Interim Submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion

Executive Summary

Fifteen people were killed at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025. This submission identifies the specific, documented system failures that allowed the attack to occur, and proposes the specific reforms capable of preventing the next one.

The submission draws exclusively on public-record sources — court judgments, sentencing remarks, control order proceedings, Federal Court filings, Senate Estimates testimony, and ASIO public statements — to map a radicalisation network of at least 28 identified individuals, including 11 convicted terrorism offenders, centred on Wissam Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown. It traces the documented chain from that network to the attack: recruitment, doctrine, Philippine connections, and IED capability.

The submission identifies seven categories of institutional failure, each of which represented a missed opportunity to detect the attackers or disrupt the network that produced them:

• Intelligence without action. ASIO infiltrated the network for six years through an undercover agent who repeatedly warned that Haddad was radicalising young people. The centre was never shut down. Haddad was never charged. The street dawah operations through which the attacker was recruited at age 17 continued uninterrupted.
• Laws that existed but were not used. Three separate criminal provisions — state and federal — covered Haddad's conduct. Every element of every offence could have been established from publicly available material. No prosecution was brought by any public authority. A private applicant eventually used one of those provisions, and the Federal Court found 25 antisemitic imputations.
• An investigation opened and abandoned. ASIO investigated Naveed Akram in October 2019 after identifying his connections to the network. The investigation was closed after six months. He was never monitored again. Six years later, he carried out the attack.
• Post-release monitoring that did not exist. A Continuing Detention Order application for a convicted ISIS recruiter from the same network was filed six days before his release and failed. Three years of his communications went unmonitored. The AFP surveillance team for released terrorism offenders was disbanded weeks before the attack.
• Databases that did not communicate. The attacker's father obtained six firearms while his son was a known ASIO subject. The family spent 28 days in the Philippines — the operating territory of a designated terrorist organisation — without triggering any intelligence alert. The systems did not talk to each other.
• A prison that did not contain. The self-declared IS Commander of Australia directed operational doctrine from inside the country's highest-security prison to at least three network members, offering access to weapons and explosives suppliers. The communications were discovered only during routine searches.
• A risk assessment tool no better than chance. The instrument used in Continuing Detention Order proceedings — VERA-2R — was found by a government-commissioned report to have no predictive validity. The finding was suppressed for more than two years while government lawyers continued presenting VERA-2R assessments to courts.

None of these failures would have been addressed by the legislation enacted after the attack, which targeted political speech. The attacker was radicalised through a mosque-based network, not through street protest. ASIO identified him in 2019 — four years before the Opera House protests.

The submission makes 12 proposals, each tied to a documented failure and implementable within existing legislative frameworks or by administrative action.

One is urgent. Isaac El Matari — the network's most dangerous member, who plotted attacks from Supermax — has a maximum sentence expiring approximately November 2026. The Continuing Detention Order regime sunsets on 7 December 2026. If the interim report does not address this gap, the legislative mechanism for post-sentence supervision may expire weeks after his release. The window for action is closing.

Schedule of Proposals

The following proposals are developed in full at Section 5 and supported by the evidence in Sections 1–4. Each is tied to a documented failure. Each is implementable within existing legislative frameworks or by administrative action. None requires restricting political speech.

Proposal A (URGENT): Examine CDO position for Isaac El Matari. Sentence expires approximately November 2026; CDO regime sunsets 7 December 2026. Section 3.2, para 70

Proposal 1: Examine the intelligence relationship with Haddad — what information flowed in each direction and whether the decision not to charge him was justified, given that the radicalisation infrastructure he operated produced the Bondi attack. Section 1.2, para 58

Proposal 2: Examine the adequacy of post-release monitoring of Uweinat (November 2022 – December 2025). CDO application filed six days late; three years of communications unmonitored. Section 1.3, para 56

Proposal 3: Implement automatic cross-referencing between ASIO databases, the firearms registry, and Border Force travel records. No new legislation required. The attacker's father obtained six firearms while his son was a known ASIO subject. Sections 1.2 and 3.1, paras 48 and 62–64

Proposal 4: Require CDO assessment to commence no later than 12 months before any terrorism offender's scheduled release. Every release date is known years in advance. Section 3.2, para 69

Proposal 5: Replace VERA-2R with a validated risk assessment instrument. Commission independent review of all CDO and ESO assessments conducted using VERA-2R. Section 3.2, para 71

Proposal 5A: Introduce mandatory minimum post-release conditions for persons convicted of specified terrorism offences, triggered by the conviction itself — not by a discretionary application or a subjective risk assessment. Electronic monitoring, curfew, prohibited associations, and travel restrictions should attach as a matter of law, with the onus on the offender to seek variation. Impose a statutory obligation on the AFP to establish and maintain a dedicated post-release monitoring capability — removing the executive discretion that led to the disbandment of the AFP surveillance team weeks before the attack. Section 3.2, paras 74–77

Proposal 6: Establish automatic intelligence flags for travel to terrorism-linked regions by any person with terrorism-related associations. The Akrams spent 28 days in Mindanao and cleared customs without triggering any alert. Section 3.4, paras 82–84

Proposal 7: Comprehensive audit of prison communications security for all terrorism offenders. El Matari communicated operational doctrine from Supermax to at least three network members. Discovered only during routine searches. Section 3.3, para 81

Proposal 8: Seek disclosure of the suppressed Saadieh prohibited contact list (34 names) and the full Dakkak control order schedule. The full extent of the network has never been publicly mapped. Section 1.3, paras 57–58

Proposal 9: Seek production of all intelligence holdings relating to the Akrams' 28-day Mindanao visit, including Philippine liaison, Border Force records, and Five Eyes intelligence on AMDC–Philippines network connections. Section 1.4, paras 53–55

Proposal 10: Examine whether ASIO has conducted a post-incident review of its 2019–2020 Akram investigation and whether the strategic pivot toward youth radicalisation created a structural gap for individuals radicalised as minors who aged into adulthood. Section 1.2, paras 39–40

Proposal 11: Examine the evidence for community-based counter-radicalisation programs and recommend a nationally coordinated intervention framework operating independently of law enforcement to preserve community trust. NZ precedent; Section 1.1

Preface

1. The submitter is Jacob Carswell-Doherty, a Sydney-based legal practitioner with 15 years of experience in litigation, property, commercial, and dispute resolution practice. A full curriculum vitae, including qualifications, professional history, published work, and research methodology, is set out in the final submission and available to the Commission on request.

2. This interim submission responds to the Commissioner's statement at the opening hearing on 24 February 2026 that the Commission is to deliver an interim report by 30 April 2026 focusing on the third term of reference — the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the attack on 14 December 2025 — and identifying "any issues that require urgent or immediate action."¹ It addresses matters falling within the evidence topics identified by Senior Counsel Assisting, Mr Richard Lancaster SC, as the third and fourth broad topics: what law enforcement and security agencies have been doing to tackle antisemitic conduct and how the response could be improved, and the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the Bondi attack.²

3. The central proposition of this submission is that political speech was not a cause of the Bondi attack. Rather, the attack would likely not have occurred but for identifiable failures in Australia's intelligence, law enforcement, and post-sentence supervision systems, all of them capable of remedy. None of those failures could have been addressed by legislation equivalent to that enacted after the Bondi attack. That response targeted political speech. It did not address the security gaps and failures that permitted the attack to occur, and which risk further attack.

4. Fifteen people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025, including a ten-year-old child, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and a pregnant woman. The institutional failures documented in this submission are not abstract policy questions. They are the specific, traceable reasons those people are dead. The security reforms proposed below are directed at ensuring that the systems designed to prevent such attacks — systems that existed and were funded but did not function — are made to work.

5. The submission (following a summary of the proposals) is structured as follows. Section 1 documents the radicalisation pipeline (the Al Madina Dawah Centre network, its connections to ISIS, and the chain from Haddad's preaching to the Bondi attack), the intelligence and institutional failures (matching publicly available evidence to the elements of existing criminal offences that were never invoked), the facilitation chain connecting the Al Madina Dawah Centre (AMDC) network to Philippine-based groups, matters arising from Philippine military operations that warrant further investigation, and the surveillance gap created by systemic failures in post-release monitoring. Section 2 addresses the "environment" narrative linking the attack to pro-Palestinian protests. Section 3 identifies the specific security reforms the interim report should recommend — database integration, post-release supervision, network disruption, travel monitoring, and encrypted communications. Section 4 examines the New Zealand Royal Commission precedent. Section 5 sets out the proposals, each tied to a documented failure. Section 6 is the conclusion. A summary of recommended findings follows this preface.

