Annie: Welcome to Covered, a podcast that helps you figure out what the hell is going on in the news and how you feel about it.

Jodi: Here to guide you through the biggest news stories of the last week, as always, we are your hosts, news journalists Jodie Lee and Annie Puller.

Annie: And on this week's episode, we dive into the first findings from the Bondi Royal Commission. to every agency involved, nothing could have stopped it. We unpack why that's so difficult for Australians to accept.

Jodi: Our second story this week is US President Donald Trump has survived a third assassination attempt, this time at the White House Correspondents' Dinner with his entire cabinet in the room.

Annie: And the controversy surrounding Australia's ISIS brides is reaching breaking point. They're trying to get home, the government says it won't help, but it can't legally stop them either. A very convoluted story to unpack. But first let's go to our honourable mentions. These are the stories that are worth getting your head across but don't quite warrant a deep dive.

Jodi: Our first one this week is incredibly difficult. The five day search for a young Indigenous girl missing in Alice Springs has ended in tragedy. The five year old was last seen at her family's campsite in Alice Springs. She went down to bed on Anzac Day before she was seen leaving arm in arm with an older man. Despite an extensive search that involved more than 200 volunteers and Aboriginal trackers, today authorities found the body of the five-year-old. Police have in custody a suspect, a 47-year-old man by the name of Jefferson Lewis. He was released from prison just six days before it's alleged he took the young girl. Today, her mum released a statement online saying, know you are in heaven with the rest of the family. Me and your brother will meet you one day.

Annie: Moving to our second honourable Ben Roberts-Smith's girlfriend is backtracking after calling Liberal MP and former SAS officer Andrew Hasty ⁓ a traitor in a since-deleted comment on Anzac Day. She said ⁓ it was a mistake to it in a public forum and that it wasn't done with Ben's knowledge. ⁓ Hasty is expected to be as a witness in Ben Roberts-Smith's upcoming criminal murder trial, ⁓ which gives the comment a low context. ⁓

Jodi: Third Honourable Mention this week is a little bit lighter and I think it's safe to say that Kenyan runner Sebastian Sawai ate his Weepix on Sunday morning. He broke the record. He was able to complete the London Marathon in a record breaking time of under two hours. He finished the 42.2 kilometre course in one hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds. The Sydney Marathon is the next world major so keep your eyes peeled to see whether or not we can get the current record holder down.

Annie: You Yeah, mean impressive is an understatement, but let's move to our lead story this week. And honestly, there is kind of no easy way to open with this one. ⁓ The initial report from the Bondi terror attack royal commission has been handed down and we both really want to acknowledge before we get into it that this is an incredibly difficult and incredibly painful time for many Australians, particularly for our Jewish community. It was December 14 last year. 15 people were killed at a public Jewish celebration on Bondi Beach in broad daylight. It was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in Australia's history and the worst mass shooting our country has seen since Port Arthur. I think as a nation we are still trying to grapple with this, grapple with the enormity ⁓ of what has happened and what it now means.

Jodi: Yeah, but I think this interim report is the first step in us collectively as a nation beginning to unpack what happened and as you say, understand. But let's start with the basics of what this report actually is because it isn't final. So in January of this year, the federal government established the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Former High Court Justice Virginia Bell was appointed to lead that process and her job was to examine what happened. why it happened and what needs to be done to ensure that something like this never happens again. Today she handed down an interim report. It's 154 pages. incredibly, ⁓ it's incredibly long and dense though we should note that it's only an edited version because sections of this have been redacted for security purposes and we will never know what they include.

Annie: I think, ⁓ at least for me, the headline finding is going to sit really uncomfortably with a lot of people. Literally not one agency has said that there was anything that could have been done differently to stop this attack from happening. The government's position essentially is that the system did not fail on a legal level and Anthony Albanese was very quick to front the media ⁓ just minutes after this report was handed down.

