Dennis Richardson resigns as special advisor weeks before report
Updated ,first published
The royal commission into antisemitism has been thrown into crisis by the shocking retirement of special adviser Dennis Richardson, who said he felt his contributions were unnecessary and his remuneration was not consistent with the work he did.
The ASIO boss left his post just weeks before commissioner Virginia Bell was to deliver her interim report into the performance of the country’s intelligence and police services in response to the Bondi massacre on December 14 last year.
Bell announced Richardson’s shocking resignation in a statement Wednesday night; Leading groups in the Jewish community were racing to find out why he suddenly resigned.
Richardson’s resignation represents a difficult start for the royal commission, which has struggled to meet strict deadlines set by the government for itself and identified key areas of inquiry to avoid undermining the criminal case over the massacre.
“Frankly, I came to the conclusion that the remuneration I was being paid was not consistent with the work I was doing,” Richardson told ABC radio.
Richardson, who was initially expected to write an independent review into potential intelligence failures, said: “I eventually came to the view that I was surplus to requirements.”
He said Bell was “a very nice person” and had excellent legal acumen, but added: “I think there wasn’t enough discussion at the beginning about exactly how things were going to work.”
He said the interim report prepared by the royal commission was “very different” to the document it would have produced under its original instructions.
“As I noted at the commission’s first hearing, Mr. Richardson was in a unique position to advise on materials to be requested from our intelligence and security agencies to assess their effectiveness in preparing for and responding to a terrorist attack,” Bell said.
“Thanks to Mr Richardson and senior members of his team, former Commonwealth counter-terrorism coordinator and ASIO deputy director-general Tony Sheehan, and former Under-Secretary of Defense and AusAID director-general Peter Baxter, work on the interim report is well advanced.”
“Mr Sheehan and Mr Baxter will remain on the committee to support the preparation of the interim report, which I am confident will be delivered in accordance with the Letters Patent.”
Jewish community sources said they were stunned by the resignation, seeing that Richardson had held many meetings with top groups and that the process was going well.
Following the Bondi Beach massacre, which killed 15 innocent people during a Hanukkah celebration on December 14 last year, the Albanian government announced that Richardson would lead an investigation into possible failures of intelligence and law enforcement.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese insisted for several weeks that Richardson was the foremost authority on the country’s intelligence agencies and that there was no need for a royal commission.
His review was later submitted to the royal commission after Albanese bowed to pressure for a wide-ranging federal investigation.
Bell is scheduled to submit his interim report covering possible intelligence and law enforcement failures by the end of April.
Bell, a former Supreme Court judge, said she was “grateful to Mr. Richardson for his valuable contributions to the Commission.”
Richardson previously ran domestic spy agency ASIO, the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Office and served as Australia’s ambassador to Washington.
Attorney General Michelle Rowland said she had been notified of Richardson’s decision.
“The government thanks Mr. Richardson for his efforts to date,” he said.
“The government will continue to support the royal commission to carry out its important work, including delivering the interim report by 30 April.
“The royal commission, which is independent of the government, will provide further updates in due course.”
Richardson’s role was to conduct interviews and provide advice to Bell, who was tasked with writing the interim report and the final version of the report.
Bell announced on the opening day of the royal commission that the decision to wrap Richardson’s investigation into a royal commission had complicated the process.
“Perhaps inevitably, the transfer of the administrative inquiry to this royal commission has caused some delay,” Bell said.
Bell said delays in obtaining the material made it unlikely his interim report would reach a definitive conclusion on the adequacy of security arrangements at the Bondi Hanukkah event and the effectiveness of information sharing between ASIO and the police.
That will have to wait until his final report.
There are also delays in whistleblower immunity laws that the government wanted to pass through parliament earlier this month so former and current intelligence officers can testify before the commission without breaching security provisions. After the coalition and senators insisted that national security laws could not be approved without review, the law was referred to the parliament’s joint intelligence and security committee for review.
Shadow attorney general Michaelia Cash said Australians owed answers to what went wrong.
“Mr. Richardson was uniquely positioned to challenge the actions of our intelligence and security agencies and to ensure that the commission had the strongest possible national security expertise to guide its work,” he said.
“Australians deserve absolute confidence that the royal commission will uncover what went wrong and ensure this never happens again.”