6. The submission's central contention may be expressed in terms of the structured proportionality framework applied by this Commissioner in McCloy v New South Wales (2015) 257 CLR 178 and Clubb v Edwards (2019) 267 CLR 171. The post-Bondi legislative response — directed at political speech and assembly — fails the necessity limb of that test. Less restrictive means were reasonably available to achieve the legitimate purpose of protecting the community from terrorism: specifically, the operational security reforms identified in this submission, each of which directly addresses the pathway that produced the attack without burdening the implied freedom of political communication.

7. The scope of this submission is deliberately narrow. It addresses the security failures that enabled the Bondi attack and the specific, implementable reforms those failures require. Matters bearing on the other terms of reference — data methodology, the lawfare pattern, constitutional analysis, the conflation dynamic, the IHRA definition, legislative proportionality, social cohesion, and foreign influence — are addressed in the final submission, which should be read together with this document.

8. The Letters Patent require that the Commission's inquiry must not prejudice any future criminal proceedings relating to the Bondi attack. The Commissioner reiterated this constraint at the opening hearing. This submission draws exclusively on material already in the public domain — court judgments, published sentencing remarks, Senate Estimates testimony, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) public statements, and media reporting. It does not purport to address matters that may be the subject of ongoing investigation or prosecution.

9. Senior Counsel Assisting noted at the opening hearing that "the process of document production by some recipients of notices is not presently where we would like it to be," and that delays associated with public interest immunity, statutory non-disclosure provisions, and legal professional privilege have constrained the Commission's access to classified material. On 12 March 2026, Commissioner Bell announced that Dennis Richardson AC has resigned as Special Adviser to the Commission. The senior members of his team — Tony Sheehan, former Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator and Deputy Director-General of ASIO, and Peter Baxter, former Deputy Secretary at the Department of Defence and Director-General of AusAID — will remain with the Commission to support preparation of the Interim Report. This submission addresses a different gap: it presents the public-record evidence of remediable system failures. That evidence is available now. It supports recommendations the interim report can make without awaiting the conclusion of the classified review.

Summary of Recommended Findings

The following table synthesises the submitted findings of fact and inference throughout this submission, cross-referenced to the supporting evidence and paragraph numbers. The Commission is respectfully invited to adopt these findings on the basis of the publicly available material cited.

Section 1: The Bondi Attack

Terms of Reference 3 (Bondi) and 1 (drivers of antisemitism)

1.1 The Radicalisation Pipeline — Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre

This section documents the radicalisation pipeline that produced the Bondi attack, centred on Wissam Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown. The evidence establishes that Haddad built an infrastructure that functioned as a radicalisation pipeline producing multiple terrorism convictions; that his antisemitism was personal editorialising, not mainstream Islamic teaching; that his network comprised at least 28 identified individuals including 11 convicted terrorism offenders; and that the attacker, Naveed Akram, was recruited into this network at age 17. The section then traces the intelligence and institutional failures, the facilitation chain connecting the network to the Philippines, and the surveillance gap that allowed the attack to proceed undetected.

10. The organisation referred to throughout this submission as "ISIS" (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) requires brief context, as its ideology is central to the Bondi attackers' radicalisation. ISIS split from al-Qaeda in 2014, declared a worldwide caliphate, and at its territorial peak controlled approximately 100,000 square kilometres. Its last significant territory fell in March 2019. It now operates through decentralised sleeper cells and affiliated "provinces" (wilayat) across Africa, South-East Asia, and the Middle East. ISIS follows Salafi-jihadist ideology — a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam combined with the doctrine of violent jihad. The concept of takfir (excommunicating other Muslims as apostates) is central to its theology and distinguishes it from virtually all mainstream Islamic scholarship.³

11. ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah are ideologically distinct, and in many respects adversarial organisations. ISIS pursues a global theocracy with no national borders; Hamas is an Islamist-nationalist movement focused on Palestinian statehood; Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist organisation aligned with Iran. ISIS declared takfir on Hamas and has perpetrated violence against Palestinian refugees. The conflation of these organisations — and by extension, the conflation of pro-Palestinian protest with ISIS-inspired terrorism — collapses distinctions fundamental to any serious threat assessment.⁴

12. ISIS operated a sophisticated multi-platform propaganda apparatus — including Dabiq magazine, the Al-Hayat Media Centre, and Amaq News Agency — that functioned as its primary recruitment tool. This machinery is relevant because the AMDC's own media operation was a local adaptation of the ISIS propaganda model, scaled to a suburban Sydney mosque.⁵

13. The Al Madina Dawah Centre operated from 54 Kitchener Parade, Bankstown — an industrial building converted into a prayer space, with three hundred to four hundred attending Friday prayers. The founder, Wissam Haddad, built an infrastructure that functioned simultaneously as mosque, community centre, and radicalisation pipeline.⁶

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of the Haddad Affidavit (NSD 1503/2024) and convictions in R v El Matari [2021] NSWSC 1260 and R v Uweinat [2021] NSWSC 1256, that the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown functioned simultaneously as mosque, community centre, and radicalisation pipeline, and that its founder Wissam Haddad built an infrastructure that produced multiple individuals convicted of terrorism offences. (ToR 3, ToR 1)

14. The Federal Court case Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720 documented the content of Haddad's teaching. The judgment found the Al Madina Dawah Centre promoted "antisemitic views" and "extremist ideology," identifying twenty-five separate antisemitic imputations.⁷ ASIO identified Haddad as "the most important jihadist, extremist preacher in Sydney."⁸ In January 2015, police raided Haddad's home and reportedly found an ISIS flag, ISIS DVDs, a machete, tasers, capsicum spray, and newspaper clippings about counter-terrorism operations. Haddad received a good behaviour bond for possessing three prohibited weapons — two tasers and capsicum spray. He was not charged with any terrorism-related offence. The centre remained open.⁹ In one 2023 post, Haddad declared:

"We hate the disbelievers. The sword is the only weapon to deal with such people."

15. A critical finding of the Wertheim proceedings is that Haddad's antisemitism did not represent mainstream Islamic teaching. Professor Gabriel Reynolds (University of Notre Dame, CEO of the International Qur'anic Studies Association) provided expert evidence that Haddad's Quranic quotations are "generally accurate" but "often selective in a way that produces a maximally anti-Jewish presentation," and that his generalisations connecting ancient Jewish tribes to modern Jews are "not consistent with the Qur'an or the hadith."¹⁰ Haddad's additions are his own invention. The antisemitic content was personal editorialising grafted onto religious texts, not mainstream Islamic teaching. Haddad also explicitly rejected the distinction between Zionism and Judaism, referring to "the Jews" 169 times without qualification — establishing that the ideology underlying the attack was antisemitic, not anti-Zionist.

16. During the years Naveed Akram was frequenting the centre, it operated freely.

17. Haddad's own sworn affidavit confirmed he studied under Dr Bilal Phillips and completed studies of "Al wala wal barra" — "Loyalty and Disavowal" — a concept foundational to Salafi-jihadi ideology. He was unaccredited at the time of the speeches the court found unlawful; his sole formal accreditation — an "Ejeza" obtained through Sheikh Ibrahim Barakat in Lebanon — was awarded in June 2024, seven months after those speeches. The accreditation chain traces to Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism.¹¹

18. Haddad's affidavit confirms he taught youth classes of "15 youth members between the ages of 12 to 21," later "approximately 20 male youth members."¹² Weekly lessons covered Islamic scripture and ideology. In November 2023, he delivered a lecture series called "The Jews of Al Madina,"¹³ quoting the hadith:

"The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, O Muslim! there is a Jew behind me; kill him!"

19. The centre's reach extended well beyond its Friday congregation. AMDC operated a Saturday school for children in Grades K–6,¹⁴ engaged a paid content design team in Indonesia to produce material for its platforms,¹⁵ and ran a "#StayMuslimDontVote" campaign promoting the position that democratic participation constitutes shirk.¹⁶ Haddad's public declaration: "prime ministers are false gods; we should not join and not vote."

