What a royal commission can and cannot do
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A royal commission is a formal, independent inquiry established to investigate a matter of significant public concern, typically given strong powers to compel evidence and testimony that go well beyond what an ordinary agency review could achieve. Its scope is usually defined precisely by the terms of reference set at the outset.
What a royal commission can do is gather evidence, hold public hearings, and make findings and recommendations that carry considerable moral and political weight, often prompting legislative reform. What it generally cannot do is impose a criminal conviction or a civil penalty directly, since those outcomes remain the responsibility of the ordinary courts.
This division of function is deliberate, since a commission's broad investigative powers would sit uneasily alongside the stricter procedural protections a criminal trial requires. Recommendations still need to be acted upon by government or referred elsewhere for prosecution, which is why implementation, rather than the inquiry itself, is often the harder part of the process.