be a decision that she makes going forward.”

In a written statement to the royal commission, first reported by The Australian Financial Review this week, Burgess wrote: “I understand this [classified] question as asking whether a decision was made, or a direction issued, by those bodies or people in that period, that either ASIO or the [national intelligence community] as a whole are to reduce [counter-terrorism] efforts to service other priorities.

“I am informed that the Commonwealth intends to assert public interest immunity in relation to whether cabinet or the National Security Committee of cabinet made a decision or issued a direction of that kind.”

Duniam demanded the government release the documents to the royal commission, accusing it of using public interest immunity protections “as a shield from political embarrassment”.

“I cannot see how who made the decision relating to funding and resourcing of intelligence agencies is something that should be held back from consideration by the royal commissioner,” Duniam told Sky News on Friday.

Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo said Bell should reject the public immunity claim.

“I can’t see the basis for withholding information from the commission. I do, of course, think that ultimately in the public version of her report, there’s going to have to be discretion exercised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion said on Thursday that public interest immunity may apply if material would “reveal the confidential deliberations of cabinet”.

“If public interest immunity applies, the material is not able to be given to the royal commission,” she told the Australian Financial Review.

However, Bell would be able to inspect the material for the purpose of deciding whether to support or reject the public interest immunity claim.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said at a press conference she would have to check who sought to block the documents, adding that “some of this information is highly sensitive”.

Bell’s interim report, released last month, stated that the proportion of funding allocated to counter-terrorism “significantly declined” across national intelligence community agencies from 2020 to 2025, even as overall funding increased.

Albanese has refused to be drawn on this finding, and told SBS last month: “The report makes it clear that there was no inadequacy when it comes to preventing terrorist acts as a result of government agencies. So, it makes that very clear in the report.”

Burgess told the royal commission in an appearance on Monday that ASIO had made a pivot to investigating foreign interference and espionage when this supplanted terrorism as the nation’s top national security threat in 2022.

“In retrospect, I still think that our resourcing was sufficient for the problems we face,” he said.

“Of course, we are stretched, and I do have a means by which I can ask for additional resources if we need to.”

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