20. The provocation was deliberate and media-literate. Cross-examination in Wertheim revealed a cycle: inflammatory content, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) TV amplification, mainstream media coverage, then social media leverage. Haddad's response to media reporting on his antisemitic sermon: "But since this hadith angered you, I want to increase this anger by quoting more scripture."¹⁷ He admitted he was "entirely unconcerned by the offence" he caused.¹⁸ He maintained contact with ISIS fighters Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar in Syria, showing a journalist footage of them executing prisoners in 2016.¹⁹

21. The Street Dawah network was Haddad's mobile proselytising operation. A van bearing the centre's branding transported young men to locations across Sydney where they engaged passersby in religious conversation and recorded video for online distribution. The operation presented as earnest religious outreach. Its function, as established in subsequent terrorism prosecutions, was recruitment. Court documents from four separate terrorism prosecutions explicitly identify street dawah as the radicalisation vector.²⁰

22. Federal Court filings in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720 identify the individual known as "Brother Ye Ye" or "Mr Ye" as Yahya Ye — a committee member of AMDC Inc responsible for media, a joint bank account signatory alongside Haddad and Enver Neziroski, and co-founder of The Dawah Van Incorporated with Haddad in 2022.²¹ Post-attack reporting confirmed that Yahya Ye recruited the then-17-year-old Naveed Akram into the AMDC orbit and introduced him to Bankstown Street Dawah, where he encountered members of the El Matari cell. Ye has never been charged with any offence.

23. Post-attack CNN reporting identified Naveed Akram in 2019-era Street Dawah videos. One showed him outside a Sydney train station, urging passersby to embrace Islam. Another captured him telling two young boys that "the law of Allah" was "more important than anything else." Post-attack reporting citing senior officials stated Akram was "a street preacher for Mr Haddad's Dawah Van." He was seventeen at the time.²²

24. Isaac El Matari styled himself "IS Commander Australia." R v El Matari [2021] NSWSC 1260 documents his vision: a militant cell in rural Australia modelled on ISIS operations in the Philippines. Surveillance captured him stating:

"So that the brothers would start a STATE out in the bush here like the boys in Marawi did."²³

25. The connections between Naveed Akram and the Al Madina Dawah Centre network are documented through multiple independent sources. ABC News, citing counterterrorism officials, reported that Akram and El Matari were "close" and that ASIO's October 2019 investigation was triggered by El Matari's arrest in July 2019.²⁴ Counterterrorism officials separately confirmed to TIME magazine that the ASIO investigation "identified his links to Wisam Haddad." Prime Minister Albanese confirmed the investigation was opened because Akram was "associated with others" and was "accessing extremist material online; speaking with other radicalised men." No court cases name Akram, but three independent categories of sources confirm his connections to the network: government statements, intelligence source reporting, and media investigations.

26. Youssef Uweinat was recruited at fourteen by street preachers the court described as "well-known to national security authorities."²⁵ By the time of his arrest, he was an ISIS recruiter himself. He served as a youth leader at the Al Madina Dawah Centre during the period Naveed Akram attended. ABC News confirmed Akram's "association with" Uweinat.

27. The centre functioned as connective tissue for a network that produced multiple terrorism convictions. El Matari, Uweinat, Khaled Sharrouf, Mohamed Elomar, and Mostafa Mahamed Farag all attended the same centres and were present at the same Friday prayers.²⁶ Another preacher who lectured at the centre's predecessor, Al Risalah, was Abu Sulayman (Mahamed Farag) — described as "one of Australia's highest-ranking al-Qa'ida terrorists in Syria."²⁷ The 2019 ASIO investigation confirmed Akram was connected to at least three members of the network.

28. A comprehensive network map identifying at least 28 individuals — including 11 convicted terrorism offenders, multiple control order subjects, and international connections extending to a UN-sanctioned ISIS figure — is set out in the Appendix, drawn from sentencing judgments, control order proceedings, and Federal Court filings.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of sentencing judgments in R v El Matari [2021] NSWSC 1260, R v Uweinat [2021] NSWSC 1256, R v Lawrence [2023] NSWSC 1428, and CDPP v Saadieh [2021] NSWCCA 232; control order proceedings in Booth v Dakkak [2020] FCA 1882 and Attorney-General v Amin [2023] NSWSC 1280; Federal Court filings in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720; and Senate Estimates testimony of Senator Cash (February 2024), that the Al Madina Dawah Centre network comprised at least 28 identified individuals including 11 convicted terrorism offenders, multiple control order subjects, uncharged associates, and international connections extending to a UN-sanctioned ISIS figure in Kenya and ISIS-affiliated groups in the Philippines. The Commission should further find that three additional prohibited contact lists — Saadieh (34 names, suppressed), Amin (31 names), and the balance of the Dakkak schedule — contain further network members whose identities and current activities are unknown. (ToR 3, ToR 2)

29. Following the territorial collapse of its caliphate by 2019, ISIS adapted its strategy: followers who could not migrate to the caliphate were directed to conduct attacks in their home countries. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD Global) tracked 26 ISIS-linked attacks across 29 countries between January 2024 and December 2025, of which 11 (42.3%) targeted Jews or Israelis. Eighty-four disrupted plots were identified, of which 27 (32.1%) targeted Jewish institutions.²⁸ The escalation of ISIS's anti-Jewish targeting guidance after October 7, 2023, followed a documented sequence:

• October 2023: al-Naba published "Practical Steps to Fight the Jews," calling for attacks on synagogues, Jewish neighbourhoods, and embassies. A separate infographic instructed followers that "the battle with the Jews is purely religious and ideological, not patriotic or nationalistic."
• December 2023: Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP)'s Voice of Khurasan (Issue 31) published "The Nation Deserving Holocaust the Most," accompanied by an infographic providing methods of targeting Jewish people for violence.
• January 2024: ISIS spokesman Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari released a 34-minute audio message titled "And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them" — the organisation's first global attack call since 2022 — directing followers to target synagogues, Jewish gatherings, and Israeli diplomatic missions. In the same month, ISKP's Voice of Khurasan (Issue 32) published a written article by al-Ansari advocating "all-out religious war against Jews" with tactical instructions including bombings, stabbings, shootings, and vehicle attacks. The coordinated audio and written publication indicates a deliberate multi-platform campaign.
• 2024–2025: Encrypted Telegram channels circulated low-tech attack strategies targeting synagogues and religious gatherings, timed to coincide with religious festivals.
• 18 December 2025: Four days after Bondi, al-Naba (Issue 526) published "The Pride of Sydney," praising the Akrams as "heroes" and "lions" who had "answered the call and carried out the recommendations to target holidays and gatherings," and specifically named Belgium as a target.²⁹

30. The Bondi attack on 14 December 2025 targeted a Hanukkah celebration — a Jewish religious festival — consistent with the targeting guidance ISIS had published over the preceding two years. Joshua Roose, in an RSIS Commentary published 9 February 2026, described the attack as "ISIS-inspired antisemitic terrorism" that "exposed legislative and security gaps, failures in threat assessment and protective security, and political inaction amid escalating antisemitism."²⁸ The failure to distinguish ISIS from the Palestinian solidarity movement misdirected the policy response.³⁰ ISIS's post-October 7 response was not to support the Palestinian cause but to redirect its followers toward attacking Jews globally. The Bondi attack was committed by a man radicalised through an ISIS-aligned network, motivated by ISIS-specific theology, following ISIS-published targeting guidance. The legislation passed after the attack does not address any of these.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of the ASIO investigation timeline (October 2019), the AFP statement of 22 December 2025, and the comprehensive search of all 19 documents filed in Wertheim v Haddad (finding no protest attendance references), that the evidence does not support a causal link between the pro-Palestinian protest movement and the radicalisation of the Bondi attackers. Naveed Akram was identified by ASIO in 2019, four years before the Opera House protests and five years before university encampments. The AMDC operated through mosque-based indoctrination and personal recruitment, not through street protest. (ToR 1, ToR 3)

1.2 Intelligence and Institutional Failures in Relation to Haddad

The relevance of Haddad to the Bondi attack is not simply that he preached antisemitic hatred. It is that he operated the infrastructure — the centre, the street dawah, the youth classes — through which the Akrams entered the radicalisation pipeline. Each failure to act against Haddad was a missed opportunity to disrupt that infrastructure before Naveed Akram was recruited into it at age 17, and to maintain visibility over his continued involvement with the network after ASIO closed its investigation in April 2020. The failures documented below are not historical curiosities. They are the specific points at which intervention would have disrupted the pathway to the Bondi attack.

31. ASIO infiltrated Haddad's network for six years through an undercover agent codenamed "Marcus." In April 2025, Marcus broke his cover on ABC Four Corners, describing the centre as "feeling like an ISIL camp." He stated he "repeatedly warned the agency that Haddad was indoctrinating young people." He confirmed Haddad called ISIS "the brothers" and the black flag "the flag of the Muslims."³¹ Marcus explained Haddad's model: he was attempting to "copy Choudary's experience into the Australian community" — a reference to Anjem Choudary, the British extremist whose network radicalised dozens of terrorists.³²

32. When ABC confronted Haddad with the allegations, he responded:

"If I am a leader of violent extremism, why is it that people on the grapevine are saying these words, but law enforcement don't have the same information?"³³

He denied membership of al-Muhajiroun but called its founder Omar Bakri and Choudary "brothers in Islam" and "people who are going through a struggle for speaking the truth."

