Victoria Police are scanning social media 24/7 in the hunt for ideological threats and violence, the anti-Semitism royal commission has been told.
The state’s Crime and Counter Terrorism Investigation Services boss, Assistant Commissioner Martin O’Brien, fronted the royal commission on Friday.
In December Victoria Police launched an around-the-clock centralised command centre, he said.
“It’s still in phase one, but that monitors live social media, crime reporting, incident fact sheets, across many streams,” Assistant Commissioner O’Brien said.
“First and foremost, I say we certainly scan, at all times, all social media methodologies.
“We also have a number of streams of intelligence sources, whether that be human source or through other agencies.”
Counsel assisting the commission, Tamara Phillips, asked how Victoria Police processes incident and crime reports that have racial, political or ideological circumstances.
The commission heard a “fact sheet” will be attached to the incident report if there are those undertones, which makes the report more visible while another software system filters all the reports.
“There might be a little bit of time lag between when that (report database report) goes on and when it’s actually recorded, and it can be seen by others.
“It also requires an incident fact sheet so that in real time people across the organisation and certainly the levels of management … (can match) with other intel that’s in the system to say that there’s a little bit more going on than what the first presents,” he said.
Ms Phillips produced a document of a report made on October 3, 2025, where a synagogue has been called on the phone, and an unknown female abused the call taker saying “the Jewish community were genocidal” called Jews “pedophile c***s” and “that their days were numbered and that they were maggot rat Jews”.
Ms Phillips questioned why there was no additional police fact sheet logged along with the incident report which would have flagged the incident to have religious or ideological elements.
“I would expect it to be done,” Mr O’Brien said.
Another report of a 5.5-metre swastika graffitied on a construction site also did not have that additional, ideological-tagged fact sheet.
Assistant Commissioner O’Brien then explained that the central command was set up after those incidents.
Evidence from Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Nutt concerned classified material, so his testimony was given in closed court.
‘Carrying an enormous burden, making impossible decisions’
A highly experienced intelligence analyst in Australia’s Jewish community also gave evidence on Friday, fronting the royal commission for the second time.
Tahli Blicblau has worked for the private and volunteer Jewish safety group CSG, and the independent New South Wales Crime Commission.
Since the Bondi terror attack, Ms Blicblau has been a part of the large Jewish collective formally co-ordinating the community’s response.
From her time working for the NSW Crime Commission, she said intelligence sharing could be improved.
My observations were that there are strong structures in place to facilitate inter-agency co-operation, communication and co-ordination,” she said.
“Certainly many of the structures are there. But I think it’s fair to say there’s room for improvement on how open that co-ordination (is) and how effective it always is.”
She said she heard anti-Semitism within the Crime Commission that went beyond “Jews being stingy” and bigotry directed at other minority groups.
“Noting my comments earlier about there not being any structural anti-Semitism, I would say that there were what I would describe as low levels of awareness.
“Law enforcement is not traditionally a career that Jewish people go into. There were very few of us, certainly, in senior levels of law enforcement.
“I think it’s fair to say from my experience, my senior colleagues at that time didn’t have a strong understanding either, of Jewish history or culture – nor the unique threat environment as it impacted on the Jewish community,” Ms Blicblau said.
She is also on the Crisis Leadership Team and Recovery Task force set up by the Jewish community after the Bondi terror attack.
The crisis team is within CSG and it included representatives from the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Rabbinical Council of New South Wales and expert advisers in security, intelligence and mental health and trauma.
Responding to something as horrific as the Bondi attack again would require more integrated planning and co-ordination, she said.
“I need to say that everyone around every table was doing the best job they knew how,” Ms Blicblau said.
“The leaders of the Jewish community around that table were carrying an enormous burden in making impossible decisions, about the safety and security of the community and trying to balance that against the fact that the community needed and wanted to gather at that incredibly difficult time.
Jewish leaders were making decisions about what gatherings would be safe while grieving and “under enormous pressure”, with only open source information and community knowledge.
As she said during her previous appearance, generally there was a convergence threatening Australian Jews; elements of the far-left, the far-right, radical Islam and conspiratorial movements.
“But in addition to that convergence of radical ideologies, there also is a convergence of threat actors, including domestic and foreign terrorist organisations, state actors and, increasingly, transnational, serious and organised crime or TSOC entities working with those groups,” she said.
If Australia accepted that the threat to Jews was as severe as ASIO says, the engagement between law enforcement and the Jewish community “needs to be sufficiently mature to meet the scale of the threat”.
Commissioner Bell asked about references to the far-left threats to Jews, and whether they were people involved in the pro-Palestine movement.
“Perhaps I wouldn’t describe them in those exact terms,” Ms Blicblau said.
“I’m talking about an extreme fringe radical element of which that is certainly a part of the ideological drivers. But the people I’m talking about are, anti-democratic, anti-Australian anti-colonial generally, which extends not only to Israel but also to Australia.
Commissioner Bell asked if Ms Blicblau was suggesting people who march in pro-Palestine demonstrations were “motivated towards violence, towards Jewish people”.
“I would say the vast majority of them are not,” Ms Blicblau replied.
More to come
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