Analysis and companion papers
Work that sits alongside the submission rather than inside it. Some of it is method, published before it produced anything. Some of it is argument we are still testing. None of it is settled, and it is all here so that it can be disagreed with.
How to read anything on these pages
The submission itself is a single, considered proposal. These are not. They are working documents at different stages of confidence, and each one states its own limits on its own face.
Where a paper carries a caveat — that its case citations are unverified against the authorised reports, that it is not written by a legal practitioner, that a theory is not proven — that caveat is part of the paper and travels with it. Nothing here should be quoted as a Hidden Shield finding.
The research programme
One instrument, published before a single document had been coded, so that it could not later be suspected of having been shaped to produce its own findings.
Cohesion Coding Rubric
The published method behind our analysis of submissions to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Four dimensions, twenty-six items, with a verbatim quotation required against every score. It describes structural features of an argument. It does not rank them, and it does not score anyone as right or wrong.
- →Read the rubric and the coding rulesStatus: unfrozen, under reliability test. One coder has coded the six-document reliability subset; the second coding is under way. There are no results yet.
How a coder reads a submission
The rubric drawn as a model, and then applied in public to two real pairs of submissions — including the mistake a coder makes reading quickly. Every quotation has been checked against the Commission’s published PDF at the page given.
- →See the instrument appliedFour submissions, chosen because they sit outside the six being used for the reliability test. If you are one of the organisations quoted and you believe the coding is wrong, it will be corrected on the page.
Buyback watch
A live policy matter that touches this project at one specific point, tracked here because of what it bears on rather than because we have a position on firearms policy.
The New South Wales buyback
A summary of what was said publicly in a Shooters Union Australia webinar on 3 September 2026, read against the constitutional grounds in our companion paper below. The question of interest is narrow: whether the Commonwealth attached conditions to its money, because that is what the strongest legal ground turns on.
- →Read the summaryClaims summarised from a public webinar and not independently verified. Not legal advice. This page does not endorse any campaign and takes no position on how anyone should vote.
Three working papers
Written by Lawrie Lyons. They cross-reference one another and they are at different stages of confidence — which each of them says, on its own first page.
The National Gun Buyback Scheme — Constitutional Grounds and the Defence-Capability Question
Asks whether the Commonwealth’s co-funding of the New South Wales buyback is open to constitutional challenge. Three grounds, in descending order of strength, with the principal obstacle confronted rather than avoided. The realistic outcome it identifies is amendment, not invalidation.
- 01Section 96 and the conditions question — the strongest ground, and the one with no policy content at all. It turns on a matter of fact that a document request could settle.
- 02Just terms — contingent on the first, engaged by the flat schedule, the cap and the Phase 2 fee.
- 03Defence capability — useful only as rebuttal on characterisation. Advanced on its own it is a parliamentary submission, not a legal one.
- !Case citations are drawn from general knowledge and have not been verified against the authorised reports. The paper is not legal advice and was not written by a legal practitioner. Both caveats are printed on the document.
Criminological Analysis — the Police-Impersonation Ruse
Argues that a fake roadside stop by someone presenting as police explains a category of Australian disappearance in which a vehicle is found abandoned and undamaged. Anchored to documented overseas cases, and grading every claim as established, suspected, or requiring caution.
- !The paper explicitly declines to attribute the ruse to any named individual, and the theory is not presented as proven. Read those gradings as written.
Protecting Travellers on Australia’s Remote Highways
Applies an air-marshal probability model to long-distance road travel, proposing that a small proportion of road users be licensed and recorded as protectors, with cross-border recognition of that licence.
- !The least settled of the three. It extends the framework to a cohort that has never held lawful armed authority in public service, which is a departure from the submission’s central argument rather than an application of it. Published for scrutiny, not offered as a recommendation.
Working papers, not settled positions
These papers were written to be argued with. Where one of them is wrong, we would rather hear it from a reader than defend it later, and a correction carrying a source will be acted on.
None of them forms part of the submission placed before the Commission.
Disagreement is the point
Anyone may take the same documents, apply the same rubric, and reach different scores. An item that two people outside this project code differently is an item that needs rewriting.
Correspondence is welcome from researchers, from the organisations whose submissions appear in the corpus, and from anyone who thinks a code or a claim has been applied wrongly.
The coding rubric The Hidden Shield submission Send a correction