In today’s fast-paced stock market environment, investors are constantly seeking ways to maximize returns while optimizing their capital. One such powerful tool is the margin trading facility, which allows traders to take larger positions in the market using borrowed funds. While this can amplify profits, it also increases risk, making proper planning essential.

This is where tools like a MTF calculator (often referred to as an MTF calculator) become highly valuable. They help traders estimate costs, risks, and potential returns before placing leveraged trades.

In this article, we’ll break down how margin trading works, its benefits and risks, and how calculators can help you make smarter trading decisions.

What is Margin Trading Facility?

Margin trading facility or MTF is a brokerage service that enables investors to purchase stock by making a fraction of the overall trade value. The balance is financed by the broker.

Simple Example:

●       Total stock purchase: ₹1,00,000

●       Your contribution: ₹30,000

●       Broker funds: ₹70,000

This implies that you have the ability to manage a bigger investment using small funds.

How Does Margin Trading Facility Work?

In MTF, the broker provides leverage against eligible stocks. Here’s how it works:

●       You pick a qualified stock that is eligible to be listed in MTF.

●       You make the necessary margin (percentage of total value).

●       The rest is financed by the broker.

●       Collateral is in the form of shares.

●       You pay interest on what you borrow.

●       The position may last several days, as opposed to intraday trades.

Key Features of Margin Trading

In order to comprehend margin trading facility, you must know the following components:

●       Margin Requirement - The amount you have to provide as your own money.

●       Leverage - The funds which are multiplied by the broker.

●       Interest Rate - Interest charged on the amount borrowed (Normally 8-18 percent a year in India).

●       Maintenance Margin - Minimal balance to maintain the position.

What is a MTF Calculator?

A MTF calculator is a device that aids traders in estimating the financial effect of margin trading.

It calculates:

●       Total trade value

●       Margin required

●       Borrowed amount

●       Interest cost

●       Possible profit or loss.

This enables traders to strategize trades before trading as opposed to guessing.

The Importance of Calculators in Margin trading

Calculator is a must when leverage is involved.

1. Accurate Cost Estimation: The cost of interest may be a major determinant of profitability.

2. Risk Assessment: You are able to assess the extent you will lose in case the market goes against you.

3. Position Sizing: The amount of capital to be allocated is determined by helps.

4. Scenario Planning: You are able to practice various price movements prior to making trades.

Understanding Interest Calculation in MTF

Interest is one of the most important costs in margin trading. It is calculated based on the borrowed amount and holding period.

Here’s the standard formula:

Interest=P×R×T/365T​

Where:

P = Borrowed amount

R = Annual interest rate.

T = Number of days

Example on an MTF Calculator.

To illustrate the operation of a MTF calculator, we will see how it works in practice:

●       Total trade value: ₹1,00,000

●       Margin paid: ₹25,000

●       Borrowed amount: ₹75,000

●       Interest rate: 12 per cent/year.

●       Holding period: 30 days

●       Interest Cost: ≈ ₹739

This expenditure has to be subtracted off your profits.

Advantages of Margin Trading Facility

●       Greater Buying Power: You are able to make larger positions on small amounts of capital.

●       Increased Return Potential: When the market works towards your advantage, profits are increased.

●       Improved Capital Usage: You are able to make diversification in investments with leverage.

●       Flexibility: It is possible to hold positions outside of intraday trading.

Risks of Margin Trading Facility

Though the margin trading facility is advantageous, it is associated with risks:

●       Amplified Losses: The losses grow proportionate to leverage.

●       Interest Burden: Interest is paid even when your trade is not profitable.

●       Margin Calls: You will have to add money in case of a decrease in the price of stocks.

●       Forced Liquidation: Broker can sell your shares due to lack of maintenance of margin.

The Role of Calculators in Risk Management

A MTF calculator alleviates these risks by:

●       Showing break-even points

●       Estimating worst-case scenarios

●       Assistance in determining stop-loss.

●       Preventing over-leveraging

This renders your trading more disciplined and data-driven.