Jodi: So on face value, I guess the government's response as has been found in this interim report is that the system quote unquote worked. Here's where it gets a little bit complex and incredibly difficult to digest. Sitting alongside that finding in this report is something that is really difficult to reconcile. Embedded in this 154 page interim report is the fact that the Jewish community's own security organization sent an email to New South Wales police less than a week before the 15th of December and it said and I quote, a terrorist attack against the New South Wales Jewish community is likely and there is a high level of anti-semitic vilification. So the community was across this, they understood what they were facing and they proactively reached out to New South Wales police and asked for support.

Annie: Yeah, and worth noting that there was a string of incredibly serious anti-Semitic attacks leading up to this right across the country. I guess Jodie, the obvious question, what was the response?

Jodi: Well, New South Wales police said that dedicated officers just couldn't be provided for that specific Hanukkah celebration on the 15th of December. But New South Wales police offered what they called mobile patrols instead. That's three general duty officers and one supervisor who were deployed on the day. And there's an email in this report from an operations inspector to command inspectors sent three days before the attack that says, in quotes, No need to stay the entire duration, but your presence will ensure that the community feels safe.

Annie: Yeah, I mean, that is quite disturbing to hear in hindsight. And we now also know that New South Wales police conducted no formal risk assessment before the event, despite receiving these warnings from the Jewish community's own security organisation and leaders in the Jewish community that a terror attack could have been possible, in fact, could have been highly likely. Police have been unable to provide any kind of written risk assessment. ⁓ is largely that they received no specific request for dedicated resources. We're talking about counter-terrorism police. While at the same time they're acknowledging that they were aware of this request for police presence. So I just don't think those two things can be true at the same time.

Jodi: worth noting that one of those officers who did deploy to Bondi was probationary constable Jack Hibbett. ⁓ been on the job for four months, so incredibly fresh to the New South Wales police force. ⁓ the 14th of December he was shot in the head and lost sight in one eye. Another one of the officers, Constable Scott Dyson, ⁓ placed in a medically induced coma as a result of the injuries ⁓ during that terror attack. They're not experienced counter-terrorism officers. These were ⁓ arguably some of the most junior on the job who were sent just to really, you know, show face and make a community feel a sense of reassurance.

Annie: Yeah, I mean, don't even... What do you even say to that? I don't even know how to react.

Jodi: There's kind of nothing that you can say and that's exactly what this report is trying to reckon with. You know, there are 14 recommendations in total. A number, as I said, are confidential for security reasons, so we don't know what they say, but three of them are really getting a lot of attention. Bearing in mind, this is an interim report, so we still don't have the final findings. But the most immediate one that stands out for me is around security at Jewish events. So New South Wales police currently has specific procedures for what they call Jewish high holy days. Those are some of the most important religious days on the calendar for our Jewish community and there are dedicated offices and particular protocols that they deploy on those days. Now the recommendation from this interim report is that those same standards that are rolled out on the most important days now apply to any high-risk Jewish community event year round, not just those big calendar moments. which for me is an incredibly sad indictment on the state of where we are as an Australian community, that that is what is being recommended as what is required.

Annie: you think about ⁓ a community that has to come together for times of celebration and every event in the back of their mind is this overarching security question. I think there's also a bigger structural question in all of this and that's really how our intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies actually talk to each other. This isn't really a new issue but it's again something that's been brought up. ⁓ The is basically a full review of the joint counter-terrorism network So that's the leadership, the information sharing between agencies and state policing and essentially the crux of it is how teams work together on the ground to stop attacks like this from happening.

Jodi: That's a really interesting recommendation because communication is only useful when you have information to share. And we know that in this instance, authorities had very little information on the alleged attackers. In fact, ASIO had investigated one of the alleged attackers back in 2019 and found that there was no reason to continue monitoring him or keep him on their radar. the director general told a parliamentary hearing earlier this year that the two Men had deliberately concealed their plot. They went dark. They were very cautious not to use communication channels that would be accessible by authorities in order to throw them off the scent of what they were allegedly planning to do. So the agency's position is we looked, we found nothing because they were actively hiding this from us.

Annie: Yeah, well, I guess the reality is that ⁓ these people can be hidden in plain sight, which brings us to kind of ⁓ next point, and that is the gun buyback scheme that's being discussed. Because if someone slips through the cracks, the next line of defence is essentially making sure that they can't get armed.