33. The outcome: Haddad was never charged. The centre remained open. The street dawah operations continued uninterrupted. It was through those operations that Yahya Ye recruited the seventeen-year-old Naveed Akram into the network.

34. The institutional failure extended beyond intelligence. The existing criminal law provided multiple avenues to address Haddad's conduct, and none were used. It is anticipated that the response will be that intelligence agencies could not use their information for prosecution because it would disclose sources and methods. That response does not withstand scrutiny: the publicly available evidence alone — court judgments, Haddad's own sworn affidavit, his social media posts, and media reporting — matches the elements of at least three criminal provisions without requiring disclosure of any classified material.

35. Section 93Z of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) criminalises public threats or incitement of violence on grounds of race or religion. Haddad publicly quoted the hadith "O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me; kill him" and stated "the sword is the only weapon to deal with such people" — statements directed at a religious group and available on public social media platforms. Section 93Z has produced no sustained convictions since its introduction in 2018: two convictions were annulled because police commenced prosecutions without the required Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) consent, and a third was quashed on appeal.³⁴

36. Division 80 of the Criminal Code (Cth) criminalises urging violence against groups distinguished by race or religion, carrying a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment. Haddad's statements urging that Jews should be dealt with by "the sword" and his promotion of content celebrating violence against Jewish people were publicly available. The AFP referred one of the sermons to an anti-terror squad; no charges followed under any provision.

37. Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), under which the private Wertheim proceedings were eventually brought, had been available since 1995. It took a private applicant — not the state — to use this provision, and the Federal Court found 25 antisemitic imputations. The conduct was unlawful under existing law; the failure was that no public authority acted.

38. The state had at least three separate legal instruments capable of addressing Haddad's conduct and used none of them. Every element of every offence identified above could have been established from publicly available material — Haddad's own affidavit, his social media posts, media reporting, and the Wertheim court record. The sources-and-methods justification for inaction does not explain why publicly available evidence was not prosecuted using publicly available legal tools.³⁵ Had any of these provisions been invoked, the resulting investigation and prosecution would have mapped the network's membership and activities — including the involvement of Naveed Akram, whom ASIO had already identified as connected to Haddad, El Matari, and Uweinat. Disrupting the hub would have exposed the spokes.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find that at least three separate legal instruments existed to address Haddad's conduct — section 93Z of the NSW Crimes Act, Division 80 of the Criminal Code (Cth), and section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act — and that none were used by any law enforcement or prosecutorial authority; and further that the elements of each offence could have been established from publicly available material without requiring disclosure of classified intelligence. (ToR 2)

39. ASIO investigated Naveed Akram from October 2019 to April 2020. Prime Minister Albanese confirmed the investigation was opened because Akram was "associated with others" — specifically, his connections to El Matari, Uweinat, and Haddad. The investigation found he was "accessing extremist material online" and "speaking with other radicalised men." It concluded there was "no indication of any ongoing threat." Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stated: "More than half a decade ago, it was not the case that he had the motivation or the ideology where horrifically we saw him end up half a decade later." Akram was never placed on a terrorism watchlist. From that point until the attack — six years — there is "no indication he came under the attention of authorities at any point."³⁶

40. The strategic context of ASIO's decision to close the Akram investigation warrants examination. In his March 2021 Annual Threat Assessment, Director-General Burgess disclosed that minors had surged from "around two to three per cent" to "closer to 15 per cent" of new counter-terrorism investigations, and that "the age of the minors being radicalised is getting lower." ASIO pivoted toward youth radicalisation as a strategic priority — a pivot that by 2024 saw minors comprising approximately 20 per cent of priority counter-terrorism cases, with the youngest subject aged 12. Akram fell between the two phases of this strategic shift. He was recruited into the AMDC network at 17 — a minor — through exactly the kind of youth radicalisation pathway ASIO would later identify as its highest priority. But by the time ASIO investigated him in October 2019, he was 19 — no longer a minor, and assessed through an adult threat framework that found "no indication of any ongoing threat." By the time ASIO formally pivoted to youth radicalisation in 2021, Akram was 21 and had been cleared for over a year. He had aged out of the cohort ASIO was pivoting toward, and had already exited the adult surveillance pipeline. The system designed to catch youth radicalisation did not yet exist when he was radicalised as a youth; the system that investigated him as an adult was not designed to track the dormant radicalisation of former minors.

41. The timeline also warrants emphasis on a separate point. ASIO identified Akram's connections to the ISIS network in October 2019 — four years before the Opera House protests, six years before Australia formally recognised the State of Palestine on 21 September 2025. His radicalisation was not the product of the Palestinian solidarity movement. It was the product of a documented network with documented links to ISIS, operating from a documented centre that ASIO itself had infiltrated for six years.

42. In November 2022, ASIO Director-General Burgess lowered the terrorism threat level from PROBABLE to POSSIBLE — the first reduction since September 2014. "Dissipated, not disappeared."³⁷ In his February 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, he stated the Middle East conflict "did not directly inspire terrorism here."³⁸ After Bondi, he acknowledged: "One of these individuals was known to us, but not in an immediate-threat perspective." The threat-level downgrade and deprioritisation of Islamic extremism proved directly wrong — a Salafi-jihadist network ASIO had identified in 2019 carried out the worst terrorist attack in Australian history.

43. The consequences of the strategic pivot were operational. The Nightly reported that an AFP national surveillance team under the Counter-Terrorism Special Investigations Command, mandated to monitor High Risk Terrorist Offenders released into the community, was disbanded weeks before the Bondi attack due to funding shortfalls.³⁹ The team responsible for monitoring released terrorists was defunded. A released terrorist's associate then attacked Bondi Beach.

44. The same month Burgess declared the threat "dissipated," Uweinat was released from prison. No ankle bracelet. No curfew. No banned contacts. The government's supervision application had been filed six days before his release. It failed. The expert who assessed Uweinat had warned his beliefs "could re-emerge" if he was "reunited with his former network." Within weeks, he was back at Haddad's centre. By August 2025, he was standing on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a protest of approximately 90,000 people, waving the black shahada flag. Haddad was beside him. This was approximately three months before the Akrams flew to the Philippines.⁴⁰

45. The Continuing Detention Order regime — enacted under Division 105A of the Criminal Code for high-risk terrorism offenders — has been systematically underutilised. No publicly reported CDO application has been made since Attorney-General Dreyfus took office, although non-publication orders may conceal applications the Commission is in a position to verify.⁴¹ The risk assessment tool used in CDO proceedings, VERA-2R, was found by a government-commissioned report to perform no better than chance, a finding suppressed for more than two years.^{42 43} The CDO failures are examined in detail in Section 3.2 below.

46. El Matari's incarceration at the High Risk Management Correctional Centre did not contain his influence. In September 2019, police found a three-page letter he had written to fellow inmate Tukiterangi Lawrence — a New Zealand-born convert convicted of terrorism offences — laying out operational doctrine:

"A small enclosed battalion to exploit the exposed landscape, taking to remote regional areas to plan the orchestration of attacks."⁴⁴

47. Lawrence described El Matari's letter as "beautiful" and endorsed the insurgency plans. The sentencing remarks of R v Lawrence [2023] NSWSC 1428 record that the correspondence demonstrated a shared commitment to violent action, not merely shared ideology.⁴⁴ The prison letter network extended further. In May 2020, three letters from El Matari were seized from Uweinat's cell — addressed not to Uweinat's legal name but to his jihadi name: "Abu Musa al-Maqdisi." El Matari was not on Uweinat's approved association list. The letters penetrated Goulburn's Supermax facility regardless — a failure of the prison communications monitoring system at Australia's highest-security correctional centre.⁴⁵ El Matari also wrote to Joseph Saadieh, a member of the same network who had participated in Street Dawah alongside Uweinat and was later charged with IS membership. On Saadieh's devices, police found 26 explosive-related files — including instructions for constructing improvised explosive devices — that Joint Counter-Terrorism Team expert analysis confirmed were "generally viable." These files were in the possession of a person directly connected to El Matari four years before the Bondi attackers built five pipe bombs.⁴⁶

48. Sajid Akram applied for a firearms licence in 2020 — one year after his son came to ASIO's attention. Despite a 2.5-year processing delay, it was granted in 2023. By the time of the attack, he possessed six high-powered firearms. Under NSW law, association with someone on a terrorism watchlist should be grounds for denial. No cross-check between ASIO's records and the firearms registry occurred. In October 2025 — before the Philippines trip — police video shows father and son conducting firearms training at a rural NSW property near Goulburn.⁴⁷

49. From 1-28 November 2025, father and son travelled to Davao City in Mindanao, a region associated with ISIS-affiliated groups.⁵⁰ A month-long trip to a known terrorism hotspot triggered no intelligence alerts. Three weeks after returning, on 14 December 2025, they attacked a Hanukkah celebration at Archer Park near Bondi Beach. Eighty-three shots were fired from four firearms over approximately twelve minutes, with 57 magazine changes during the attack. The five IEDs — homemade pipe bombs — failed to detonate. Fifteen people were killed, including a ten-year-old girl, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, a retired police officer, and a pregnant woman. It was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil and the second-deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history after Port Arthur.⁴⁸

1.3 The Facilitation Chain

The following section traces the documented connections between the AMDC network and the Bondi attack — the facilitation chain through which doctrine, contacts, and capability were transmitted from convicted network members to the Akrams.