SEBI Rules of Margin Trading

SEBI regulates the margin trading to safeguard the investors.

Key Rules:

●       Under MTF trading, only approved stocks are allowed to be traded.

●       Interest rates should be disclosed by brokers.

●       It is necessary to maintain margin requirements.

●       Stocks are put as collaterals.

These laws make sure that everything is transparent and minimize unnecessary risk.

How to Use a MTF Calculator Effectively?

In order to maximize a MTF calculator, do the following steps:

●       Input Accurate Data: The correct values of margin, interest rate and holding period are entered.

●       Test Multiple Scenarios: Test the responses of profits and losses to price movements.

●       Add All Costs: Include interest, taxes and brokerage.

●       Set Limits: Determine maximum tolerable loss to trade.

A calculator helps you decide which approach suits your strategy.

A calculator assists you in choosing what approach is befitting to your strategy.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

In case of trading on margin:

●       Ignoring interest costs

●       Over-leveraging positions

●       Not using a calculator

●       Keeping losing trades excessively.

●       Trading without research

These are some of the errors that you can avoid to enhance your trading results.

Tips for Smart Leveraged Trading

●       Never make trades without a MTF calculator.

●       Start with low leverage

●       Select basically robust stocks.

●       Monitor positions regularly

●       Use stop-loss orders

●       Avoid emotional decisions

Who Should Use Margin trading Facility?

The margin trading facility is suitable to:

●       Experienced traders

●       Knowledgeable investors on the market.

●       Risk takers.

●       It should be used with care by beginners and only after they are aware of the risks.

The Future of MTF Tools

With advancements in technology, MTF tools are becoming more advanced:

●       Real-time calculators

●       AI-based risk analysis

●       Integrated trading dashboards

●       Automatic margin call notifications.

These instruments are also enabling leveraged trading to be more organized and effective.

Conclusion

The margin trading facility is a powerful tool that can enhance your trading potential by increasing buying power. However, it comes with higher risks and costs, especially due to leverage and interest charges.

This is where a MTF calculator becomes indispensable. It helps you estimate costs, analyze risks, and plan trades effectively. Instead of relying on assumptions, you can make informed, data-driven decisions.

In the end, successful leveraged trading is not about taking maximum risk—it’s about balancing opportunity with discipline. With the right strategy, proper calculations, and risk management, margin trading can become a valuable part of your investment approach.

This is an advertorial. The article is published as received.

Is it about TikTok? AI? Or does Jack just really miss six-second doses of cringe?

As social media becomes a central part of young people’s lives, concerns are growing about its impact on their mental health. Yet public debates and measures tend to treat adolescents as one homogeneous group. We frequently ignore the fact that social media use does not affect all young people in the same way – nor does it have the same impacts on their wellbeing.

In a recent chapter of the World Happiness Report 2026, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the University of Oxford, we have examined how problematic social media use relates to the wellbeing of adolescents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

We looked at 43 countries spanning six broad regions – Anglo-Celtic, Caucasus-Black Sea, Central-Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Western Europe – covering mainly European countries and their immediate neighbouring areas.

Using data from over 330,000 young people, we found a clear and consistent pattern: higher levels of problematic social media use – that is, compulsive or uncontrolled engagement with social media – are associated with poorer wellbeing.

Teenagers who report more problematic use tend to experience more psychological complaints, such as feeling low, nervous, irritable, or having difficulty sleeping. They also have lower life satisfaction, a measure of how positively they evaluate their lives as a whole.

This pattern appears across all countries in our study, but its strength varies from one country to another. It is particularly pronounced in Anglo-Celtic countries such as the UK and Ireland, while it is comparatively weaker in the Caucasus-Black Sea region.

Socioeconomic background matters

The story does not end with geography. Globally, teenagers from less advantaged backgrounds tend to be more vulnerable to the negative consequences of problematic social media use than their more advantaged peers.

This means socioeconomic status – the material and social resources available to a household, such as income and living conditions – actively shapes the risks and opportunities that young people experience as a result of online environments.

