PM declines to answer caravan question
The NSW Premier said a "comprehensive investigation" was being undertaken.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to answer when asked in Question Time on Tuesday when he was made aware of the discovery of a caravan containing explosives and a hit list of Jewish targets.
The caravan was found abandoned in the north-western Sydney suburb of Dural on January 19, the Daily Telegraph said last Wednesday. Alongside the explosives and the list was a message that read “F**k the Jews”. The Great Synagogue and Sydney Jewish Museum were among the targets on the list.
The AJN understands NSW Premier Chris Minns was briefed almost immediately but the Prime Minister was kept in the dark.
Asked by Opposition frontbencher Michael Sukkar when he had been made aware, Albanese told Parliament, “We don’t discuss those details … what you do when you have an ongoing investigation is that you take the advice of the Australian Federal Police and the ASIO director-general, and that is precisely what I have done the whole way through.”
When Sukkar probed, “We’ve asked for the date, not the detail,” Speaker Milton Dick said, “The Prime Minister is being clear about the question he was asked and particularly giving reasons perhaps why he’s not releasing that date.”
Minns for his part hit back last week at criticism over police keeping the investigation secret.
Addressing reporters last Thursday morning, Minns said, “If the police believe covert means are the best way of locking up people who are responsible for these actions, that’s what needs to happen.”
The NSW Premier said a “comprehensive investigation” was being undertaken.
“The public should have every confidence that the largest police force in the country, with the most experienced commanders when it comes to counterterrorism, are focused on precisely this issue,” he said.
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb added, “The fact that this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation and it’s been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used.”
That came after Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim told reporters on Thursday evening the roof body heard about the caravan “when we read about it in the media”.
“It is incumbent on the federal government and its national security ministers to say when they knew about this sickening incident, who is behind it and what steps they took to protect Australia’s Jewish community,” he said.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said the state roof body “have been saying for weeks now that the Jewish community is the target of an ongoing campaign of domestic terrorism”.
“This is now beyond dispute,” he said.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said last week that arrests had been made “on the periphery of this job”.
One individual named in relation to the investigation and taken into custody on a separate matter last month, Tammie Farrugia, was arrested in connection to an antisemitic vandalism and arson spree in Sydney’s Woollahra last December.
Police are also looking into whether the caravan may have been planted to be found.
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