Grattan on Friday: Dennis Richardson’s exit puts antisemitism royal commissioner under more pressure

By personality and at his stage in life, Dennis Richardson is a man who, on occasion, stands on his dignity.

Richardson, 78, has a stellar public service career behind him. As a former head of ASIO, and former secretary of the defence and foreign affairs departments, who also served as ambassador to Washington, Richardson has plenty of experience in handling complicated assignments and relationships. But he’s also willing to say when enough is enough.

This week he reached that point, quitting the inquiry into the security issues around the Bondi massacre that he was conducting within the antisemitism royal commission.

Richardson declared he’d become a “fifth wheel” and not worth the $5,500 a day he was being paid.

“I was surplus to requirements,” he told Sky News, in one of several interviews he did on Thursday explaining his decision. “If you enjoy tough jobs, it’s very difficult to go back to what is essentially a research officer. When that happens, it does eat into you over time, and there’s not the job satisfaction there.”

As soon as the royal commission was announced, Richardson must have known his situation was going to be tricky.

Initially, in December, the government had charged him with investigating the federal law enforcement and security agencies, in the wake of Bondi. His review would look at whether the bodies had the “right powers, structures, processes and sharing arrangements” to keep Australians safe.

It was to be a standalone inquiry – at that stage Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was holding out against calling a royal commission.

But by January Albanese was pushed into the commission by political and public pressure. When he eventually gave in, he folded the Richardson inquiry into the wider commission, headed by former High Court judge Virginia Bell. He could have made Richardson a commissioner (and perhaps added one more) but chose not to do so.

Richardson, who was to report in April, soon found the legalistic constraints of a royal commission rubbed up against the more freewheeling approach that a former bureaucrat, who knows personally virtually all the key players, would bring to an inquiry.

Once his report was to be part of the royal commission, “it needed to conform to the way the royal commissioner and senior counsel saw it. That was no longer a flexibility for me,” he explained.

His inquiry “became a different animal. And over time, what I could add became less and less, and it reached a point where I saw no point in staying around.”

Richardson raised his issues with Bell “a couple of weeks ago”, and a short-term settlement was reached. But the problem persisted because it involved a fundamental difference of approach, arising from the inherent nature of a royal commission, especially one run by an ex-judge.

He did not talk with Albanese about his concerns, “because a royal commission sits outside of government […] it would have been quite wrong of me to talk to the prime minister”, seeking intervention, which anyway he didn’t think would have occurred.

He did consult some former bureaucrats as he mulled on his situation and what to do.

He would have found sympathetic ears. Some former senior public servants are known to have doubts about judicial figures presiding over inquiries into government agencies and departments, believing they may take a too legalistic approach, not understanding the multiple issues and pressures those in charge of these bodies may have to juggle.

Richardson’s resignation is a major blow to Albanese, who in December said of him: “Dennis Richardson […] has a lifetime of service going back to the Howard government, the Hawke government, the Rudd government, the Abbott government, right through every government here for 30 years. He is someone of integrity. He will have enormous power.”

This week’s debacle reflects on Albanese’s initial decisions in setting up the process, inviting the question: would it have run more smoothly if Richardson had been made a commissioner or, alternatively, if his inquiry had remained autonomous?

Richardson himself says he and Bell needed a deeper discussion at the start about how things would operate. There is no guarantee, however, that this would have prevented their two worlds colliding.

The security report, still due in April, will now be more general and less immediately definitive than originally planned.

Richardson has been adamant that any recommendations relating to intelligence and law enforcement by definition go to questions of community safety and should be presented to government at the first opportunity, and well before the final report.

Bell said in a Wednesday statement that work on the interim report “is well advanced”. She said senior members of the Richardson team – Tony Sheehan, the former Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator and Deputy Director-General of ASIO and Peter Baxter, a former deputy secretary in the defence department – would stay working on the interim report.

Richardson’s high profile departure may remove what has been a point of friction for Bell, but it puts more pressure on her – and there’s plenty there already.

Richardson has been careful to be publicly highly supportive of Bell and the commission generally. “Virginia Bell is an outstanding jurist. She has excellent senior counsel and other people working with her,” he said.

“I understand all the questions people raise about the credibility of the royal commission. [But] I’m totally relaxed that at the end of the day the credibility of the royal commission will be steadfast.”

Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson’s claim that it is “a disaster” for the commission’s ultimate findings and recommendations that Richardson will no longer be involved is hyperbolic.

Nevertheless Richardson’s departure will reinforce questions about a royal commission that has a timeframe squeezed into under a year, and very broad terms of reference including looking at social cohesion, with a sole commissioner who, however eminent, necessarily has a limited range of expertise.