Jodi: This is interesting, it's an argument that Australians like to use against gun violence in the US a lot. But what's tricky about this one is we've actually done it here before. So in 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre, then Prime Minister John Howard introduced a gun amnesty. Basically, the government said we will take back a number of firearms from within the community and they took possession of 650,000 weapons. Now the recommendation in this interim report is to do that again. ⁓ nationally consistent gun laws and a scheme to purchase and destroy surplus weapons, newly banned and also illegal firearms. But the reality check now, and I found this quite shocking actually, is that the Alana and Madeleine Foundation, which was established in memory of two young sisters who lost their lives at Port Arthur, ⁓ it's revealed that there are now more guns in Australia after that gun amnesty than there were before the Port Arthur massacre. The buyback brought numbers down to around 2.2 million by the year 2001 and today there are 4.1 million guns in our country.

Annie: So reading between the lines, it doesn't sound like this buyback alone is really a solution. worth noting that ⁓ this is an interim report as we said, there's still a lot more to come out. The has committed to all 14 recommendations in full ⁓ and next week the Commission opens to the public. So that's two weeks of hearings in Sydney off where ⁓ many Jewish Australians will speak directly about their experience that day. is really what's going to shape the final report which is due to be handed down on December 14 this year. A milestone that ⁓ is just a dark day in Australia's history. It's also the same ⁓ one year anniversary of this attack.

Jodi: think it's worth noting and the Prime Minister noted this too today that this interim report has been handed down at a time of a real resurgence, a scourge of anti-Semitism not just here in Australia but right across the globe. You only have to look at what's happening in the news this week internationally. You know a number of anti-Jewish hateful incidents that are just really difficult to ignore. ⁓ Here in Sydney, there's a public forum defending the phrase globalise the Intifada, which is considered incredibly confidential and very triggering for members of the Jewish community. still scheduled to go ahead on the 5th of May at a City of Sydney venue. In London, there's been footage emerging of a man stabbing two random Jewish people on the street in what police say is an act of terror and an act of Jewish hate. ⁓ In the US, an army soldier has been arrested and charged with plotting a massacre at a synagogue.

Annie: God, when you just collectively... read that out. There's just like no level of comprehension in me with the state of the world. ⁓ But it's exactly why the Australian Jewish Association, while welcoming this report, said that it's also undermined by the failure to name radical Islamist extremism directly. It hasn't really done that and that's a downfall that's being criticised. I think what is clear is that no report, no inquiry no commission is ever truly going to make sense ⁓ as to how this all happened but the hope here is that it stops it from ever happening again. I do want to move to our next story now over in Washington DC and this is extraordinary as it is alarming. So every year the White House Correspondence Association hosts its annual dinner. It's a huge black tie event. The who's who of the US is there. It's basically where the American press ⁓ collide with the most powerful people in the country in one room. I mean think of it as journalists and politicians pretending to like each other for just a couple of hours.

Jodi: Yes, what's really interesting though, usually the president comes, traditionally they give a speech. Barack Obama very famously used a lot of comedy in his and basically took the piss out of a number of members of his government and of the press. But Donald Trump, since he was elected to office, has famously refused to attend this dinner. He's made no secret of his disdain for the mainstream media. ⁓ and has spent years attacking the media. So it's no surprise that he wouldn't like to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner. But this year he obviously had a change of heart as did many of his senior officials. So he was there along with his wife, Melania, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI Director and the Speaker of the House were all there. What's really interesting about this is this is the entire line of presidential succession. who were all there in the room dressed in their black tie best and then as we're about to find out somebody tried to kill the president and members of his cabinet.

Annie: get. It sounds like the plot of an actual Hollywood film in a very disturbing way. What I found really fascinating is there was this Republican strategist in the ballroom and she said afterwards, after this all unfolded, that it was the easiest high profile event she had ever gotten into that she'd ever had access to. I'm pretty sure it was literally paper invites to get into that room. And people at her table were already talking about the security security or the lack of security before those shots rang out. Trump and his administration had apparently provided a lower level of security that night than it typically does for other gatherings of senior officials and dignitaries, which I found really surprising because his entire cabinet was in the room along with a lot of heavy hitters, including executives from some of the biggest banks.