Interestingly, these inequalities are especially visible when we look at life satisfaction. Differences between socioeconomic groups are smaller when it comes to psychological complaints, but much clearer and more consistent for how adolescents evaluate their lives overall.

One likely reason is that life satisfaction is more sensitive to social comparisons. Social media exposes young people to constant benchmarks – what others have, do, and achieve – which can amplify differences in perceived opportunities and resources.

At the same time, these patterns are not identical everywhere. For instance, socioeconomic differences in psychological complaints tend to be modest in most regions including continental European countries such as France, Austria or Belgium, but are more clearly observed in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Scotland and Wales.

In contrast, socioeconomic gaps in life satisfaction appear across most regions, although they tend to be weaker in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Cyprus and Greece.

A growing problem

We also examined how these patterns have evolved over time. Between 2018 and 2022, the link between problematic social media use and poor adolescent wellbeing became stronger.

This suggests that the risks linked to problematic use may have intensified in recent years, possibly reflecting the growing role of digital technologies in young people’s daily lives, particularly during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Importantly, this intensification has affected teenagers across socioeconomic groups in broadly similar ways in most regions. In other words, while inequalities remain they have not widened over this period.

Leer más: Social media addiction disrupts the sleep, moods and social activities of teens and young adults

No one-size-fits-all solution

While public debates about social media and mental health often treat adolescents as a single demographic group, our results show a more complex reality. Problematic social media use is linked to poorer wellbeing across countries, but its effects are shaped by social realities. They vary depending on where young people live and what resources are available to them.

Not all teenagers experience the digital world in the same way, and not all are equally equipped to cope with its pressures. Recognising this is essential for designing policies that are not only effective, but also equitable, ensuring that interventions reach those adolescents who are most vulnerable to digital risks.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Roger Fernandez-Urbano receives funding from the Spanish Government’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency through Ramón y Cajal (RYC) grant. Roger is a member of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS).

Maria Rubio-Cabañez's involvement in this research was supported by the DIGINEQ (Digital Time Use, Adolescent Well-Being and Social Inequalities) project (Grant agreement ID: 101089233), funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

Pablo Gracia's involvement in this research was supported by the DIGINEQ (Digital Time Use, Adolescent Well-Being and Social Inequalities) project (Grant agreement ID: 101089233), funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

It’s revision season. If you’re a student preparing for upcoming exams, you might be tempted to put aside sport or other physical activity for a while in order to dedicate more time to learning.

But exercise is extremely important for academic success. Make time to be active. It may well help you revise better.

Doing some physical activity improves our ability to think and process information. My research with colleagues has shown this to be true for both primary school and secondary school pupils.

In fact, when we consider the different types of cognition, such as perception, memory and attention, the domain where physical activity has the greatest benefit is executive function. This is our ability to carry out complex, higher-level thinking. It’s the domain that is linked to academic performance.

Research has found that the beneficial effects of physical activity on cognition last for around 45 minutes. This means it is important to have regular activity breaks to maximise the boost exercise gives to revision.

You could try scheduling your revision in hour-long blocks: 45 minutes of work followed by 10-15 minutes of physical activity. This could be walking, running, body weight exercises such as squats, or even some stretching.

Perhaps most importantly, though, find an activity that you like. You’ll then be more likely to incorporate it into your revision routine. So this could be a ten-minute walk after an hour of revision, a quick five-minute break for some squats or press-ups every half hour – or a morning swim or lunchtime run.

If you can, try to go outside for these breaks. My colleagues and I have recently carried out research showing that outdoor physical activity is more beneficial than indoor physical activity for cognition.

This was true for attention, memory and executive function, which we assessed using a battery of computerised tests. So, get up, take a break, get outside, get active and boost your revision.

You can also use the boost that exercise gives you on exam days. Perhaps take a pre-exam walk – it might help calm any nerves, too.

There are many possible reasons why physical activity can boost your revision. For example, it can increase blood flow to the brain and cause the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters – the tiny signalling molecules which help our brains work more effectively.