50. The AFP stated on 22 December 2025 that "there is no evidence to suggest these alleged offenders were part of a broader terrorist cell, or were directed by others to carry out an attack."⁴⁹ It is submitted that this assessment warrants scrutiny.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — particularly where the surveillance systems that would have detected network involvement had been dismantled or never established. The AFP surveillance team for released terrorism offenders was disbanded weeks before the attack. No control order was in place on Uweinat, meaning three years of his communications went unmonitored. Haddad — the network hub — was never charged, never subject to a control order, and never placed under any monitoring regime despite ASIO identifying him as the most important jihadist preacher in Sydney. The claim that the Akrams acted alone must be assessed against the reality that the agencies making that claim had no surveillance in place capable of detecting the connections this submission documents.

51. In fact, the documented evidence discloses a facilitation chain connecting the Akrams to the network. Akram was recruited by Yahya Ye at 17 and connected by ASIO in 2019 to El Matari, Uweinat, and Haddad. El Matari provided the doctrine and Philippines contacts — his surveillance transcripts celebrated "the brothers in the Philippines." Uweinat, Akram's youth leader at AMDC, distributed Philippines-specific ISIS content after release. Saadieh possessed 26 viable IED files four years before the Akrams built five pipe bombs. The Akrams then travelled to the Philippines — the exact region El Matari's doctrine celebrated and that multiple control orders in the network specifically prohibited — and returned with IED capability. Alqudsi's control order explicitly banned Philippine contacts; the Cerantonio case confirmed a plan to travel to the southern Philippines to engage with Islamist militant groups.⁵¹

The proposition that the Akrams independently conceived, planned, and executed the attack without any facilitation from this network is one the Commission should test rigorously.

52. The Philippines trip requires particular scrutiny. Before November 2025, there is no public evidence that either Akram possessed IED capability. Three weeks after returning from 28 days in Mindanao — the operating territory of designated terrorist organisations, a region repeatedly celebrated in El Matari's surveillance transcripts, and a destination specifically prohibited in multiple control orders imposed on members of the same network — they attacked with five pipe bombs. The inference that IED capability was acquired or developed during that trip is strong. The reason it cannot be confirmed is that every system capable of detecting coordination had been dismantled or never established (paragraphs 50 and 56). The evidence does not prove coordination. It establishes that the instruments which would have detected it were not operating.

1.4 Philippine Military Operations: Matters Requiring Investigation

53. Two additional facts concerning Philippine military operations during the Akrams' visit are placed before the Commission. No causal connection is asserted by the writer; the coincidence of timing, given the documented network connections to the Philippines, warrants examination by authorities with access to classified intelligence.

54. The Akrams originally booked flights to arrive on 14 November 2025 but changed the booking to 1 November. On 14–15 November — the exact dates originally scheduled — Philippine forces killed Najib Laguindab (alias Abu Jihad), sub-leader of the Dawlah Islamiyah-Maute Group, responsible for the July 2023 MSU bombing.^50A

55. On 7 December 2025 — one week before Bondi — Philippine forces killed Mohammad Usman Solaiman, Amir and bomb expert of the Dawlah Islamiyah-Hassan Group, nephew of notorious explosives manufacturer Basit Usman (BIFF-SOG/Abu Sayyaf/Jemaah Islamiyah connections), responsible for multiple Mindanao bombings between 2022 and 2023.^50B The Akrams attacked seven days later with five IEDs assessed as "viable" but which failed to detonate. The Commission should examine whether any connection existed between the Akrams and Solaiman's network, and whether the change of travel dates reflected foreknowledge of deteriorating security conditions.

1.5 The Surveillance Gap

56. Without a control order, no one monitored Uweinat's communications after his release in November 2022. Whether he passed along Philippine contacts from El Matari's network, or made introductions for Akram, is unknown — and unknowable, because the systems that would have answered these questions did not exist. Had Uweinat been subject to a control order with standard telecommunications monitoring, any contact with Akram would have been detected. Had Haddad been subject to surveillance following the 2015 raid, his continued role as the network's connective hub would have been visible. Had the AFP surveillance team not been disbanded, released offenders returning to Haddad's centre would have been observed. Three years of unmonitored communications — the direct consequence of a CDO application filed six days late — is not merely a procedural failure. It is the gap through which the facilitation chain operated undetected.

57. The full extent of the network has never been publicly mapped. The Saadieh bail conditions (September 2021) prohibit contact with 34 named individuals — court-suppressed.⁵² The Dakkak control order (Booth v Dakkak [2020] FCA 1882) lists 11 prohibited contacts including El Matari, Haddad, Uweinat, Saadieh, and a UN-sanctioned Kenyan ISIS figure.⁵³ Three further individuals on the Dakkak list — including Hozan Alou (born 1999, the same generation as Akram) — have no public information attached to them. These lists, if disclosed to the Commission, would provide the most comprehensive map of the network available from any single court document.

58. On 23 December 2025, the Sydney Morning Herald reported what investigators had said privately for years: Haddad was "a good intel source."⁵⁴ If accurate, a calculation was made that his intelligence value outweighed his danger as a radicaliser. Whether police protection of an asset enabled a massacre is a question this Commission must address.

Section 2: The "Political Environment" Narrative

59. A central contention in much mainstream public discourse is that pro-Palestinian protests created an "environment" contributing to the attack. The evidence does not support this.

The AMDC radicalisation network operated through mosque-based indoctrination and personal recruitment, not through street protest. ASIO identified Akram's connections to the ISIS network in October 2019 — four years before the Opera House protests, five years before university encampments. A comprehensive search of all 19 documents filed in Wertheim v Haddad found no reference to Haddad or any of his associates attending rallies, protests, marches, or demonstrations, with the single exception of the August 2025 Harbour Bridge march where Uweinat — already radicalised for over a decade — was photographed.⁵⁵ The AFP stated there is "no evidence" the attackers were part of a broader cell.⁴⁹ The ASIO Director-General stated that "none of the terrorism threats investigated since October had been inspired by Gaza."⁵⁶ Deputy Commissioner Hudson confirmed that "none of the individuals we have arrested have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology."⁵⁷ The most serious post-October 7 attacks on Jewish targets — the Lewis Continental Kitchen arson and the Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing — were directed by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) using criminal proxies who held no antisemitic ideology.⁵⁶ The correct threat vector was the Al Madina Dawah Centre network — a specific, identifiable radicalisation pipeline operating through a centre ASIO itself had infiltrated for six years. The final submission addresses the environment narrative in full.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of a comprehensive search of all 19 documents filed in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, together with the AFP's statement that there was "no evidence" the attackers were part of a broader cell and the ASIO Director-General's statement that "none of the terrorism threats investigated since October had been inspired by Gaza," that the evidence does not support the contention that the protest movement contributed to the Bondi attack. The correct threat vector was the Al Madina Dawah Centre radicalisation network. (ToR 1, ToR 2, ToR 3)

Section 3: Proposed Security Fixes

Terms of Reference 2 (law enforcement) and 3 (Bondi)

60. The Commissioner noted at the opening hearing that delays in obtaining and assessing material may mean that some evidence concerning the adequacy of security arrangements and intelligence agency effectiveness will form part of the final report rather than the interim report. In those circumstances, the proposals below are based on the public record alone but, it is submitted, are no less compelling for that. The proposals are a response to systemic failures apparent from court judgments, Senate Estimates testimony, and published reporting. If the classified material reveals additional failures, the case for reform is stronger, not weaker.

61. To summarise again: The Bondi attack was enabled by specific, identifiable, fixable failures in the systems designed to prevent it. None of those failures would have been addressed by restrictions on political speech.