Jodi: Well, I think it's important to unpack who is alleged to be at the center of all this. Authorities took into custody that would be assassin and he's since been named as Cole Thomas Allen. He's a 31 year old university educated mechanical engineer and he booked a room at the hotel where this White House Correspondents Dinner was taking place. Allegedly just three weeks before the event, he said to have boarded a train. from his hometown in Los Angeles to Washington DC. And then on the night of the dinner, police say that he sent a 1000 word kind of manifesto of sorts to members of his family. The opening line said, hello everybody! So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today. And he signed off, friendly federal assassin. ⁓ Less than 30 minutes before this shooting unfolded. He's alleged to have taken a selfie in the mirror of the room at the hotel. It's actually chilling to see he's wearing sort of very smart attire, a black shirt and black trousers. He's got a tie on and very clearly in the reflection of the mirror you can see on his person a number of weapons. Prosecutors released that photo this week and at least for me it made my skin crawl. It's just a bizarre and chilling set of circumstances.

Annie: Yeah, I just can't get past the use of the exclamation marks in the manifesto and the language. Like calling yourself the friendly assassin, that is just a new level of unhinged. But it's worth noting that moments after Trump and Melania took to the stage, these shots practically rang out. So Alan had run through the security checkpoints on the floor above the ballroom where this event was being hosted. Trump and Melania were essentially taken to the ground for cover. The video that surfaced on social media moments after this happened was insane. They're like scooped up by their security personnel and ushered out in seconds. And then an agent grabs JD Vance by the jacket. So within a very short timeframe, This room went from a black-tie ballroom dinner to an emergency evacuation. ⁓ Interestingly, Alan didn't make it out the door. He was tackled before he reached the stairs. However, one security service agent was actually shot in the process over all of this. Thankfully, his vest saved his life. But when you consider the weaponry that this guy was allegedly carrying, it's just insane to think that no one was seriously injured in all of this. But this is what really hits for me. This is the third, the third apparent attempt on Trump's life since 2024. So in two years, we've had Butler, West Palm Beach, and now this.

Jodi: Not only is it the third attempt on Trump's life, but this is the second time a US president has been shot at at this very hotel. So I didn't know any of this and I kind of went on a deep dive in preparation for today's episode. And this for me was the most alarming thing. So it's called the Washington Hilton, but apparently political insiders in Washington DC actually call it the Hinckley Hilton. And that's because in 1981, a man by the name of John Hinckley Jr. shot at then President Ronald Reagan outside this hotel. ⁓ Ronald Reagan came within an inch of his life but his press secretary, man by the name of James Brady, wasn't as lucky. He was shot in the head and has never fully recovered from his injuries. The White House Correspondents' Dinner has been held at the Washington Hilton or the Hinckley Hilton for 57 years. People say because it's the biggest ballroom in Washington DC. And as you mentioned before, this is kind of the night of nights for people in politics and the media and the news. And so everybody's clamoring to get a ticket to this. Everybody wants to take part in it. But the most bizarre element of this is even in spite of the correspondence dinner taking place there, the rest of the hotel has still been open to members of the public. So Cole Allen and potentially hundreds of other tourists or travelers were able to book a room. the hotel while the president, his cabinet and the entire mainstream media were dining downstairs.

Annie: I'm just. flabbergasted on a number of fronts with all of this, particularly you would think with this history of the hotel you would be scaling up security and kind of going all guns blazing as opposed to scaling it back. But what's also really insane about how this all played out is that the people in these rooms were political journalists, they're political correspondents, so the best of the best in the media space in the US. And they're essentially living out the biggest political story. of the year in real time. What I keep coming back to is how on earth are you supposed to react to this? Like as a journalist you're there celebrating the media. Do you duck for cover? Do you continue to work? Do you pull out your phone? Like do you call your mum? I know I'd I'd freaking be calling anyone who would be picking up. There was one Australian journalist though who works for the ABC. His name is ⁓ John Lyons and This was an insane video. He basically pulled out his phone and started rolling on the whole thing. ⁓ Yeah. And like, it's just worth noting for those people who can't see that video, these people weren't just lying on the floor. They were literally piled on top of each other. It was like a sandwich.

