There are growing calls for a Royal Commission

 and increasingly ridiculous reasons not to have one in to what led up to the appalling events at Bondi.

The idea that an "inquiry" can be conducted quickly, easily and effectively and will therefore produce quick, easy and effective results is nonsense of course. The government does not believe it. They are taking the "safe" path. They know what the results of the inquiry will be. They have written the terms of the inquiry to ensure the outcome will be largely favourable to them. It is essential for their future, not just in this term of government but in the term after that and the term after that. This is what they are aiming for. 

They have a huge majority in the present parliament. They know they will lose some seats at the next election. Their concern at present is not losing seats to the present Opposition but the very real possibility of losing seats to areas where there are large groups of Muslim voters. There are some in government who believe it would not take a great deal for this to happen. They fear a government where the balance of power is held by a very small group with a very different agenda. 

An inquiry is a vastly different thing from a Royal Commission. It is much more easily controlled. There does not need to be any input from the public, least of all from those who have been directly affected. Information can be withheld. Lies can be told without fear of being held in contempt of court. There are no sanctions available. The results do not need to be made public. There is no real pressure to do anything with the findings. (Anyone who doubts that only needs to look at the report by Jillian Segal into anti-Semitism. The government has now sat on that for months and made no move to deal with any of the recommendations.)

It is far too many years ago that the late Senior Cat invited a Jewish couple we know to talk to a group of people from his church. I can remember all too well that D... stood in our kitchen and hastily ate a sandwich I had made him because he had come straight from a long day at work. He looked worried and was clearly nervous which was unlike the way he normally was in our home. 

I was not part of the group but I was preparing supper for everyone when I heard D... asked a question which shocked me, "Then why do you hate us so much?" He did not mean that immediate little group of course. They had made him and his wife more than welcome but it was clear that, although they were born here, they did not feel fully welcome. That question was asked more than twenty years ago. Nothing has changed.   

"Qui tacet consentire videtur" (He who is silent is understood to consent.)

Or, as usually misattributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," 

Surely it is time to speak up and do something? 

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