BEHIND THE BADGE – NICK KALDAS

Nick Kaldas was born in Egypt in 1958 and moved with his family to Australia in 1969. He served in the NSW Police for 35 years, the last ten as the Deputy Commissioner. His career was mainly in major and organised crime investigations and counter terrorism. Nick also held a number of significant international roles, including Deputy Chief Police Adviser with the Coalition Forces in Iraq in 2004, overseeing the rebuilding of the Iraqi police and security forces; Chief of investigations in the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2009-10 and investigating the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri. In 2025, Nick Kaldas released his memoir Behind The Badge. To speak of some of his book’s recollection, Nick Kaldas addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 24 March 2025. The paper which follows was taken from an edited transcript of Nick Kaldas’ talk.

BEHIND THE BADGE: FROM EGYPTIAN BOY TO NSW POLICE SENIOR OFFICER TO COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT ROYAL COMMISSIONER

NICK KALDAS

Distinguished guests, ladies and gents, it’s great to see old friends here and I’m really happy that so many of you turned out today. I just want to thank Gerard and The Sydney Institute for having me.

This opportunity to speak here tonight is humbling. I’ve just signed the book for the people who have spoken here and when you look at all the dignitaries that have been through here, I’m not sure if I really belong in this company. But my connection with Gerard goes back almost 20 years to the day when I first was promoted to assistant commissioner for counter-terrorism. Gerard asked to interview me, and I remember being really flattered that someone like Gerard would see me back then as someone who was worthy of an in-depth interview. We had a good couple of hours and covered a whole lot of topics and solved the problems of the world which was wonderful.

Tonight, I thought I’d speak to you about a few themes that, hopefully, would come out of my book. I want to mention why I wrote the book, my journey as a young migrant kid from Egypt and then discuss the various roles I’ve held, both in Australia and internationally.

I have a dear friend called Bob Baer, whom you might want to Google at some stage. He’s ex-CIA and he’s written five or six books now. He was the head CIA person in Lebanon throughout most of the civil war. He’s been there and done it all. His story is just amazing. He wrote his first book using the CIA’s nickname of “the company” titled The Company We Keep which was then made into a movie called Syriana. It’s Bob’s life story. George Clooney plays Bob Bear but I need to stress that Bob Bear doesn’t look anything like George Clooney. Now that I’ve written this book, some of my former colleagues from police, who are basically affectionately known as “smart asses”, are trying to guess who would play me if they made it into a movie. Danny DeVito has been mentioned but I don’t know.

Bob Baer inspired me as have other friends as well. Gary Jubelin, former homicide investigator, is a dear friend and has written two books now. Bob said to me, “It’s not all for you or all about you, it’s about your kids, your wife and all your loved ones.” Police don’t normally talk about themselves, and we certainly don’t go home at the end of a shift and tell family what you’ve seen and what you’ve done and what you’ve been through. That’s even more so with some of the jobs I’ve had overseas investigating chemical weapons in Syria or the assassination of Lebanese

Cops, in particular, don’t talk about this stuff. You don’t brag, and it’s seen as bragging if you say anything. What Bob said to me was that he dedicated his book to his kids and said, “I hope this goes some way towards explaining where the hell I was.” He did miss out on a lot of their childhood. I don’t think I did anywhere near as much. Writing the book was a torturous experience, I have to say, three years plus and you have to go back and check everything and make sure the facts are right and the dates and quotes and everything else are all accurate.

Bob Carr, our former premier, gave me some advice some time ago. He said, “Nick you must go back and check everything because human memory is fallible.” And he said he could have sworn some things were black – he’s written I think four or five books – but he checked, and black was actually white. I was very conscious of that. I did dedicate the book to my kids, and I hope it tells my kids and grandkids and great grandkids and the community, generally, about some of the places I’ve been in and what I’ve learned and our journey – a journey from upper Egypt to Cairo then from Cairo to Sydney.

One of the things that has struck me over the many years in my career is that family is really what it’s all about in many ways. It is what shapes you, your anchor. I have a friend who’s on a board with me, an English fellow and a former special forces British SAS. As a former regimental sergeant major, he’s been in every major battle in the last 20 years. Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else where they’ve gone. The picture of him in uniform has so many of medals on his chest. I’m proud to call him a friend and he’s very proud of himself, obviously, as well. He tells the story of how his last commanding officer said to his wife at a medal ceremony, “Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that Vince would achieve all these things?” And she looked at him and said, “Vince has never featured in my wildest dreams.” They do keep you grounded, don’t they, the family.

