Government loses bid to keep terror funding documents secret

Michelle Rowland has said it is standard procedure to request confidentiality for cabinet documents. (ABC News: Stuart Carnegie)

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has rejected the federal government's public immunity claim over cabinet documents.

The documents pertain to the counterterrorism enforcement budget and whether it declined between 2020 and 2025.

Spy boss Mike Burgess has denied the government ever asked ASIO to shift resources away from counterterrorism.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has rejected the federal government's bid to keep cabinet documents about counterterrorism funding secret.

The federal government had made a public interest immunity claim over the documents, which Attorney-General Michelle Rowland defended as standard procedure for matters related to cabinet.

But royal commissioner Virginia Bell found it was in the public interest for the inquiry to access the documents, so it could make a full assessment of whether intelligence and law enforcement agencies did their job in the lead-up to the Bondi terror attack.

The prime minister's department secretary, Steven Kennedy, had argued the cabinet documents should be protected because ministers relied on the assumption their meetings would be confidential.

He said releasing them could result in a lack of "candour" going forward.

But while Ms Bell acknowledged Mr Kennedy's concerns, she said there were "no issue of disclosure to the public or to another party" because only she and those who read her confidential report would ever read the contents.

The federal government has made a public interest immunity claim over the documents before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

In her finding, Ms Bell said she had weighed the public interest in disclosure of the documents against the public interest in maintaining confidentiality.

The ruling found the documents were critical to allow the commission to conduct a "thorough examination of the issues raised" in relation to counterterrorism funding.

Ms Bell also said access to the documents would provide a comparison of the resourcing given to counterterrorism before and after August 2024, when the terror threat level was raised to "probable".

"In the context of the antisemitic Bondi terrorist attack on 14 December 2025, the question of whether intelligence and law enforcement agencies performed to maximum effectiveness requires consideration of the priority given to, and the resourcing of, counter-terrorism by each agency," she wrote.

The royal commission