3.1 Database Integration

62. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the central question:

"Why when ASIO had identified Naveed Akram in 2019, was his father allowed to keep six guns? Are databases talking to each other?"⁵⁸

63. They were not. ASIO's records, the NSW Firearms Registry, and Border Force travel monitoring operate as separate systems with no automatic cross-referencing.

64. It is submitted that if a person is flagged by ASIO, that flag should automatically appear when any member of their household applies for a firearms licence. If a firearms licence holder or their immediate family member travels to a terrorism-linked region, that should trigger automatic review. These are database queries. They require no new legislation. They require the existing systems to communicate.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of former Prime Minister Turnbull's public statement and the operational evidence set out in Section 1, that ASIO records, the NSW Firearms Registry, and Border Force travel monitoring operate as separate systems with no automatic cross-referencing, and that this separation directly enabled the Bondi attack: ASIO identified Akram in 2019, his father obtained six firearms in 2023, and the family travelled to Mindanao in 2025, all without triggering intelligence alerts. (ToR 2, ToR 3)

65. The financial intelligence gap is similarly significant. Sajid Akram transferred the family property — purchased for $700,000 — into his wife's name at a stated value of $477,500 approximately 22 months before the attack, then moved between short-term rentals. The Akrams paid for 28 consecutive nights at a Davao hotel in cash without providing identification. Neither income source readily explains the cumulative cost of international travel, six firearms, bomb-making materials, and weeks of accommodation. No Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) investigation connected to the attack has been publicly disclosed.⁵⁹

3.2 Post-Release Supervision and Risk Assessment

66. Continuing Detention Orders were Parliament's answer to a specific problem: the management of convicted terrorists who have served their sentences but remain dangerous. Enacted under Division 105A of the Criminal Code in 2016⁶⁰, CDOs permit the Attorney-General to apply to detain high-risk terrorism offenders beyond their prison term, indefinitely if necessary, where there is an "unacceptable risk." No publicly reported CDO application has been made since Attorney-General Dreyfus took office — although it is possible that applications have been made subject to non-publication orders, a matter the Commission is in a position to verify.

67. Senator Michaelia Cash, then Shadow Attorney-General, identified the pattern at Senate Estimates in February 2024 — ten months before Bondi:

"For Mr Uweinat [the CDO application] was six days before the sentence expired and, in relation to Mr Cerantonio, Mr Benbrika and Mr Al Maouie, there was no application for a post-sentence order at all."⁶¹

68. Every release date was known years in advance. The Uweinat CDO application was filed six days before release and failed. For Cerantonio and Al Maouie, no application was made. The Benbrika case requires qualification: a CDO was obtained under the previous government (Minister for Home Affairs v Benbrika [2020] VSC 888), but upon its expiry the Commonwealth sought only an Extended Supervision Order (ESO) after its own expert assessed Benbrika as presenting a "moderate-low overall risk": Benbrika v Attorney-General (Cth) [2024] VSC 265 at [72]. Hollingworth J rejected the three-year ESO and imposed a 12-month ESO.^61A The institutional concern is that the Commonwealth's VERA-2R-based risk methodology led it to seek a lesser order than the Court considered appropriate.

69. The Department's explanation was that "when responsibility for doing the High Risk Terrorist Offenders (HRTO) work came across to the Attorney-General's Department, there was very limited resourcing and capability in that area."⁶¹ The failure was not in the legislative framework. Parliament created CDOs and funded them. The failure was in executive implementation. It is submitted that CDO assessments should commence no later than 12 months before any terrorism offender's scheduled release, with dedicated resourcing for preparation, expert engagement, and timely judicial review.

70. This failure is about to repeat itself. Isaac El Matari — the self-declared IS Commander of Australia, who plotted attacks from inside Supermax, maintained an active prison correspondence network with Uweinat, Lawrence, and Saadieh, and whose surveillance transcripts celebrated "the brothers in the Philippines" — has been parole-eligible since approximately January 2025. His maximum sentence expires approximately November 2026. The CDO legislative regime sunsets on 7 December 2026 — weeks after his potential release. Media reporting in January 2026 indicated the AFP was taking steps toward a CDO application, but no formal application has been publicly confirmed. The structural problem remains regardless: the CDO sunset date creates an unacceptable gap. If El Matari is released at sentence expiry without a CDO, and the regime expires weeks later, Australia will have lost the only legislative mechanism available for post-sentence supervision of a convicted terrorism plotter.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of the sentencing in R v El Matari [2021] NSWSC 1260 and the sunset clause in Division 105A of the Criminal Code, that Isaac El Matari's maximum sentence expires approximately November 2026 and the CDO legislative regime sunsets on 7 December 2026, creating an unacceptable gap in which the only legislative mechanism for post-sentence supervision may expire weeks after the most dangerous terrorism offender in the network becomes eligible for release. (ToR 2, ToR 3)

71. The risk assessment tool used in CDO proceedings — VERA-2R — was found by a report by Dr Emily Corner and Dr Helen Taylor (the Corner Report), commissioned by the Department of Home Affairs and provided to the department on 20 May 2020, to have predictive validity no better than chance.⁶² The then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton suppressed the Corner Report for more than two years. During those years, government lawyers presented VERA-2R assessments to courts as evidence in CDO proceedings while the tool's unreliability was known. The INSLM, Mr Grant Donaldson SC, concluded there was "no excuse" for not disclosing the report and that it was "shocking" that orders had been sought and made without parties knowing the Corner Report existed. Justice Hollingworth called the suppression "a disgrace" and "serious interference with the administration of justice."⁶²

72. The supervision regime has failed systematically. Radwan Dakkak, convicted of associating with a terrorist organisation, breached his interim control order within 16 days of release.⁶³ In November 2025, the Supreme Court imposed a significantly relaxed ESO on Mustapha, removing electronic monitoring, curfew, and association restrictions for an individual whose expert assessment found he "does not support democracy," "believes in violence, both in general terms and with respect to jihad," and "is supportive of Islamic State."⁶⁴ Tukiterangi Lawrence, despite catastrophic physical disability rendering him tetraplegic, maintained 123,822 extremist images and 1,192 videos while subject to an ESO and told assessors that police officers are "legitimate targets Islamically."⁶⁵

73. Research on Australian jihadist cases found fewer than 10% of offenders were assessed as genuinely contrite, and approximately 29% were judged to have good prospects for rehabilitation.⁶⁶ Uweinat told Justice Bellew under oath that he had "completely renounced" ISIS. The court accepted this and declined to impose a CDO. Within weeks of release, Uweinat returned to the Al Madina Dawah Centre — the same centre where he had been radicalised, the same preacher whose ideology led to his conviction.⁶⁷

74. The Uweinat case warrants particular attention because it exposes a structural defect in the framework. Justice Bellew was asked to determine whether a convicted ISIS recruiter had genuinely abandoned his ideology. The only tools available to assist that determination were: the offender's own sworn testimony — which proved false; a risk assessment instrument, VERA-2R — which had been found to perform no better than chance; and expert opinion informed by both. The court acted in good faith on the material before it. The problem is that the material was worthless. Uweinat had every incentive to lie, the assessment tool could not distinguish truth from deception, and no objective metric existed against which to test his claim. The consequence of this structural failure was not abstract: it produced a three-year gap in monitoring during which the facilitation chain documented in Section 1 operated undetected.

75. The pattern is not confined to Uweinat. Dakkak breached his control order within 16 days. Mustapha had his electronic monitoring, curfew, and association restrictions removed despite an expert finding he was "supportive of Islamic State." Lawrence maintained over 120,000 extremist files while subject to an ESO. Benbrika contacted Haddad within days of release. In every case, the system relied on a combination of subjective self-reporting, unreliable risk assessment, and judicial discretion applied to material that did not support reliable conclusions. The framework asks courts to answer a question — has this person genuinely deradicalised? — that the available evidence cannot answer.

76. It is submitted that the current discretionary framework should be supplemented by a regime of mandatory minimum post-release conditions triggered by the conviction itself, not by a subjective assessment of current risk. A person convicted of a specified terrorism offence under Division 101, 102, or 103 of the Criminal Code should, upon release, be subject to prescribed conditions for a prescribed period — including electronic monitoring, curfew, prohibited associations, and travel restrictions — without the need for a separate application, a VERA-2R assessment, or the offender's cooperation. The conditions would attach to the conviction as a matter of law, in the same way that registration attaches to qualifying sexual offences under existing state and federal schemes. This does not replace judicial oversight: an offender could apply for variation or removal of conditions after a specified period, bearing the onus of demonstrating that the conditions are no longer necessary. But the default would be supervision, not liberty. The current default — liberty unless the executive applies in time, proves ongoing risk using an unreliable tool, and persuades a court on the basis of the offender's own representations — has been tested. Fifteen people are dead.