So, why did I join the police? I joined in 1981, some 40-45 years ago now. There weren’t many migrants in the in the police at that time. But, I’ve reflected often and certainly when I was writing the book on why I joined. I think it’s a desire to serve, to make a difference, to serve the community. And I hope throughout my service that I served as a role model for young men and women, particularly from migrant backgrounds. It might inspire them to join and to rise. To contribute to them realising that there should be no glass ceilings. If I could do it, anyone can.

Mike Julian, a former deputy commissioner from NYPD and a very dear friend, was some years ago head of security for Westfield shopping centres. He thinks philosophically about everything; he’s a deep thinker about some of the issues that we all face. He used to tell me that in his assessment, joining the police is about a desire to stand up to bullies. To right the wrongs. To help those who can’t help themselves. It’s particularly so for people who are doing criminal investigation and major crime investigations, armed robberies, rapes, murders. People who cannot simply write the wrongs or fix things for themselves. Subconsciously, if not consciously, that’s why a lot of us join; it is certainly altruistic. Most of us stay altruistic, although some run off the rails, as we know. My career, as Gerard said, has mainly been (by choice) in homicide and armed robberies, organised crime and, in the last decade or so, counterterrorism and related issues. I don’t regret any of it. You’re not dealing with happy customers most of the time and you do get complaints, and nasty things said about you.

One of the highlights, if you can call it a highlight, of my career was leading the investigation into the assassination of John Newman, the MP in New South Wales who was murdered. We convicted the main offender. He’s been sentenced to life, never to be released. But those who supported him called us all sorts of names and made allegations against us. This is how torturous the process can be. But if you’re committed and you want to do good things you cannot give up, obviously, you’ve got to continue.

So, we had a coroner’s inquest. We had hearings in the New South Wales Crime Commission. We had a coronial inquest. A committal hearing which went for about three months. Three supreme court trials. Then he went to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the Court of Criminal Appeal and the High Court of Australia. Out of all of that, he was found to have done it, he was found guilty. He was, however, granted a Royal Commission of Inquiry into his conviction which took nine months. We were in the witness box for days at a time. Trying to explain what we said and did 15 years before. Even though it had been through such torturous judicial oversight. At the end, Justice Patton said that he was even more guilty than the jury was allowed to hear. It’s a contact sport. I accepted that when I went to major crime because it’s again about bullies and about people who will stand over you to stop you from doing what you need to do, your job and what you’re there to do.

Now to my role in overseas operations that Gerard mentioned. I’m Egyptian born but migrated as a 12-year-old. I spoke English before we came to Australia as well French which, unfortunately, I’ve lost. We came out with basically not much in our pockets, but we certainly had dreams and a vision for where we wanted to go and an aspiration to do well. I joined the police. In time, I met a lot of people through my work with the FBI and the USDA and so on. Some of those people were selected by the Bush Administration to go to Iraq after the fall of Saddam, the subsequent invasion, and to help rebuild the Iraqi police and security forces. They contacted me and asked if I was interested, and it took me a little while to agree. I wasn’t getting on with the hierarchy in New South Wales Police at the time and I had a particularly cranky boss who used to yell at me. I took a leave of absence 12 months. I told my cranky boss that I’d go somewhere with less conflict and hostility. He didn’t laugh.

I was selected to go over as a Senior Police Adviser. A few months after that, I was promoted to be the Deputy Chief Police Adviser – rebuilding the Iraqi police. It was a heck of a job, and we did it in a very active conflict zone. There was an insurgency trying to stop everything from happening. There were a lot of people who simply didn’t want us to succeed obviously. It would be a two-hour discussion in itself as to what went wrong in Iraq and what went right. I’ll just make this one point.

My being there had nothing to do with what I thought of US policy. I’m not political at all. I’ve tried to be absolutely, politically neutral in whatever roles I’ve had. And as I came through the ranks in New South Wales both sides of politics say, “How about it?” And I just say, “Look I’m not a politician. I’m here to do a job. Please leave me out of all this stuff.” I went because the Iraqi people needed help, and they needed to stand up again and to democratise and modernise everything they were doing. Because they had fallen badly behind obviously under the Saddam regime.

I’m happy to have done that. It was unusual. The Australian War Memorial interviewed me for a series of oral history. I’m the only serving Australian police officer to have served with the Coalition in Iraq; others have come and gone in a week or two. But I certainly spent most of 2004 there, and then went back twice more. Firstly, because there were allegations that Australians had been kidnapped, and I went to help with that investigation. The third time was in 2005. Again, at the request of our federal government to help them establish the Iraqi special tribunal. Which covered regime crimes and Saddam’s trials and so on.

