Dutton accused of skipping caravan briefings to ‘stoke fear’
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of avoiding police briefings on the explosive-laden caravan found in NSW so he could stoke fear about it.
Burke took to the airwaves on Tuesday – a day after police revealed the abandoned caravan, found at Dural in Sydney’s north-west on January 19, was a “con job” arranged by organised crime figures – to blast Dutton.
After the find at Dural, Dutton was immediately on the offensive about the discovery, calling it potentially “the most catastrophic terrorist attack in our country’s history”.
“He made claim after claim which is now demonstrably untrue [and] simply asserted a large-scale planned terrorist attack,” Burke said on Tuesday.
“That is not what we were dealing with. We were dealing with a criminal con job, and Peter Dutton was one of the people who was conned.”
But the Coalition hit back, with home affairs spokesman James Paterson tweeting that he and shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash were briefed on the investigation on January 30, along with people from Dutton’s office.
At the time, the discovery of the caravan – packed with enough explosives to create a 40-metre blast, and a note with a list of “Jewish entities” – was still being treated as a potential terror incident.
You might like
“In a desperate attempt to distract from Labor’s failures on national security, Tony Burke has again misled the public. The Opposition was briefed by the AFP on Thursday 30 Jan, including myself, the Shadow AG and the Opposition Leader’s office,” Paterson tweeted.
A senior Coalition source also rejected Burke’s suggestion that briefing offers were declined, telling the ABC one was never offered.
The caravan was found after a string of antisemitic incidents in Sydney. Including arson and graffiti attacks on a synagogue, they sent shockwaves through the city’s Jewish community.
The Dural discovery was viewed as an escalation of antisemitism in Australia and prompted federal opposition calls for an inquiry into when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had learned of it.
Albanese, who has repeatedly condemned antisemitism, dismissed the need for an inquiry.
Early in the investigation, he also described it as a terrorist plot.
“After a reasonably short time they had started to review it and realised that what they were dealing with was something quite different,” Burke said.
“At that point, we continued to say publicly that Peter Dutton should be briefed. We continued to remind him that he was able to be briefed by the Australian Federal Police; he deliberately chose to not find out.”
Stay informed, daily
“As the police view developed, certainly our briefings and our understanding of the situation developed as well.”
Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the caravan was never going to cause mass casualties but was a concocted criminal plot to cause fear for their benefit.
Almost immediately on finding it, investigators believed it “was part of a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job”, she said.
On Monday, police made 14 more arrests related to the antisemitic crime wave. They said it was not ideologically motivated, but arranged to benefit organised crime figures
The men and women, aged 18-41, have been charged with 65 offences following the investigations into the multiple antisemitic incidents across Sydney’s east between October and February.
Charges were laid after warrants and firearm prohibition orders were executed across Sydney on Monday.
No one has yet been charged over the explosive-laden caravan.
On Tuesday, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said the criminals involved in the hoax “sought to take advantage of already-strained social cohesion and unprecedented levels of antisemitism by targeting the Jewish community for their own personal benefit”.
“This is reprehensible and had a chilling effect on the Jewish community,” Ossip said.
Monday’s “confirmation that the caravan plot was fabricated will bring some comfort to the Jewish community and we look forward to receiving further information as the investigation continues to progress”, he said.
“We will continue to engage closely with law enforcement agencies and the NSW government in relation to these matters and the ongoing security of the Jewish community.”
Reported cases of antisemitism and Islamophobia have increased in Australia since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel launched a war in Gaza in response.
– with AAP