It’s vital that schools keep in mind how important physical activity is during exam season, too. One challenge here is that, in many schools, the sports hall also becomes the exam hall. This is understandable given space requirements.

Rather than limiting opportunities for PE, though, it could seen as an opportunity to take school physical activity outside, and for teachers to find innovative ways to help their students get the extra cognition boost that comes from being outdoors.

It’s key that schools, parents and students themselves don’t stop prioritising keeping active, even when there’s so much revision to cram in. Of course, there is always a balance to be found, but physical activity boosts our cognition, revision and learning. Why would we not want to make the most of this?

I often use the term “unleashing the power of physical activity”. I encourage you to do just this during revision and exam season. Whether you (or your child, your class, or any young people you know) are revising for GCSEs, A levels, university exams or any other tests, the same applies – stay smart, and stay active.

Simon Cooper has received funding from the Waterloo Foundation, Rosetrees Trust, Stoneygate Trust, Education Endowment Foundation and Sport England.

Artificial intelligence is transforming our world and financial services are no exception. AI is reshaping the personal banking sector but where does it currently stand on gender parity, transparency and fairness?

When someone applies for a loan today, there is a growing chance that no human ever reads their application. A data-driven algorithm decides whether they qualify, how much they can borrow, and how risky they are considered, often in a matter of seconds and without explanation, quietly shaping financial opportunities in ways most people never see but feel in their everyday lives.

These systems are usually presented as neutral tools: faster than people, more consistent, less prone to prejudice.

In a sector long criticised for opacity and bias, that promise is appealing and frequently echoed in industry and policy debates. But that promise rests on a fragile assumption, rarely made explicit, that the data these systems learn from reflects everyone’s lives equally.

A recent report by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, based on fieldwork in five member states, examined how high-risk AI systems are governed under the EU AI Act in areas such as employment, public benefits and law enforcement. It found a striking gap between legal ambition and practice: while risks of discrimination are broadly acknowledged, providers and deployers often lack the tools, expertise and guidance to assess them systematically. Self-assessments tend to be inconsistent, and oversight remains thin.

This is an important issue. When the data feeding these systems fails to capture the reality of women’s financial lives with the same depth and accuracy as men’s, the result is not just a technical shortcoming but a structural distortion, one that shapes who gets access to credit, on what terms, and with what long-term consequences. For AI-driven finance to be fair, women must first be “visible” in the data on which these systems rely.

Algorithms do not judge fairness or ask whether an outcome makes sense, but estimate what is most likely to be correct based on the data they are given, drawing patterns and projecting them forward. When data is incomplete or distorted, the system’s conclusions rest on shaky assumptions from the start.

If women are underrepresented, poorly measured, or never analysed separately from men, the system cannot see unequal outcomes, and what it cannot see, it cannot correct. Bias is simply carried forward and made routine.

This dynamic is easy to miss when discussions stay at the level of models and regulation, but its effects become clear as soon as automated systems are observed in practice. Across different countries, evidence shows how quickly inequality can be embedded in algorithmic decisions, not because systems are designed to discriminate, but because they faithfully reproduce the distortions already present in the data they learn from.

Kenya offers a telling illustration. According to published studies, a widely used digital lending algorithm consistently offered women smaller loans than men, in some cases by more than a third, despite stronger repayment performance. The system did not single women out deliberately: it simply learned from data shaped by long-standing social and economic disparities, and then applied those patterns at scale.

What matters in this example is not Kenya itself, but what the case makes visible. The algorithm did exactly what it was designed to do, learning from past behaviour and applying those patterns consistently, yet without the ability to distinguish between women’s and men’s outcomes, there was no way to detect that inequality was being reproduced in real time. The problem was not automation, but blindness.

How can finance overcome the gender blind spot?