The thinking in Canberra, and with our federal government, was that Saddam Hussein had 12 or 13 major cases against him. On my return, I was asked to debrief in Canberra. My view was that they would try him on the first. They would find him guilty. He would appeal and lose, and they would execute him. People simply didn’t believe me. They just said, “There’s 12 cases they’re going to have to hear – people need closure. The international community will insist.” Guess what happened. They tried him on the first one. He was found guilty. He appealed, he lost and they executed him. The 35 years of oppression and a really bad dictatorship obviously came to the fore and there was a lot of revenge.

So, I came back and was promoted to Deputy Commissioner. I got married and a few other things happened. But then I was selected by the United Nations to head up the special tribunal for Lebanon’s investigations into the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister Hariri. And there were about 20 other murders that had occurred over a four-year period between 2004 and 2008. Mainly of politicians, journalists, military men and police. The state of Lebanon passed legislation, but they didn’t feel they could investigate it because the suspects were Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is a military force in Lebanon, a militia and they’re also in parliament. They have a political party. At the time, the Lebanese government didn’t feel they could do it. The last assassination had occurred a few months before I arrived. It was of a fellow that would have been one of my deputies in the investigation. He was a Lebanese police officer called Wissam Eid, and he was the first one to analyse communications. He had worked out the suspects, where their phones were and so on. Essentially these were the bad guys – all Hezbollah.

The Sunnis and the Shiites in Lebanon and the Middle East are like the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Hezbollah and the regime at the time in Syria and Iran are all Shiites, and they do stick together. Bob Baer gave expert evidence for us. He made a statement in relation to how the three of them (Hezbollah, Iran and Syria) acted in unison.

We began to prove, with the communications analysis, that the bad guys, who were Hezbollah, were Shiites in a very Sunni area, Tripoli, in the north of Lebanon, two hours north of Beirut. They purchased the mobile phones, the SIM cards, the suicide vehicle and so on. And they activated those mobile phones on and off for about six months in this Sunni area. They also got a patsy, a young fellow called Ahmad Abu Adass who was a Palestinian Sunni guy. They had him make a video – a martyrdom video – to say he was doing the work of Hezbollah in the name of Osama Bin Laden and the Sunnis. It was the exact opposite of the truth. He disappeared and we’re sure they used him to make the video and then executed him. But it was all meant to convince us that the problem was the Sunnis, not Hezbollah.

But what we proved the five of them who were involved in the murder – had their real phone that they used day-to-day and the murder phone that they used to coordinate at the time and place of the murder. For each of those five defendants, the two phones moved together for six months. The head of Hezbollah then gave a number of international speeches singling me out and calling me names and so on.

The point I wanted to make about Lebanon, with all those murders that had occurred, there was a cult of impunity. People were committing murders knowing that they weren’t going to be investigated properly. They were never going to be held to account, and nothing was going to happen. But, after the tribunal was established, the murders stopped, at least for a while. I think there’s been a couple in more recent times but certainly it’s a rapidly evolving environment in Lebanon and I’m watching closely as many good people are. And I hope and pray, as it is such a beautiful country, with beautiful people, that it improves. They’ve been through so much with the civil war and everyone has repeatedly invaded and held territory there and so on. But they’re so resilient, they just bounce back, I don’t know how they do it.

So, we indicted the five guys. Two are now dead, three have been convicted. And Hezbollah, you’d have to say, out of the current conflict, has been decimated. Their capabilities have been decimated. Their leaders have, and certainly Hassan Nasrallah himself and those who followed him, been assassinated by Israel. But I make no comment about that. I’m just saying they have been. I would argue that you can’t be a democratic country if you have more than one military force inside it. It means someone can force the government or coerce authorities into doing something or threaten them. Which is exactly what Hezbollah have been doing in Lebanon. They are the ultimate bully, in my view. So, I was happy that we contributed towards ending that cult of impunity and hopefully making them think twice before they committed any more murders.

After I was selected by the United Nations, I left the police to lead the investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It’s fair to say that all of the nations and the intelligence communities that you would think of from the West and elsewhere had a finger in that pie. Everybody wanted us to listen to them and everybody had their view about who did it and what happened and so on. Including the Russians and some Arab countries that had aligned with the Assad regime which was in power then. We wrote a good report, which proved that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons in Syria and nobody else. Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people, there’s no doubt about that. The United Nations Security Council accepted the report and they filed it. There were more attacks. I recall President Barack Obama saying if it can be proven that Assad has done this it will be a red line and there will be consequences. But nothing happened. Nobody actually held Assad to account. If you keep doing something and you get away with it, you’re not going to stop.