Jodi: There's footage of people climbing over chairs to get out. But as you say, it's that instinct as a journalist, like, ⁓ my God, this is history unfolding in real time. It's not about me and my own safety. Like I have to get the scoop.

Annie: Yeah. Mmm.

Jodi: reports are that Donald Trump wanted to continue the dinner. ⁓ You know, be back this brief interlude. Yes, we'll be back after this brief interlude. Obviously ⁓ his team him against that. So Trump then decided to hold a press conference at the White House. ⁓ So members of the press corps raced from that Washington Hilton to the White House dressed

Annie: I didn't know that.

Jodi: head to toe in black tie garb. And there are these incredible shots. are, you know, for me, that's like just history unfolding in real time, standing in a ball gown, you know, taking notes while asking questions of the president in the White House. You know, that's the job and it's such a strange job at the best of times, but it's moments like that where you realize it is also such a critical and important role.

Annie: Yeah, and I have to say that there's literally nothing funny about this whole situation, but there was something quite comical in all of it. When this unfolded, there was two journalists in the room. One continued to eat his mashed potato the entire time this was playing out, like as he watched all of these people get ushered out of a room, and another female journalist decided to basically go around picking up champagne bottles on the table. So... I don't know, America, strangest...

Jodi: Strange, strange stress responses, shall we say. But ⁓ let's park the US president and move to our third story for this week's episode.

Annie: Yeah, this one is a little closer to home. for years now, a group of Australian women and their children have been stuck in detention camps in northern Syria. They're part of what the media has dubbed ISIS brides. So women who left Australia between 2012 and 2018 to join the Islamic State. They married fighters, they raised their families overseas and then ISIS basically collapsed in 2019. So they were detained. by Kurdish forces. So some of these women and children have been over there for seven years.

Jodi: Yeah, well many of the children were actually born in Syria. But this week, this sort of entire situation has escalated. So 13 of those women and children left where they had been living, which was the Al-Raj camp in Syria. And they traveled to the city of Damascus to try and board a flight home to Australia. Instead they were turned around at the airport and Syrian authorities have publicly said it is because the Australian government is refusing to allow them to land here on home soil. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was blunt, he said and I quote, we are providing no support for repatriation and no assistance for these people.

Annie: Yeah, there's been so many iterations of this story and on the surface when you hear that quote, it does sound kind of decisive, it sounds hard line, but the phrase... ISIS brides, at least from my perspective, is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. flattens two very different stories into one headline. You have women who made a choice to follow their husbands, fighters over there, and then you have children who had no choice at all. And I just think this is an issue that is far more complicated than what that label suggests. ⁓

Jodi: Well, to push back on that, many of the women say that they didn't have a choice and that they were coerced by the men in their family, be it their fathers or their brothers or their husbands to travel to the region

Annie: Mm.

Jodi: The messaging coming out of the terror organization at that time to women was to join the caliphate, not necessarily as combat soldiers on the ground, but to build a community as part of the caliphate, to marry ISIS fighters, to raise children, and to serve the religious cause, I guess, in support. ⁓ But it was far more controlled reality when they got there on the ground. Their movement, they say, was heavily restricted. Roles were really tightly defined. And many of these women were widowed, not once, but multiple times as they married and then were forced to remarry. And those men were killed in battle. So when ISIS fell in 2019, many of these women whose homes were in Australia ended up in camps in northern Syria. And we've seen footage and pictures from inside these facilities and the conditions are horrific. Human rights watchers described them as inhumane, degrading and life threatening. But that was 2019, seven years ago. And there are now 34 Australian women and children who have remained in those conditions. since 2019.

Annie: and this is an issue that's been under the political microscope, if you can call it that, through successive governments. This is obviously coming to a flash point now. I think the obvious question for our listeners is why is it all blowing up? the reality is the situation on the ground has changed very fast and it kind of changes every day, at least over the last week. ⁓ to give you context, Assad's government collapsed back in December 2024. So ⁓ the Kurdish forces running these camps, they lost stability, they lost control. A new Syrian government stepped in. ⁓ and the camps just began to dissipate. And a problem Western countries had been avoiding for years became urgent almost overnight. They couldn't ignore it and these women had to go somewhere. at the same time, this was all unfolding. The US was applying pressure on Syria to facilitate returns. And this is partly because they fund the camps and they wanted to direct resources elsewhere. So this brief sort of window opened, 13 women and children made their move and then they were turned back. It's just, it's so convoluted.