77. The structural defect extends beyond the conditions themselves to the resourcing of their enforcement. The Nightly reported that an AFP national surveillance team responsible for monitoring released terrorism offenders was disbanded weeks before the Bondi attack due to funding shortfalls. The disbandment of this team — the only dedicated capability for tracking convicted terrorists after release — was an executive decision taken without legislative constraint. The current framework leaves the existence and resourcing of post-release monitoring entirely to administrative discretion: the executive may establish a surveillance team, or may not; may fund it, or may not; may disband it when budgets are tight, or may not. The Bondi attack demonstrated the consequence. It is submitted that the monitoring of released terrorism offenders should not be a function that the executive may choose to fund or defund according to budgetary convenience. The obligation to maintain a dedicated post-release monitoring capability for persons convicted of terrorism offences should be imposed by statute, in the same way that the obligation to maintain a sex offender register is imposed by statute. A legislative mandate removes the possibility that a future budget cycle will again leave convicted terrorists unmonitored. The AFP surveillance team was not cut because monitoring released terrorists was assessed as unnecessary. It was cut because nothing in law required it to exist.

3.3 Network Disruption

78. Haddad appears on every control order examined — Dakkak, Biber, Church, Amin. Released extremists are forbidden from contacting him, yet he remained free to receive them.⁶⁸ When Abdul Nacer Benbrika was released in December 2023, AFP surveillance documented his communications with Haddad within days. They met in person.⁶⁹

79. In April 2021, police conducting routine supervision checks on Moudasser Taleb — a convicted ISIS supporter from the AMDC network sentenced in 2018 for advocating terrorism — discovered him in possession of an illegally modified sawn-off shotgun while subject to an Extended Supervision Order.⁷⁰

80. Haddad functioned as a hub. The asset-value calculation that apparently protected him from prosecution should be reassessed in light of the Bondi attack. Whatever intelligence he provided, the cost of leaving the radicalisation infrastructure intact must be weighed against fifteen deaths.

81. The prison communications failure is particularly grave. Isaac El Matari was held at the High Risk Management Correctional Centre at Goulburn — Australia's highest-security facility, designed specifically to contain the most dangerous inmates. From inside Supermax, El Matari maintained an active correspondence network. He wrote to Lawrence laying out operational doctrine for an insurgency; Lawrence called it a "beautiful letter." Three letters from El Matari were seized from Uweinat's cell — addressed to Uweinat's jihadi name — despite El Matari not being on Uweinat's approved association list. In the Lawrence correspondence, El Matari offered access to weaponry suppliers — including explosives and suicide vests — and false document suppliers, all from inside the country's most secure prison.⁷¹ These communications were discovered only during routine searches.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of the sentencing remarks in R v Lawrence [2023] NSWSC 1428 and R v El Matari [2021] NSWSC 1260, that the self-declared IS Commander of Australia maintained an active correspondence network from inside the country's most secure prison — communicating operational doctrine, offering access to weaponry suppliers including explosives and suicide vests, and reaching inmates not on his approved association list — and that this was only discovered during routine searches. (ToR 2, ToR 3)

3.4 Travel Monitoring

82. The Akrams spent 28 days in Mindanao. El Matari's doctrine celebrated the Philippines. Dakkak's control order explicitly banned Philippine contacts. Uweinat distributed Mindanao-specific ISIS content after release. Multiple members of the same network had documented connections to the Philippines — connections courts recognised as serious enough to prohibit.

83. The legal framework already existed to address this. On 12 September 2023, the Governor-General designated Islamic State East Asia as a terrorist organisation under subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code, listing 17 aliases including Dawlah Islamiyah-Torayfie Group — the faction operating in Davao, where the Akrams spent 28 days. The Maute Group, which El Matari explicitly cited as his model, is also designated. Any contact between the Akrams and members of these groups constituted a criminal offence.⁷² The designation was current. The travel was to the designated group's territory. The existing legal framework should have identified this. It did not, because the databases that would have connected a known associate of a convicted ISIS network to travel in a designated terrorist organisation's operating area do not communicate with each other.

84. It is submitted that an Australian citizen spending a month in a region with active ISIS-affiliated groups should trigger an automatic intelligence review, particularly where that citizen has any recorded association with known terrorism networks. This is not mass surveillance; it is targeted monitoring of specific travel patterns that match documented radicalisation pathways.

3.5 The Encrypted Communications Challenge

85. ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess told a Senate hearing on 11 February 2026 that the Bondi attackers "demonstrated a high level of security awareness to hide their plot. In simple terms, they went dark to stay off the radar."⁷³ It is submitted that the resources presently directed toward speech legislation and protest policing should be redirected toward the intelligence capabilities that would address the actual threat — human intelligence penetration of extremist networks, post-release monitoring, database integration, and travel surveillance.

Section 4: New Zealand Precedent — Security Findings

86. The New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attack (Ko tō tātou kāinga tēnei, 26 November 2020) constitutes the closest international precedent for the present Commission. That inquiry investigated 51 deaths in a mass-casualty terrorist attack and had full access to classified intelligence material. Two findings are directly relevant to the interim report.

87. On the intelligence failure, the NZ Commission found "a systemic failure to recognise that there was a threat of extreme right-wing domestic terrorism that was not understood" and that "the allocation of counter-terrorism resources almost completely to Islamist extremist terrorism was not the result of a considered system-wide decision" but rather "was not based on an informed assessment of the threats of terrorism associated with other ideologies" and was "therefore inappropriate."⁷⁴ It is submitted that the parallel to Bondi is structural: in both cases, an intelligence agency failed to detect a threat because its resource allocation reflected institutional assumptions rather than evidence-based assessment.

88. The NZ Commission produced 44 recommendations. None proposed the prohibition of a political slogan or the restriction of political speech. The Commission's conclusion — that systemic intelligence failures, not insufficient speech restrictions, were the root cause — applies with equal force to the Bondi attack.

Submitted finding [Direct]: The Commission should find, on the basis of the New Zealand Royal Commission report Ko tō tātou kāinga tēnei (26 November 2020), that the NZ Commission produced 44 recommendations after investigating 51 deaths in a mass-casualty terrorist attack, and not one proposed the prohibition of a political slogan or the restriction of political speech. The NZ Commission's conclusion — that systemic intelligence failures, not insufficient speech restrictions, were the root cause — applies with equal force to the Bondi attack. (ToR 2, ToR 3)

89. The final submission examines the NZ precedent in full, including its findings on social cohesion, hate speech law, freedom of expression, and the securitisation of communities.

90. The misdirection is concrete. After the attack, the legislative response included a 90-day protest ban affecting 5.2 million people across Greater Sydney.⁷⁵ It lapsed on 17 February 2026 without producing any documented improvement in community safety. Weeks before the attack, the AFP surveillance team for released terrorism offenders had been disbanded for want of funding. The post-Bondi response directed resources at restricting speech and assembly. It did not address the intelligence, surveillance, and database failures that enabled the attack. The final submission analyses the legislative response in detail.

Section 5: Proposals

91. The following proposals address matters requiring urgent or immediate action, consistent with the Commissioner's stated purpose for the interim report. Each proposal is tied to a specific, documented failure identified in the preceding sections and identifies the agency or body responsible for implementation.