About six months later, I was contacted and asked to go back. I declined politely. The last job I had with the United Nations was the office of Internal Oversight Services. Each big segment of the United Nations has to have an oversight office. One of the bigger segments of the United Nations is UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) which is much maligned at the moment. But they operate everything to do with the Palestine refugees. After 1948, they were established as a temporary measure for the hundreds of thousands who were homeless and so on. And here we are 70 odd years later. There there’s about 5 million plus refugees and about 30,000 staff in five countries – Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, along with Gaza and the West Bank. I had four departments; investigations, audit, evaluation – the UN very systematically evaluates whether they’re getting value for money from whatever they’re doing in the refugee space – and an ethics division. The ethics division in the United Nations is proactive. It exists in many areas of the United Nations. They don’t wait for complaints. They go in and check your systems and processes before anything happens, before there’s a problem, and to see if everything’s going well. So, I took that job up and my wife and I moved to Jordan for about three and a half years. It was certainly an experience.

I’ve travelled extensively in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank. It’s such a fractured region. In relation to the current conflict, I wish I had solutions. You’re constantly looking for ways to try and get people to see the other point of view. But they’re almost incapable of it. All sides are incapable of seeing the other person’s point of view, the other side’s point of view.

I came back to Australia to do some consulting work and then I was selected by Prime Minister Scott Morrison to chair the Royal Commission into defence and veteran suicide. It took me a couple of weeks to agree. I knew it was going to be a a tough one. It certainly was. We did 900 private hearings. That’s me or one of the other commissioners, the psych and the person in for the hearing. They can bring support people with them – their doctor, their mum, their dad, their husband, wife, whatever. They tell their stories. They’re people who would not give evidence for whatever reason in public. There were 900 over three years.

We did every capital city at least a couple of times. There were three or four a day for the week. By the end of the week, I have to say, I had nothing left, nothing in the tank. You’d have to be inhuman not to feel something when you see such dreadful things that have happened to people. Such wrongs, if you like. A couple of statistics that illustrate the problem. Eighty per cent, in any year, of veterans and serving members of our defence force who suicide has never been to a war. For some people it is the blood and the gore and the trauma of conflict zones. But for the majority, it’s actually how they treat them. It’s what’s happening in the barracks. It’s the disciplinary system being weaponised against them when they complain. It’s the chain of command being horrible to you. It’s your workmates doing terrible things to you on boats or whatever.

We also had a team of analysts. They looked at what came before us. There were at least 57 inquiries that occurred over 30 years, and 770 recommendations before the Royal Commission was established. Many, if not most, of them were never actioned properly. No one ever actually assessed whether they acquitted the intent of those recommendations. Two of them were quite significant Senate inquiries that should have been followed up. I don’t think anyone went back to check if they achieved what was intended?

There was some really good work done and we galvanised all of that. We harnessed it. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. But at the end of the day, all we could do was make recommendations. We were the 58th inquiry, that we’re aware of. Many veterans who were very angry, quite rightly, often said to us, “Well, you’re just the 58^th inquiry, you’re not going to achieve anything.”

What kept us up at night was the question – what do we do to ensure that our recommendations are not simply filed like all the others? The main recommendation was the establishment of an independent body with Royal Commission powers, which would be able to report publicly – to assess the implementation of our recommendations and report publicly to parliament and the public. And to forever more watch that space and make sure that everything was on track.

Our task required us to look at the five eyes for the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand as well as Australia, obviously. We visited all of them and we looked at what they were doing. Canada and the US, in particular, had mechanisms in place so that this sort of function – of someone who’s independently looking at things and reporting publicly – would be made public and the media aware. To make parliament aware and to have people asking them questions. In the US – and perhaps because so many of their politicians have served in the military – there is a lot more awareness, frankly they care. Everyone we spoke to in the US said, “You get called up to Congress often; you get called up to the White House on a very regular basis.” I don’t know that too many Australian prime ministers have actually read those 57 reports or asked questions about what we’re doing for veterans. Or have insisted that things be followed up on.

We took an unusual approach. We were told by the lawyers that it’s unusual for sitting royal commissioners to talk to the media. We made a very conscious decision that the only way we were going to get anywhere with solving these problems was to raise the profile of the problems to such a degree that they become undeniable. Which is exactly what we did. I gave an address at the National Press Club – frankly I dropped the bucket on everyone. Many people weren’t happy with me. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t looking for a job in Canberra and I didn’t really care what they thought of me. I just wanted to do what we set out to do. I’m really happy to tell you that in record time, and Prime Minister Albanese stressed that it was in record time, they have accepted 104 of the 124 recommendations that we made. Including the main one, which is the establishment of that body that monitors what’s going on and reports and keeps it public.

