The departure of the national security

expert Dennis Richardson from the Royal Commission into anti-semitism is a matter for alarm. It should not have happened.

He was originally appointed to run a different inquiry within the government. When the Royal Commission was set up he was moved to that instead. That is where the problems really began. 

He could have been and should have been as one of the Commissioners.  Instead we have just one Commissioner, the former High Court judge Virginia Bell.  

Yes, she is considered to be an experienced and highly respected judge. Yes, she knows far more law than I and most people will ever know. The problem is that she does not know, cannot know, about  national security and intelligence gathering in the way that Dennis Richardson knows. Quite possibly he knows more than anyone else in the country but he has resigned. He says he felt as if he was a "researcher, leading a team of researchers" and a "fifth wheel".

The problem with all this is not simply that the Royal Commission is losing his knowledge but that it will hamper the entire functioning of the Royal Commission. There are questions which need to be asked of those responsible for security issues and for intelligence gathering if the Royal Commission is to uncover the failures, the weaknesses and the influences on it. 

There will also be people appearing in front of it who will not be sure of what they are actually permitted to answer on national security grounds. Richardson's presence there would have been reassuring. They and Justice Bell could have referred to him, indeed would have needed to refer to him. There is information which will not go to the Royal Commission because of the terms of reference but it is possible that Dennis Richardson's presence there might still have helped. 

This is of course what the government was hoping for. Their apparent reluctance to hold a Royal Commission in the first place was carefully managed politics. The terms of reference are intended to prevent an investigation of the real issues of concern, particularly those in seats the government now holds. These are the things which do need to be investigated. It will be interesting to see how much pressure is now exerted on Richardson to return. I suspect the government is happy to see him gone.