Why Chris Minns is not to blame for the PM’s terrorism sh*tshow

NSW Premier Chris Minns has copped a lot of flack about the PM being left in the dark about a terror plot – but he’s the wrong person to blame.

OPINION

Watching the Prime Minister tie himself up in knots over when he was told about the alleged caravan bomb plot in NSW brings one word to mind.

That word, apologies to readers, is sh*tshow.

It’s unfathomable that Anthony Albanese doesn’t realise instinctively that it’s completely wrong that the Australian Federal Police did not alert him or his Attorney-General to the fact that a major investigation was underway.

That it makes his government look stupid, out of the loop and weak.

It’s politically inept that instead of reading the AFP the riot act he’s prolonging the agony on a daily basis by refusing to say when he was told.

Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

The Prime Minister’s office is referring all questions to the AFP and the AFP is happy to tell anyone who will listen they didn’t tell him, or the Attorney-General or anyone in the Federal Government and they don’t care and don’t think that’s a problem.

What’s worse, the Albanese Government is nodding along and agreeing with the AFP it’s perfectly fine they were kept in the dark.

Come again? What the hell is going on in the AFP that they seriously think they don’t need to tell the PM there’s a caravan full of explosives in Dural with anti-Semitic messages and a list of targets?

Sure it’s been interesting enough for NSW Premier Chris Minns to field questions over why he didn’t tell the PM.

But we are peppering the wrong person with the wrong questions.

Chris Minns and David Hudson, Deputy Commissioner of the NSW Police Force addressed the media on Wednesday. Picture: 9News

Perhaps former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian had a more supplicant relationship with Scott Morrison and had him on speed dial.

Who knows. But the simple fact is there’s a protocol here and the protocol is that the job of telling the PM belongs to the AFP.

So that’s where people should be directing their questions in the first instance.

And when the AFP have made it clear they didn’t think they needed to, that’s the moment the PM and his Attorney-General should have gotten on the blower to the AFP commissioner, and told him if he doesn’t think he needs to tell the Federal Government that he needs to get a new job.

Scott Marshall and Tammie Farrugia have been arrested on the “periphery” of the investigation into the Dural caravan. Picture: Facebook

Ms Farrugia posted on Facebook looking for a caravan on December 6.

The thing I find absolutely astonishing about this unholy mess and the insipid, weak response of the Prime Minister, is to consider for a moment the conduct of the Australian Federal Police when it had the Morrison Government on speed dial every time Brittany Higgins walked into a police station.

Remember when Brittany Higgins first went to police in 2019 and we later learned that the deputy police commissioner Leanne Close went to visit then Defence Minister Linda Reynolds to tell her that Higgins had made a complaint?

She was also informed when she didn’t proceed with the complaint after the election was called.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb and Deputy Commissioner David Hudson held a press conference on Thursday addressing the ongoing police investigation into the Dural incident. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

And then years later, when Brittany Higgins walked into a Canberra police station just days before the story broke in February 2021, they told the Morrison Government that too.

This is what happened. In the wake of the AFP’s raids on media outlets in 2019, it had established a new group known as the Sensitive Investigations Oversight Board (SIOB), which considers matters that should be brought to the Minister’s attention.

The SIOB, chaired by AFP Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney, met after Ms Higgins contacted the police, but before the story broke in the media, and made the decision to contact Mr Dutton.

The property at Dural in Sydney’s north west where a caravan containing explosives was relocated to before the discovery. Photo: Jeremy Piper

Mr Dutton kept it to himself for 24 hours as he didn’t think the PM’s office needed to know, but after news.com.au contacted the Prime Minister’s office on Friday, February 12, 2021, about the matter asking questions, his chief of staff passed on the information to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

And that’s why the Prime Minister’s office was briefing journalists back then that it was a live investigation, because they had inside information on every contact Brittany Higgins had with the cops.

So the question has to be asked. On what planet does the Morrison Government need to know about a female staffers considering, maybe, making a sexual assault complaint but the Albanese Government doesn’t need to know about a live joint-terrorism investigation into a caravan packed with explosives?

The AFP has questions to answer and the Albanese Government should start asking them instead of letting the cops pat them on the head and keep them in the dark.

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Originally published as Why Chris Minns is not to blame for the PM’s terrorism sh*tshow