That is where sex-disaggregated data becomes essential. By sorting financial data by gender, regulators, financial institutions, and technology designers can uncover the impacts of automated systems, identify who has access to finance, and pinpoint areas where outcomes begin to diverge. Without that visibility, gender gaps remain hidden, and hidden gaps have a habit of becoming permanent. In digital finance, data is “a girl’s best friend”, not as a slogan, but as a practical condition for accountability.

Most financial institutions already record a customer’s gender as part of basic identification. On paper, the information is there, embedded in routine reporting and basic customer records. In practice, however, recording a variable is not the same as using it. In many countries, the sex of the customer appears in databases but is never analysed, reported, or monitored by supervisors, including in core supervisory frameworks such as prudential reporting. Too often, the data already exists, but it is collected, filed away, and then quietly ignored. The problem lies not in what can be done, but in what is done.

Fairer finance: developing countries are leading the way

The picture looks very different in countries often assumed to have fewer resources. In parts of Latin America and Africa, regulators have required sex-disaggregated reporting for years and regularly publish data on gender gaps in finance.

In Chile, financial authorities have tracked gender differences in loans and deposits for more than two decades, publishing regular sex-disaggregated financial statistics.

In Mexico, regulators combine bank data with national household surveys to understand how women and men use financial services and how they perform as borrowers.

That visibility has had practical consequences. In Mexico, supervisory data showed that women’s loans were smaller but less risky, evidence that fed into changes in loan loss provisioning rules.

In Chile, the data revealed that equal access to accounts did not translate into equal outcomes in savings or insurance, prompting more targeted policy responses. Once these gaps became visible, they became far harder to ignore.

Seen from this perspective, the situation in many high-income economies looks less like a technical lag and more like an institutional hesitation. In much of Europe, gender data remains voluntary or fragmented despite advanced data infrastructures, a failure not of technical capacity but of institutional choice. My upcoming policy paper “Data Are a Girl’s Best Friends: Tackling Digital Financial Inequality Through Sex‑Disaggregated Data”, due to be published in May explores this.

As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in financial decision-making, that choice becomes harder to defend. At a time when Europe is implementing the EU AI Act and debating how to regulate algorithmic decision-making in finance, the absence of systematic gender data raises a basic question: how can fairness be monitored if the data needed to detect inequality is never analysed?

Making women visible in the data is not symbolic. Without it, fair finance is little more than a claim.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Eliana Canavesio est membre de Volt Europa.

Przemysław Pawełczyk (BW) posted a photo:

What people see on screen can shape what they do off it. When actors such as James Dean and Marlon Brando lit cigarettes in 1950s rebel films, smoking came to signify cool, defiance and desire for an entire generation.

Among 12- to 17-year-olds in the US, smoking initiation rose from about 20% in the early 1950s to roughly 35% to 40% by the mid-1960s, according to retrospective data from national surveys. Screen media do not simply reflect society. They can also influence how people think about health, risk and behaviour.

Film and television reach vast audiences, embedding health-related behaviours in dramatic storylines. Medical dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy and ER have brought hospital life into living rooms around the world, shaping public ideas about medicine and, for some viewers, even inspiring careers in healthcare.

Sometimes films become accidental public health educators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2011 film Contagion surged in popularity as viewers returned to it for insight into viral spread, quarantine and contact tracing. Its depiction of outbreak control closely mirrored real public health responses, reinforcing messages about handwashing and physical distancing, as described in this report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading US national public health agency. When storytelling aligns with science, entertainment can improve public understanding of health risks.

But screen influence can also be harmful. Bollywood has long shaped popular culture across south Asia, and iconic films in the 1990s and early 2000s often presented smoking and drinking as stylish, casual and glamorous. These portrayals are not trivial. Research suggests that adolescents heavily exposed to tobacco imagery in Indian films are roughly twice as likely to experiment with tobacco as those with lower exposure.

Global evidence shows similar patterns. A systematic review found that adolescents who frequently see smoking in movies are significantly more likely to start smoking themselves. Despite growing awareness of the issue, tobacco imagery remains common: more than half of major box-office films released in 2024 included some form of tobacco depiction. Anti-smoking warnings shown before films can reduce pro-smoking attitudes slightly, but repeated on-screen smoking scenes often have a stronger effect.