Jodi: Yeah, but this is where it gets uncomfortable for the Australian government, right? Because legally this position that it's taken, you heard Anthony Albanese say in that quote earlier that the government isn't facilitating any kind of repatriation at all. But legally it's a very tricky and difficult position for the Australian government to sustain because citizenship in Australia isn't a privilege. It's not something that can just be removed if you behave badly. It comes with the right to enter and to live here. That's what it means to be an Australian citizen. And here's the contradiction. In the past few years, the Australian government has actually issued travel documents that's passports to some of these women. So to think that you're able to board a flight and come home means that you have the correct documentation to do that. And that documentation has only been supplied in the last little while since they've actually been on the ground in Syria. On the one hand, the state has recognized them as citizens enough to say, yes, here's your passport, which is helping them prepare for their return. And on the other hand, the government is now refusing to let them land.

Annie: Yeah, it's such a tit for tat. Like you're one thing, you're delivering the passports, but then the action is completely different. And interestingly, the government's line is, we won't help them return, but if they do make it back and they've committed a crime, they will be arrested and prosecuted. So at least two of the women who... are preparing to return are expected to be arrested and taken into custody on arrival, which sounds really, it sounds tough and it sounds hard to comprehend considering everything that they've been through. it's yeah, it's not a policy. It's just a holding position. And it's the same position Australia has actually taken for the last six years. So behind the scenes, there was this movement. Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neill developed a repatriation framework back in 2024 and then she pretty much shelved it without any explanation. Now Syria is publicly calling Australia out and questioning ⁓ of our tactics. They're saying, you know, we are refusing to take back our own citizens.

Jodi: Yeah, look, it's tricky because I have an emotional and also a rational response to this. The emotional response for me is I have no sympathy for these women. You know, if you look at what's going on here on home soil, social cohesion is not even fractured. It's like dissipated. It doesn't exist in Australia. We just spoke about, you know, terror and the interim report out of the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion. Like we are a fractured, frail nation.

Annie: Mmm.

Jodi: radicalization isn't some abstract concept anymore. It's here, it's visible, it's impacting us on a day-to-day basis. That's my emotional response.

Annie: think the issue for me is that Australia still hasn't decided or at least gotten clear on what its position is and I think ⁓ the public is at least owed that clarity. In the UK, there was a really highly publicised case of woman by the name of Shemima Begum actually lost her UK passport, her right to live there. And she tried to fight it through the courts, but here was the catch. She was actually a dual citizen because was a Bangladesh national. So that's how they were able to strip it from her. ⁓ Interestingly, took a completely different approach. They prioritised the children. So their whole ⁓ operation was to bring these kids back and prosecute the mothers on arrival, granted that happened on a case-by-case basis. So, I don't know, messy decisions, but at least they are decisive. They are decisions. We've had six years and it seems like we've made none in that time.

Jodi: Australia needs to decide and it needs to decide soon. And rather than sitting on the fence, this is an opportunity for the federal government to take a halt, to take a stance and spend the time, you know, communicating the why to the public. Like it's an opportunity to get on the front foot for positive PR as opposed to ⁓ essentially what they're doing now is they're on the back foot.

Annie: I think that's the real failure here. ⁓ Not just whether or if these women come back, but that after six years, still hasn't answered a really basic question. do we do when our citizens turn against us? ⁓ And... ⁓

Jodi: And how do we stop that from happening in the first place?

Annie: Yeah, it's a very loaded questions we realise we've covered a lot of dense topics on this week's app. So we hope you feel covered with the week's biggest news.

Jodi: And thank you so much as always for joining us. We're so grateful to be in your ears each and every week. If you like listening to us, we'd love for you to follow us on Spotify or Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. And please rate us. Five stars would be fabulous. See you next week.