Recommendation A (URGENT): Examine the CDO position for Isaac El Matari. El Matari's maximum sentence expires approximately November 2026. The CDO legislative regime sunsets on 7 December 2026. The Commission should urgently examine whether a CDO application has been made or is in preparation, and whether the sunset date creates an unacceptable gap in public protection. (Section 3.2, paragraph 70)

Recommendation 1: The Commission should examine the intelligence relationship between Wissam Haddad and law enforcement agencies, including what information flowed in each direction and whether the decision not to charge Haddad was justified given the cost of leaving the radicalisation infrastructure intact. The Commission is respectfully invited to exercise its coercive powers to obtain the relevant intelligence files. (Section 1.2, paragraph 58)

Recommendation 2: The Commission should examine the adequacy of post-release monitoring of Youssef Uweinat between November 2022 and December 2025, including whether the absence of a control order created a gap through which facilitation of Philippine-based network contacts could have occurred undetected. Without a control order, three years of his activities went unmonitored — the direct consequence of a CDO application filed six days late. (Section 1.3, paragraph 56)

Recommendation 3: Implement automatic cross-referencing between ASIO databases, the firearms registry, and Border Force travel records. Any ASIO flag should trigger review of associated firearms licences and travel patterns. This requires no new legislation. The Attorney-General's Department, in coordination with ASIO and relevant state registries, should implement. (Sections 1.2 and 3.1, paragraphs 48 and 62–64)

Recommendation 4: It is submitted that CDO assessment should be required to commence no later than 12 months before the scheduled release of any terrorism offender — or such longer period as the complexity of the case requires, particularly where fairness requires the respondent the opportunity to obtain independent expert evidence — with dedicated resourcing to prepare applications in time for thorough judicial review. Every release date is known years in advance. The Attorney-General's Department should be directed to implement this requirement. (Section 3.2, paragraph 69)

Recommendation 5: VERA-2R should be replaced with a validated risk assessment instrument — such as the ERG 22+ (used by HM Prison and Probation Service, United Kingdom) or the TRAP-18, both subject to independent peer-reviewed validation — and independent review should be commissioned of all CDO and ESO assessments conducted using VERA-2R, including the Benbrika assessment. The Attorney-General's Department should commission the review. (Section 3.2, paragraph 71)

Recommendation 5A (Mandatory post-release conditions and statutory monitoring): The Commission should recommend the introduction of a regime of mandatory minimum post-release conditions for persons convicted of specified terrorism offences under Divisions 101, 102, or 103 of the Criminal Code. Conditions — including electronic monitoring, curfew, prohibited associations, and travel restrictions — should attach to the conviction as a matter of law upon release, for a prescribed period, without requiring a separate CDO or ESO application, a VERA-2R assessment, or reliance on the offender's self-reporting about deradicalisation. The current framework placed Justice Bellew in the position of assessing Uweinat's claim to have "completely renounced" ISIS using an assessment tool no better than chance and the offender's own sworn testimony — which proved false within weeks. A conviction-based regime removes the opportunity for manipulation, eliminates dependence on a discredited risk tool, and ensures that the default upon release is supervision, not unsupervised liberty. An offender may apply for variation or removal of conditions after a specified period, bearing the onus of demonstrating they are no longer necessary. Additionally, the legislation should impose a statutory obligation on the AFP to establish and maintain a dedicated post-release monitoring capability for persons subject to these conditions. The AFP surveillance team for released terrorism offenders was disbanded weeks before the Bondi attack due to funding shortfalls — an executive decision unconstrained by any legislative requirement. Mandatory conditions on paper are worthless without a statutory mandate to resource their enforcement. The obligation to maintain monitoring capability should be imposed by law, not left to administrative discretion and annual budget cycles. The Attorney-General's Department should develop the legislative framework. (Section 3.2, paragraphs 74–77)

Recommendation 6: It is submitted that automatic intelligence flags should be established for travel to terrorism-linked regions by any person with terrorism-related associations. The Akrams spent 28 days in Mindanao — the operating area of a designated terrorist organisation — and cleared customs without triggering any alert. The Department of Home Affairs, in coordination with ASIO and Border Force, should implement the automated flagging system. (Section 3.4, paragraphs 82–84)

Recommendation 7: A comprehensive audit of prison communications security for all terrorism offenders should be conducted. El Matari communicated operational doctrine from Supermax to at least three members of the network, including offers of access to weaponry suppliers and false document suppliers. The communications were only discovered during routine searches. Corrective Services NSW and equivalent state agencies, in coordination with the AFP, should conduct the audit. (Section 3.3, paragraph 81)

Recommendation 8: The Commission should seek disclosure of the suppressed Saadieh prohibited contact list (34 names) and the full Dakkak control order schedule, and examine the current status and activities of all individuals on them. The Commission should exercise its powers under the Royal Commissions Act to obtain these documents. (Section 1.3, paragraphs 57–58)

Recommendation 9 (Philippine intelligence liaison): The Commission should seek production of all intelligence holdings relating to the Akrams' Mindanao visit (1–28 November 2025), including: (a) liaison with Philippine authorities; (b) assessments of the Laguindab and Solaiman killings in relation to the attack; (c) Border Force records, airline booking data, and AUSTRAC reporting; and (d) Five Eyes or bilateral intelligence on AMDC–Philippines network connections. The Commission should exercise its compulsion powers under the Royal Commissions Act 1902 (Cth). (Section 1.4, paragraphs 53–55)

Recommendation 10 (ASIO post-incident review): The Commission should examine whether ASIO has conducted a post-incident review of its 2019–2020 Akram investigation, including whether the strategic pivot toward youth radicalisation created a structural gap for individuals radicalised as minors who aged into adulthood. The Commission should seek production of the Akram investigation file and the "no ongoing threat" assessment. (Section 1.2, paragraphs 39–40)

Recommendation 11 (Community-based prevention): The Commission should examine the evidence for community-based counter-radicalisation programs and recommend a nationally coordinated intervention framework — modelled on approaches examined by the New Zealand Royal Commission — operating independently of law enforcement to preserve community trust. The Department of Home Affairs should implement. (NZ precedent; Section 1.1)

92. Each of these proposals addresses a documented failure in the systems designed to prevent the Bondi attack. None requires restricting political speech. None requires new criminal offences for protest activity. All are implementable within existing legislative frameworks or through administrative action. Fifteen people were killed because these systems did not function. The interim report is the opportunity to ensure they do.

Section 6: Conclusion

93. The evidence before this Commission establishes that the Bondi attack was enabled by identifiable and rectifiable system failures. An intelligence agency that infiltrated the radicalisation network for six years but did not dismantle it. A firearms licensing system that did not cross-reference ASIO records. A border security system that did not flag a month-long journey to a terrorism hotspot. A post-sentence framework that left convicted terrorists unsupervised because applications were filed outside the statutory timeframe. A risk assessment tool found to perform no better than chance — and the finding suppressed.

94. It is submitted that the remedies are specific, implementable, and do not require speech restrictions. Database integration, timely CDO applications, travel monitoring, validated risk assessment instruments, prison communications audits, community-based counter-radicalisation, and network disruption are operational changes within the power of the executive government. They address the actual pathway that produced the attack.

95. The interim report presents an urgent opportunity for action. Isaac El Matari's sentence expires in approximately November 2026. The CDO regime sunsets on 7 December 2026. If the Commission does not address this gap in its interim report, the window may close before the final report is delivered.

96. Fifteen people were murdered at Bondi Beach. This submission identifies the systemic failures that enabled the attack and the measures capable of remedying them. The Commission is respectfully invited to recommend their implementation without delay.

Appendix A: AMDC Network Map

The following table maps the identified members of the Al Madina Dawah Centre network, drawn from sentencing judgments, control order proceedings, the Wertheim v Haddad Federal Court filings, and post-attack reporting. It does not purport to be exhaustive — the suppressed Saadieh prohibited contact list (34 names), the Amin prohibited contact list (31 names), and the full Dakkak control order schedule contain additional individuals not publicly identified.

Appendix B: Curriculum Vitae of the Submitter

Jacob Carswell-Doherty Principal, Jake McKinley | Sydney, New South Wales

Qualifications

Professional Experience

Principal — Jake McKinley February 2024 – Present | Sydney, New South Wales Commercial litigation, property law, and dispute resolution practice.

Chief Executive Officer — Humans United By Law (HUBL) December 2024 – Present | Sydney, New South Wales Driving innovation and inclusivity in the legal profession through accessible CPD, networking, and mentorship. Focused on empowering women in law, supporting career progression, and fostering a collaborative and resilient legal community. Leading initiatives to address systemic challenges, promote equitable briefing, and provide practical solutions for lawyers at all stages of their careers.

Principal — Foulsham & Geddes April 2014 – February 2024 (9 years 11 months) | Sydney CBD

Commercial, Property and Litigation Lawyer — Foulsham & Geddes May 2012 – February 2024 (11 years 10 months) | Sydney Skills: intellectual property, estate planning, commercial litigation, property law.

Treasurer — Metro Assist Limited (formerly Metro Migrant Resource Centre) October 2016 – July 2017 (10 months) | Sydney Metro Assist provides community services including migrant settlement, family support, early intervention, emergency relief, tenancy services, and community development.

Director — Metro Assist Limited July 2015 – July 2017 (2 years 1 month) | Sydney

Paralegal — Buttar, Caldwell & Co. Solicitors June 2010 – December 2011 (1 year 7 months) | Sydney Civil litigation practice encompassing workers compensation, insurance, negligence, debt recovery, corporations and insolvency, family law, wills, probate, and conveyancing.

President — Student Association of University of Western Sydney 2008–2010 (2 years)