Vikki Campion: If you are going to call it a terrorist attack, you better make sure it is a terrorist attack
Two inquiries into the alleged Dural caravan terrorist plot and we have a grand obfuscation of absurd answers to simple questions and are still no closer to the truth, writes Vikki Campion.
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Everyone smelled a rat. Far from a terrorist attack, the Dural caravan parked in a paddock seemed more like a skit from Monty Python with its backwards swastikas and childlike notes listing off targets.
From the start, cops and crooks alike found the Dural caravan that Anthony Albanese and Chris Minns were selling as a thwarted terror attack a bit off.
Ex-detectives and prosecutors in politics from left, right, and centre did not see the people behind it having the acumen for a foiled terrorist plot.
A caravan parked on the side of the road brimming with obvious evidence is more trying to lead you astray than creating what the Premier called a “mass casualty event”.
There have been two inquiries since – one federal, where the Prime Minister refused to help, and another continuing in the NSW upper house, where Minns refused to give evidence.
Last week, Minns’s top adviser, James Cullen, took the stand to claim he did not take a single note during police briefings to his boss on what was supposed to be the biggest terrorist act in Sydney since the Lindt cafe siege. The police told the inquiry that in briefings to the Premier, they didn’t call it terrorism or war or bushfire but kept to the facts: A caravan parked in a paddock had been found and explosives recovered.
On January 29, Minns called a presser to claim the caravan was a “potential mass casualty” event.
Beside him was Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson, who not once muttered the T-word and told the inquiry: “From very early on, in the briefings with the Premier, we suggested there could be ulterior motives”.
So why did political leaders throw care to the wind to call a media conference to label it a terror attack before police had time to rule that in?
If you are going to call it a terrorist attack, you better make absolutely sure it is a terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks mean an exponential increase in legislative power, which should not be dished out with gay abandon. Instead, police found it was a “manipulation of the criminal justice system”.
Within a month, they found no terrorism charges could be applied. If you go out and use the word terrorism and it comes out that it’s not, you need to do another media conference saying that.
We have seen this before, like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were never there.
There is a huge step up in the state’s power under terrorism laws compared to the day-to-day constabulary rules of police.
Any political staffer would be concerned about how this transpired and why the presser was being called and would be quoting verbatim what the police said.
The Premier’s chief of staff Cullen claimed “that the reason that language was being used in that press conference was that it was exactly the language and the briefing that police provided the Premier in the lead-up to the press conference on January 29”.
Yet, the staffers, while frequently taking notes throughout the inquiry, gave evidence in the inquiry that they had not taken a single note with police.
Who believes they cannot recall a thing because, oops, we forgot a pen?
When Nationals MLC Wes Fang brought up the State Records Act 1988 showing public offices were legally required to “make and keep full and accurate records”, and the Minister’s Office Handbook that clearly states that notes should be taken because, shockingly, “other employees may need access to the information, now or in the future”, the staffers claimed to have no notes.
“If the question ultimately is, did I take notes in these briefings, the answer is no, I did not,” Cullen said.
Wouldn’t the Premier’s advisers briefed on a potential terrorism plot think, “maybe I should jot this down”, or just open the notes app on my phone?
The media adviser’s reason for the rushed “terrorism” presser was that this masthead had broken the story about the caravan full of explosives.
If this is the case, why don’t you see Minns jumping in front of a camera when The Tele breaks yarns about bullying state government agencies such as EnCo hurting landowners?
Why are politicians so hard to find when you want them to answer anything about their specific remit?
Inquiry chairman Rod Rogers says the inquiry could have been avoided had the call for papers passed by the NSW Legislative Council returned any evidence.
Yet it too came back with nothing.
Two inquiries in and we have a grand obfuscation of absurd answers to simple questions and are still no closer to the truth.
WHILE LIBS STUMBLE AROUND WOMEN, LABOR GOES IN TO BAT FOR MEN
If the Liberal Party stumbles around thinking the reason it lost the election is because of gender quotas, it will lose the next election and the election after that.
Though this does explain why membership has fallen from 70,000 in the 1970s to 6000 today.
If you want to win Australia, you have to win both men and women, and men today are being left behind. You don’t have thriving communities without thriving sons, brothers and fathers, without recognising the needs of 50 per cent of your population.
It’s one thing to say you want to be a zealot for women’s rights, but what is your plan for men’s problems?
Male suicides make up three-quarters of all suicides in this country, thousands more every year than women.
Yet there has never been any high- profile attempt to address this obscene gender gap, no campaign to unpick the reality behind why men are choosing to kill themselves, when if it were reversed and 75 per cent of suicide deaths each year were female, there would be all manner of taxpayer largesse thrown at stopping the scourge.
While the Liberals are caught in this thick fog of gender confusion, Labor, to its credit, has appointed former Olympic shooting champion Dan Repacholi as envoy for men’s health. And it’s easy to see why.
Male life expectancy is four years shorter, they’re more likely to get sick from preventable diseases, have more heart problems, get sick for longer, “forget” to go to the doctor and statistically have a worse time at the end then women.
If the government and its grant funding are not based on criteria to assist women or culturally, linguistically different or disabled or Indigenous communities, are we doing anything at all? The job of government is to look after both genders, not to pretend that one will be fine with a “she’ll be right” attitude.
LIFTER
The ACT government for finally realising EV owners need to pay a fraction of the tax ICE owners do to pay the bills.
LEANER
Whoever coined the marketing phrase “cyclone bomb”. When can we go back to using terms like “big storm”?
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Originally published as Vikki Campion: If you are going to call it a terrorist attack, you better make sure it is a terrorist attack
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