I learned a lot in those three years about PTSD, about depression, about all the mental health issues that we all face. I had really bad PTSD when I came back from Iraq. I was at war with the New South Wales Police hierarchy about promotions and so on, it’s all in the book. They wouldn’t promote me for quite a few years. It’s not just a policing problem, it’s not just a military problem, it’s a society problem. There is a stigma attached to big hearted, tough men and women from the SAS or the police or the community generally. It’s really hard for them to put their hand up and say, “I’m not well I need your support. I don’t need to be judged. I don’t need to be put on a corner have my weapon taken off me and be declared non-operational because nobody knows what to do with me.” We have to find a way to try and remove the stigma so that people get help and feel they can put their hand up.

We made a whole bunch of recommendations in that regard. Two things became clear to me: that the problems in policing and emergency services are very similar to the military and that society has a role, all of you good folks here and those watching us at home, have a huge role to play in asking questions, writing letters. The media has a huge role to play as well. As a society we have not paid enough attention. The US is probably the other extreme where they say “thank you for your service”. You don’t line up at airports, you get free theatre tickets, movie tickets and so on. I’m not advocating all of that, but I’m saying there is a culture of respect in the US for the uniform. For those who serve and making sure that they look after them, particularly when they finish, and they’re broken.

A few firsts which I’ve proud of. Firstly, I was the first person from a non-English-speaking background, and first generation, having been born and brought up overseas, to reach the rank of Deputy Commissioner and probably to reach any at that level in government, in New South Wales at least. I’m probably one of the first, if not the first, to serve as a chair of a Federal or National Royal Commission without being a lawyer, let alone a former Supreme Court judge. What they did say to me later on – it’s part of the federal Attorney-General’s department – is that you’ve been in war zones, but you’re not military, so you haven’t got an allegiance or an agenda and you’re not wedded to the military. So, hopefully, you will bring an independent mind. You’ve run major investigations, this is simply an investigation, which it was.

I was blessed; I had two fellow commissioners. One was a former Supreme Court judge from Queensland, James Douglas, and the other one was a psychiatrist and former CEO of the National Mental Health Commission, Dr Peggy Brown. I believe we brought different perspectives to the problems, and it actually worked well. We got the job done, in that regard.

We went to each of the eight jurisdictions in Australia. Along the way, we interviewed, sometimes in public, and got witnesses to give evidence to the state or territory minister for veteran affairs. In Victoria, at that stage, Natalie Solomon was the Victorian state minister for Veterans Affairs. She was very impressive.

There are problems in the Middle East. There are problems in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen and so on. There are so many conflicts everywhere and there’s a lot of doom and gloom. I’m a glass half full type of guy and I just urge everyone to not be negative. To be positive. I have great faith in our society and our institutions. And we will get through this.

I’ll come to the end. When I look back on my service, there’s probably three principles that I’ve tried to adhere to, and I’ve tried to express them in the book. Leadership is really important. The problems I’ve looked at in some of these places and with the Royal Commission identified issues of a catastrophic failure of leadership. There’s a difference between being in charge and taking charge. Where things have gone wrong, and certainly at the Royal Commission, the issues we found were people with lots of pips on their shoulders and medals on their chest. They were in charge, but they weren’t taking charge and making sure that things got done.

The second principle is that you’ve got to treat others the way you’d like to be treated. When I was Deputy Commissioner of New South Wales Police and when people got promoted to superintendent, I used to try and meet with them and talk to them. I used to say to them, “All I’ll ask of you is you treat others the way you’d like to be treated and if I see that not happening, you’ll hear from me.” And the third one is that hope is not a plan. I had those words on the wall. In whatever it is you do in your daily life, people hope everything will be all right. But if you don’t actually have a plan, if you don’t actually pick up the cudgel and do what is required to get the job done, it just doesn’t happen usually.

I look back on 35 years in police and all the roles I’ve had overseas. It’s almost a decade now of service in various roles since I left the police in the United Nations and internationally. I’m proud to have served my city, my state and my country. In the international space, in particular.

When I left the police, they asked me what I would miss. My answer was that you don’t miss the circus, but you miss the clowns. It’s really about the people. And the second thing was that I regret nothing in those years. Absolutely nothing.