A Western Sydney man who allegedly made death threats against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on social media before the federal election has been charged with threatening a Commonwealth parliamentarian.
Alexander Phillip David Keating, from Kingswood, appeared before Downing Centre Local Court on Friday, before Albanese confirmed he was the politician allegedly targeted with death threats at a press conference in Sydney.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed he had been the target of threats, and that a man had been charged.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“The person is myself, mentioned in today’s newspapers, but I don’t comment on national security issues … whether it involves someone else or whether it involves me directly,” he said.
“What I do is have confidence in our national security agencies to do their job, and they do it very well.”
The Australian Federal Police identified threats against Albanese on social media in March.
Keating allegedly made three threats from his social media account, and police executed a search warrant at his home on May 7.
Keating’s devices were taken and searched by police, and he was given a court attendance notice to face the charge of threatening to cause harm to a Commonwealth public official, for which the maximum penalty is nine years in jail.
He will return to court in August.
AFP acting commander Mark Baron said the police took all reports on the safety and security of parliamentarians seriously.
“The AFP supports freedom of speech and political expression, but I want to make it clear we will never tolerate criminal behaviour, including threats and harassment,” Baron said in a statement.
In March, AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw told Senate estimates there had been 712 reports of threats against high office holders, federal parliamentarians, dignitaries and electorate offices during the financial year to that point.
“The politicians who have been targeted are across the political spectrum live throughout Australia and are of different faiths,” Kershaw said.
The nature of the threats, Kershaw said, often targeted female parliamentarians and high office holders, “with a common feature being offensive material centred on derogatory language about their appearance”.
“Some of this material also contains extremely violent themes, including threats of graphic, sexual violence,” he said.
As discourse over the war in Gaza heightened last year, a number of MPs had their offices vandalised, including Labor MPs Josh Burns, Peter Khalil, Ged Kearney and Bill Shorten.
During the election campaign, Liberal senator James Paterson’s office was targeted by neo-Nazis. About 30 people dressed purely in black as one man yelled into a microphone that politicians would “not go unpunished”.
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