Alcohol follows a similar pattern. Teen films often frame drinking as harmless fun while downplaying addiction, injury and long-term health consequences. Studies link heavy exposure to these portrayals with earlier and riskier alcohol use among adolescents. More recently, streaming series have helped make casual vaping seem socially routine, reinforcing the idea that e-cigarettes are acceptable and relatively harmless.

Screen storytelling shapes more than substance use. Hollywood’s beauty ideals, centred on thin bodies, flawless skin and effortless glamour, can distort body image, especially among teenage girls. A striking example occurred in Fiji after western television arrived in the mid-1990s. Within three years, self-induced vomiting to control weight had risen from 0% to 11.3% among adolescent girls, while the proportion showing high levels of disordered eating attitudes rose from 12.7% to 29.2%. In interviews, some girls explicitly linked their interest in weight loss to television characters.

Some portrayals carry even greater risks. Research shows that graphic depictions of suicide in films and television dramas can trigger short-term increases in similar behaviour among vulnerable viewers. These concerns have prompted growing collaboration between mental health experts and entertainment producers to encourage safer storytelling.

Yet screen media can also improve health understanding. The World Health Organization has long supported entertainment-education, in which health messages are woven into dramas and soap operas. In parts of Africa and Asia, television narratives addressing HIV prevention, maternal health and malaria have increased clinic visits, testing uptake and awareness. In Ghana, culturally relevant health films have encouraged women to attend cervical cancer screening and antenatal care.

Read more: Soap operas can deliver effective health education to young people – new research

Some films have also helped shift public attitudes. In 1993, Philadelphia humanised the AIDS epidemic, helping reduce stigma and foster empathy towards people living with HIV. In India, the 2007 film Taare Zameen Par helped destigmatise dyslexia and encouraged schools to take learning difficulties more seriously. Hollywood blockbusters such as Outbreak have heightened awareness about infectious disease threats and preparedness.

Young audiences may be especially responsive to these messages. Children and teenagers spend hours consuming films and streaming content, often absorbing fictional lifestyles as cues about what is normal, attractive or desirable.

Creative media can also support wellbeing in less obvious ways. In my own research exploring online dance sessions for people with pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease, participants exercised to familiar Hollywood songs and simple choreography. The programme improved mood and engagement while offering modest health benefits, showing that film, music and movement can be harnessed positively.

Film-makers may not think of themselves as health educators, yet their work can shape real-world people’s beliefs and behaviours. A single scene can glamorise smoking or reckless drinking. It can also reduce stigma, encourage people to seek help, or make complex health information easier to understand.

Films are shaped by the societies that produce them, but they shape society in return. The next blockbuster may aim only to entertain. Even so, the story it tells may subtly influence how audiences think about their bodies, their habits and their health.

Vikram Niranjan receives funding from New Foundations, Research Ireland for a research about dance as an exercise.

The interim report from the royal commission on antisemitism, set up after the Bondi massacre, leaves hanging more questions than it answers.

Perhaps no one should be surprised. The decision to have this report was a case of putting the cart before the horse.

Initially the government planned, after the December murder of 15 innocent people at a Jewish festival, to have a quick inquiry into whether federal agencies had adequate powers, processes and communications arrangements. That inquiry was to be done by former senior public servant Dennis Richardson.

Later, and reluctantly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was pushed into having a much wider royal commission into “antisemitism and social cohesion” under Virginia Bell. The Richardson review was folded into the commission. This didn’t go well and Richardson quit in March, declaring he had become a “fifth wheel” and “surplus to requirements”.

The merging of the review, with its end-of-April deadline, into the commission, has meant this interim report has been made before relevant figures have appeared before the commission, which only starts hearing evidence next week.

Given this apparently illogical timing, it would have made more sense to have extended the deadline for the interim report, to enable the commission to gain the full picture on key issues it canvasses. Undoubtedly the government would have granted extra time if the commission had requested it.

