Dennis Richardson

But the thing about that is I thought that that would have been up front and centre and was up in front and centre at the beginning.

And when particularly when Dennis Richardson was involved in this before he pulled out.

So why is it at this particular stage, which is really the 11th hour, that the Commission decides to reopen hearings to hear this particular thing? Is there something deeper going on here? I can't say that I know what it is, but it seems curious.

I do like to see these things in camera, if we can, not in camera, beg your pardon, if we can have the ASIO boss, as he did give evidence publicly, the least I want to see is prime ministers and relevant ministers, Tony Burke and others, and in New South Wales too, Chris, hold their testimony in the public domain.

Now, to put that in terms of the numbers we would know in Australia, based on the size of our population compared to Israel, that would be the equivalent of four thousand people being killed in one day and close to one thousand being taken hostage.

And when I did a documentary, uh, after the events of October the seventh about the rise of antisemitism in Australia, I asked the most distinguished Australian security professional, Dennis Richardson, the former head of AZO and the Defense Department and Foreign Affairs.

I said to him, if he was advising the Australian government after such an attack, if that was committed against Australia, what would his advice be? And he said his advice unequivocally would be to track down the perpetrators of that, that attack wherever they were for as long as it took.

And that is what Israel has done, and that is what is-- Israel is doing against the odds, against many enemies in the region.

Um, I heard people's, uh, complaints and issues that they raised about the direction we were going in.

And in fact, Frydenberg admits he even took advice from former diplomat and head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, who'd also served as chief of staff to Bob Hawke.

And so he's somebody who had seen leadership turmoil up close, and he was...

Advice was pretty clear, that if you challenge a prime minister, um, it can poison your own prime ministership if you're successful.

It's very conservative.

But Dennis Richardson, the ex-ASIO head...

He's now come out and called for an open discussion about the role of extremist Islamists in promoting anti-Semitism.

And he goes on with all the stuff that's going on at the Royal Commission and just, you know, the same old, really, that, you know, it's all down to extreme Islam and anti-Semitism run right, etc., all of which is, I think, highly questionable.