Immigration Minister Tony Burke has accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of being “reckless with national security” and claimed he deliberately chose to stay in the dark about what police had learned on the caravan to continue attacking Labor over the issue.
On Monday, Australian Federal Police said that investigators “almost immediately” came to the view that the caravan discovered in the Sydney’s northwestern fringe suburb of Dural in January was “essentially a criminal con job.”
The government has accused Peter Dutton of deliberately avoiding a briefing with police on the caravan.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
For weeks after the discovery came to light and was branded as a prelude to “terrorism” by NSW Premier Chris Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese because it contained a note with the address of a synagogue, Dutton used it as a political cudgel to attack federal Labor.
He argued in a press conference in Canberra on February 6 that the prime minister should explain whether he was aware of the caravan discovery before it became public and suggested the government was weak on national security if it had been out of the loop. Albanese repeatedly declined to answer the question, instead deferring to police and security services.
Speaking this morning on ABC Radio National on Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Burke slammed Dutton, saying the opposition leader had not sought a briefing from police at the height of the furore that could have informed him about law enforcement suspicions the caravan was not a genuine terror threat.
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“He deliberately chose to not find out. And so what we had was a situation where quite deliberately, Peter Dutton made a decision to not find out the facts from the Australian Federal Police, to ignore the advice from ASIO in lowering the temperature, simply because it suited his self-promotion ambitions.”
Burke said the Dutton’s claims were helping the organised crime groups that wanted to use information about the purported anti-semitic incidents to negotiate discounts to their sentences.
“There are real consequences if you’re not responsible with national security and if he had to make a choice between self-promotion and national security, I’m pretty disappointed in the path that he chose,” Burke said.