As it is, the interim report is thinner than one would wish, as Richardson predicted it would be when he quit.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Dennis Richardson’s exit puts antisemitism royal commissioner under more pressure

Albanese at a news conference on Thursday seized on the commission’s conclusion that no legal or regulatory gap had been found that impeded “the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to prevent or respond to” an attack of the kind that happened at Bondi.

The legal framework might be OK but how well or badly did agencies operate within it? Key answers to that are left for later.

“Important issues arising from the Bondi attack, including whether there was any failure to identify and act upon intelligence in the lead up to it, or in the allocation of police resources to the Chanukah event, will be addressed in hearings,” the report says.

“No conclusion in these respects can be reached on a review of the agencies’ documents alone and in the absence of according procedural fairness to any person or agency at risk of an adverse finding.”

Precisely. But some hearings will have to be held in secret, the commission adds.

Much material about ASIO is classified in this report, including how it sets its priorities. The report gives year-by-year public statements from ASIO, which assess the various threats.

“It can be seen from the course of the Director-General of Security’s public statements from 5 August 2024 until late 2025 that ASIO publicly and repeatedly drew attention to the heightened risk of a terrorist attack and to an environment of ‘disturbing escalation’ of antisemitic incidents,” the report says.

“It will be necessary to investigate whether and how ASIO and other Commonwealth and state intelligence and law enforcement agencies understood and acted on those assessments of a probable attack; and to consider the adequacy of what was said to be ASIO’s ‘full use of our capabilities and powers’ in the context of ongoing antisemitic attacks.

"These are matters that will be explored in hearings.”

The report invites a lot of reading between the lines.

The commission does make the pointed observation, after reviewing classified material, that despite an overall increase in funding for the national intelligence community, “the proportion of funding allocated to counter-terrorism significantly declined across the NIC over the period from 2020 to 2025”.

Albanese was anxious to stress the government is acting quickly on the report’s recommendations, as far as they relate to Commonwealth responsibilities. Cabinet’s national security committee ticked off on them early Thursday morning.

Of the 14 recommendations, five are secret.

A big restraint referred to in the report is the criminal action against the surviving alleged Bondi offender. This means while some now-secret material may be released subsequently, that could be a long time away given how slowly the law proceeds. A relevant question is how much of a constraint the legal proceedings will put on the commission’s final report.

The report’s chapter about Commonwealth and state intelligence and law enforcement agency activities regarding Bondi is classified. “It should remain confidential until the finalisation of any criminal proceedings arising out of the Bondi attack. Thereafter a public version of the chapter should be released.”

Two recommendations go to the government’s gun buyback scheme, saying in essence it should be finalised as soon as possible. At present some jurisdictions are being recalcitrant or dragging their feet. Queensland on Thursday immediately repeated it would not be budging in its refusal to sign up to the gun buyback.

But, though given a lot of emphasis by the government, the gun issue is not the most important of the many challenges presented by the threats of terrorism and antisemitism.

Certain recommendations go to doing the very obvious. For example: “The Counter-Terrorism handbook should be updated promptly and then at least every three years”, and the Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator’s role should be full-time.

The report also says the federal government “should consider whether National Security Committee ministers, including the Prime Minister, should participate in a counter-terrorism exercise, along with all National Cabinet members, within nine months of each federal election”.

At the sharp end of things, the commission recommends a more comprehensive approach by New South Wales police at high-risk Jewish events.

The commission observes, “the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Israel and Iran in February 2026 is likely to have increased the risk of attacks directed at the Australian Jewish community”.

Public attention has been focused on how the war has exposed Australia’s vulnerability on fuel and other items coming through our supply lines, and its implications for inflation and economic growth. The commission’s grim warning is a reminder of the intensified danger of terrorism as another cost the Iran war poses.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Activists sailing on dozens of boats attempting to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver aid say Israeli forces intercepted them, detaining the crews while the flotilla was sailing near the Greek island of Crete.

(Image credit: Joan Mateu Parra)