How Peter Dutton got it wrong on the caravan – and why voters need to know it

Peter Dutton has mastered the art of using attack as the best form of defence – so his team is at it again in reaction to the fake terror threat from a gangland plot with a caravan of explosives.

Federal and state police have just shredded the confected claims about the caravan by confirming it was a ruse by criminals to gain plea deals with prosecutors, but the Coalition responds by declaring the government must reveal more about what it knew.

In early February, Peter Dutton called a press conference to demand an inquiry into the government’s knowledge of the caravan discovery.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In fact, the opposition leader should be answering questions. More than anyone, he whipped up the political storm six weeks ago by claiming the caravan was a security failure at the top of the government.

He even said the caravan was “believed to be the biggest planned terrorist attack” in Australia’s history.

Believed by whom? Not by the federal and state authorities, because they acted on an early theory it was a “con job” by organised crime.

Dutton wanted to believe the caravan was the nation’s biggest planned terrorist attack because it suited him to amplify the danger. Nobody else dialled up the alarm in the same way.

Yes, NSW Premier Chris Minns called it terrorism. “This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event,” he said on January 29, soon after a news report revealed the discovery of the caravan on Sydney’s northwestern fringe. He was wrong to use such loaded words when he could have been more circumspect. It became too easy for others to skip the word “potential” when talking about mass casualties.

Yes, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it terrorism. Asked on radio on January 30, he agreed with Minns and said the caravan was designed to create fear. This was technically correct, but there was another dynamic at work. Once the premier called it terrorism, it would have been risky for the prime minister to hedge on the same question. It would have helped, however, to inject an element of doubt.

Minns and Albanese could have been more honest: “Is this terrorism? We simply cannot know at this stage.” The problem is that so few leaders will admit what they do not know.

Dutton went harder than both because he had a political objective. Nobody else called for a national inquiry into the response. The opposition leader was partisan from the start.

But the opposition attack rested on one central claim: that there was a risk to innocent lives from a terror attack. There was not. As this masthead revealed, the explosives were up to 40 years old and police suspected a criminal ruse.

Authorities said very early on that they did not believe there was an imminent threat. The same authorities have now confirmed there were no terrorists at all.

So the incident never reached a threshold that required a rapid alert to the prime minister. Albanese is coy about what he knew when. The key point is that this only matters if we are sure that he absolutely needed to know about the caravan. He did not. The Coalition attack fails on this fundamental point.

The idea of a national inquiry was always a political ploy made of rickety logic, even when Dutton convened a press conference in Parliament House to demand action. The problem? He said himself there was no failure of process among the security agencies. So why hold an inquiry?

Should Dutton be given a leave pass because he did not know all the facts about the police investigation? In fact, this is a key reason he should have been more cautious with his claims. He could have sought more briefings from authorities. By going so hard, and being so openly partisan about national security, he is more exposed now the facts have emerged.

Dutton has so many cheerleaders in the media, especially among News Corp columnists and Sky News commentators, that he slips past the usual scrutiny when he gets things wrong.

Remember how he claimed the nuclear waste from a small reactor would only fill one can of Coca-Cola each year? He was out by several tonnes. You could read that here, but not in some other publications.

Albanese has made his share of stumbles – and the polls show it. There is no shortage of commentary about his mistakes. Whether the subject is his purchase of a home on the coast during a housing crisis or his underwhelming policy agenda, he has had his share of criticism in these pages.

This time, however, all the questions are for Dutton to answer. Why was he so quick to create a confected crisis out of a criminal plot? He increased the alarm about the caravan in ways that added to community anxiety about terrorism. He gave more publicity to the con.

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