‘Astounding’: Dutton turns up heat over PM’s knowledge of caravan plot

Peter Dutton has declared it astounding that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may have been kept in the dark about an apparent major antisemitic plot in Sydney, as the opposition vowed to take on key Donald Trump ally Elon Musk over the growth of neo-Nazi and other extremist content on social media.

The opposition leader’s demand for more detail on when Albanese was notified about the potential caravan explosives attack came as NSW Police said it had established crime scenes in Sydney’s eastern suburbs after antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on cars and homes in Randwick and Kingsford on Saturday night.

The head of Strike Force Pearl, a taskforce established to combat the rising wave of antisemitic attacks across the city, will address the media later on Sunday.

The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies called on Sunday morning for stronger penalties for the “despicable” graffiti, saying it was perpetrated for the “sole purpose of intimidating and terrorising the Jewish community and destabilising Sydney’s social harmony”.

The opposition is set to use the return to federal parliament this week after a lengthy summer break to grill Albanese on when he learnt that police had discovered a caravan in Sydney’s north-west packed with explosives along with the name of a Sydney synagogue, as the government seeks to burnish its credentials on the cost of living.

“I don’t think there’s been a true and honest account of what’s happened here,” Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.

Randwick council cleaners remove antisemitic graffiti from houses in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Credit: Edwina Pickles

“If the prime minister of our country is not across what was potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history essentially until the public found out about it, I think that is an absolute abrogation of his responsibility, and we do, I think, deserve to hear the answers.”

Albanese has refused to answer questions about when he learnt about the explosives discovery, saying: “I do not talk about operational matters for an ongoing investigation.

“I have no intention of undermining an ongoing investigation by going into the details.”

Dutton said he found it “astounding that the prime minister, it seems, didn’t find out [about the caravan] for seven or eight or nine days, and after [NSW] Premier [Chris] Minns found out” even though they appeared at events together during that period.

Minns has said state police told him about the caravan discovery on January 20, but Albanese has declined to say when he first learnt about the apparent plot.

Dutton said it was “inconceivable” that the topic would not have come up in conversations between Minns and Albanese, as he floated an unproven theory that police might have been worried about the prime minister’s office leaking details of the investigation.

“Otherwise it’s inexplicable that the premier of NSW would have known about this planning, this likely terrorist attack with a 40-metre blast zone, and he’s spoken to the prime minister over nine days, but never raised it, never discussed it,” Dutton said.

“I mean, if he knew that the prime minister wasn’t aware, wouldn’t he have raised it with him?

“I just think Premier Minns and the prime minister need to give an honest account of what they knew when and why the prime minister wasn’t briefed.

“It would have been the instinct of the AFP [Australian Federal Police] commissioner to brief the minister and the prime minister, as it was when I was home affairs minister.”

On Saturday Minns defended not telling Albanese about the secret police investigation into the caravan plot, saying authorities had told him it was “strictly confidential”.

Minns said he did not believe the virtual national cabinet meeting on January 21, convened by Albanese to address the rise of antisemitic hate crimes, was the appropriate forum to raise the matter.

“I completely accept that people would be scrutinising or understanding where and how I would brief my colleagues, but I wouldn’t do it on a forum that big, with so many people from other jurisdictions,” he said.

Asked about a report in this masthead that Australian neo-Nazis are thriving on Elon Musk’s X platform, Dutton said “of course” such content should be taken down.

“I’ve had a battle for over a decade against people like Elon Musk and [Meta boss] Mark Zuckerberg and others who are making money out of our kids, and they need to do it in a responsible way,” he said.

As well as running X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk is leading Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and has emerged as a key financial backer of the US president.

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