Nine days after the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil, and amid a rising chorus of voices calling for a federal royal commission, Anthony Albanese dug in.
“There was no royal commission called by the Howard government after Port Arthur,” the prime minister told the media from Parliament House on Tuesday.
“There was no royal commission called by the Abbott government after the Lindt siege. We provided on both those occasions, as the opposition … we provided support for national unity at that time.”
New South Wales, he pointed out, would have its own state-based royal commission, which his government would cooperate with. A review by Dennis Richardson into federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies was also due to be completed by April.
After spending much of 2025 on a high, Labor is finishing the year under pressure over the shooting. Polling numbers in recent days show Albanese’s popularity dropping to the lowest it has been since the May election and, at a commemoration vigil on Sunday, the prime minister was booed.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Albanese has been criticised by prominent Jewish Australians, including former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, by many in the media, and by the Coalition over his rejection of calls for a national royal commission.
Even the former high court chief justice Robert French criticised the government’s decision to order a review of intelligence and policing arrangements instead of a more powerful probe. Leading lawyers signed an open letter on Tuesday.
Despite a landslide election victory little more than six months ago, Albanese goes into the summer break facing a complex political landscape. The path he chooses could make or break his second term in The Lodge.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said on Tuesday only a royal commission could provide the full explanation of the Bondi deaths that was urgently required.
“The federal government should be the first calling for it,” he said. “The fact that we need to grapple with the government over this, plead for it, it’s just deeply insulting.”
Jewish leaders have said there was deep frustration with the government, even as they played down the booing at Sunday’s vigil. They pointed to Albanese’s failure to more quickly advance recommendations of the special envoy on antisemitism, Jillian Segal, and moves by Labor to talk down the challenge.
Political historian Chris Wallace says Bondi “has profoundly damaged Anthony Albanese’s prime ministership”.
“There is no getting round the fact that the government got the Segal report in July and five months later was cruising towards the summer break without a response, and with none on the horizon.
“That is too slow – for Albanese, typically slow – and it’s not as if there weren’t strenuous pleas for an urgent response to the Segal report. It is a performance failure that can’t be rationalised away.”
Wallace, of Canberra University, said the prime minister’s style is being challenged by other leaders.
“The terrorism brought two political leaders into sharp public focus, Albanese and New South Wales premier Chris Minns, and the comparison was unfavourable to Albanese. What has been seen by voters can’t be unseen.”
Crisis responses can make or break prime ministers. John Howard’s determination to strengthen gun laws after the 1997 Port Arthur massacre is a key part of his political legacy, just like Scott Morrison’s Hawaii holiday looms large in memories of the 2020 black summer bushfires.
Tony Barry, a pollster for Redbridge, said it is too soon to say how the Bondi tragedy will play out politically but the main risk for Albanese is a prevailing view among voters that he is “weak”.
Barry says the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, and members of her frontbench haven’t been able to get the tone right since the terror attack.
He points to poll results published by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age showing nearly half of voters told Resolve they were unsatisfied by the government’s response, even while their opinions of Ley also declined.
“Albanese’s biggest challenge is he still suffers from that weakness frame,” Barry said. “I think some of those Resolve polling numbers were pretty devastating, because strength is one of the leadership attributes voters look for particularly in times where national security is salient.”
Barry said it is likely national security and defence will be a more salient issue for voters when Redbridge conducts its first poll for 2026 in February.
Wallace said voters would mark down the Liberals and Nationals too.
“Citizens would be more impressed by dignified Coalition MPs supporting the government in the serious business of finding and fixing the system’s gaps, errors, oversights and processes that failed to stop this terrorism before it happened than by shouty accusations against the prime minister,” she said.
Ley, on Tuesday, doubled down on her criticisms of Albanese and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, whom she accused of not having “shed a single tear” over the attack at an extraordinary press conference on Monday.
She told Sunrise: “I make no apology for my passion on that occasion”.
The prime minister, who has so far tried to avoid personal attacks, said on Tuesday that he “regrets” the politicisation of the attack and would continue to call for unity.
Some Labor MPs are frustrated too. Mike Freelander and Ed Husic joined calls for a royal commission this week, while others said Albanese had not spent enough time with the Jewish community and key stakeholders over the past two years. One Labor MP said Minns had done this effectively.
The MP agreed the government should have called a royal commission and said they were “pretty pissed off” it had not. “It is our failure,” they said. “It happened on our watch.”
But, quietly, some Labor MPs have shared messages of support sent from constituents, out of view of the cameras. “It’s not his fault,” one told their local member this week, expressing disgust at politicisation of the tragedy.
“I don’t recall John Howard being blamed for Port Arthur or Tony Abbott for [the] Lindt Cafe, yet apparently when two madmen kill 15 people, it’s Albo’s fault,” another message seen by Guardian Australia said.
Dean Sherr, a former Albanese adviser and consultant, said the Jewish community has felt increasingly isolated as antisemitism has increased and wants to see “leaders are firmly in their corner”.
“The Bondi attack has made all these feelings of isolation and insecurity so much worse,” he said.
“The community is obviously looking for action and responsibility and accountability, but they’re also looking to feel that leaders are firmly in their corner and that they understand what they’re going through.”
Sherr warned there was no quick fix for rebuilding trust.
A member of Melbourne’s Jewish community, he also acknowledged that relations with Labor had experienced some strain before 7 October 2023, dating back to the reversal of the recognition of West Jerusalem in October 2022, a decision which had been made on a Jewish holiday.
This week, Albanese has urged “urgency and unity, not division and delay”.
