A caravan packed with explosives is the means. A note in the vehicle with Jewish addresses including a synagogue is the motive. Taken together these facts tell me that there is a growing risk of a mass casualty attack in Australia, most likely directed against Jews.
One can only wonder at the media management stupidity that prompted the NSW police to issue a statement just before 5pm on Wednesday saying “There is no ongoing threat to the community.”
This statement was released “on behalf of Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson”. He should explain how he can be so confident about something he clearly cannot know.
Something we can all be certain about is that attacks on Jews and their property have become more frequent, more flagrant and more dangerous. The ongoing threat is plain to see.
If the police and our security agencies had actionable intelligence about the network of individuals behind this caravan rigged as an improvised explosive device, I suggest those persons should be arrested.
It seems clear that the individuals in custody are at best low-level criminals, not planners.
The fact that more than 100 police are now reportedly active on Strike Force Pearl, the counter-terrorism taskforce, can be taken as a good indication that there is deep worry about the imminent risk of a terror attack.
The police don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know if there are any more improvised explosive devices out there. They will certainly be working to establish if the mining explosives in the caravan come from a larger stockpile, but there are many ways to source or rig explosives.
The knowledge of the explosive-packed caravan found at Dural north of Sydney was leaked to the media on Wednesday. That suggests to me there is disquiet somewhere within NSW Police, or individuals working closely with them.
That disquiet must go to the, at best, pedestrian management of rising anti-Semitism and the associated terror threat happening inside our police and security services.
By pedestrian I mean, for example, attempting to claim that forming an anti-Semitism database between police forces is a noteworthy outcome from a national cabinet meeting. Or claiming that a monthly meeting of state police officers is some type of taskforce working collectively on a shared problem.
Then we have what is reportedly causing a rift between the Australian Federal Police and NSWPOL, which is that Sydney was blindsided by AFP claims there may be an international organised crime element paying Australian crooks in cryptocurrency to commission anti-Semitic attacks.
And there is AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw’s statement that “intelligence is not the same as evidence – we are building evidence”. Of course that’s true but it’s a jibe that sticks in the throat of intelligence agencies, the implication being that their product is inadequate for proper police work.
On Thursday, ASIO released its own, to my reading rather snippy, response. “One of the key reasons we raised the threat level in August 2024 was because we anticipated spikes in politically motivated violence. Unfortunately, the security environment has evolved almost exactly as we expected.”
So take that, police services, perhaps you should read the intelligence product more carefully.
ASIO head Mike Burgess is adamant that the terrorism threat level should not now be lifted. The current level is “probable”, meaning “there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack or attack planning in the next 12 months”.
The next step up on the threat level is “expected”. What needs to change in ASIO’s thinking to move from “probable” to “expected”? Apparently not the discovery of a caravan packed with explosives and a list of Jewish targets.
The missing link here might be, for example, an intercepted communication where people are recorded planning to drive the caravan to a specific location and detonate it. That would give rise to an expected threat, and maybe only minutes or hours to prevent the act being commissioned.
Both Burgess and AFP Commissioner Kershaw have publicly commented that almost all the communications of their targets are encrypted, meaning that opportunities to intercept clear communications are rare. My view is that the counter-terrorism threat level system is no longer workable. To lift the level any higher means that we will practically be in an operation to foil an imminent attack.
The current threat level system is therefore not helping people understand the immediate risks we face. A “greater then 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack” is the analytical equivalent of a coin toss.
One example last week when policing fell way below even pedestrian came in the interview between Sky News anchor Sharri Markson and NSW Police Force Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics Commander Assistant Commissioner Mark Walton.
Walton defended the arrest of a Jew waving an Israeli flag at hundreds of shouting pro-Palestinian protesters outside Sydney’s Great Synagogue in December on the basis that sometimes “cops have got to be practical”. So, “to avoid an escalation” it is apparently acceptable to arrest the victim rather than the aggressors as a matter “of public safety”.
Walton then launched into an oddly undergraduate discussion about the range of attacks that have taken place against Jews: “It’s terror, but is it terrorism?” His point, I believe, was that police need evidence of a type that produces court convictions. Fair enough, but people fearing attack may be more worried for their lives than judicial standards of evidence.
I have no doubt that Assistant Commissioner Walton is a highly skilled and experienced policeman, but stifling anti-Semitism and stopping terror attacks is not helped by woodenly defending police evidence-gathering procedures. The immediate safety of Australian Jews and the success of police cases in court are two different things.
Note that Walton was interviewed before the information about the Dural caravan was revealed. As the counter-terrorism commander he must have known about that improvised explosive device. And yet he’s asking, “It’s terror, but is it terrorism?”
There is one very clear reason we are suffering through duelling media statements and uncomfortable interviews from police and security agency heads: it is the absence of anything resembling leadership from the one figure who should have the moral suasion and administrative power to force better outcomes from officials: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Nothing focuses the minds of bickering officials faster than an angry prime minister demanding urgent action to deal with a problem. When did Albanese find out about the Dural caravan? Was it the reason he called an impromptu national cabinet 10 days ago? If so, how is it that the discovery of a vehicle bomb and a target list produced nothing more than the promise of a database?
If Albanese found out about the caravan later, why didn’t that spark a second national cabinet meeting? Finding a device like this is an unusual event in Australia, well worth ministerial attention.
I have written regularly in these pages about Albanese’s mystifying failure to take command of this issue. In his daily election-focused media appearances we see him wrestling awkwardly with the English language to justify reluctant engagement on anti-Semitism.
Albanese will list the steps he has taken, the funding for synagogues, banning the Nazi salute, appointing an anti-Semitism commissioner he chooses not to listen to, all of this mixed with reminders of his Tory-fighting days at university.
Then there is Albanese’s inordinate focus on process, the meetings he attends, the awkward photo opportunities with the Jewish community, the flights he takes that mean he is invariably at point B not point A. All of it begrudgingly delivered. The PM couldn’t make it clearer that anti-Semitism and the rise of terrorism is a problem he does not want to face.
Contrast this with NSW Premier Chris Minns, who is capable of speaking clearly and with some conviction about this issue. Minns is also able to acknowledge that he didn’t deal with the problem of anti-Jewish protests quickly enough after the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023.
Albanese will not enjoy being upstaged by a fellow NSW Labor politician. This will have reverberations inside Labor’s tribal factions.
It is possible to some extent to fake leadership even if one is not genuinely capable of it. Albanese’s failure to grasp the importance of anti-Semitism as a galvanising threat to Australian values undermines his leadership going into the federal election.
What should Albanese do? First, he should tell his police and intelligence agency heads to give the media a break for a while. He will take the lead. The PM should ask Peter Dutton for a ceasefire in election campaigning and convene in Canberra a summit at parliament bringing the nation’s great and good together to focus minds, wallets, officials and media on finding a national path away from this ancient hatred.
Then, the PM should drive the bureaucracy like he really wanted a priority on anti-Semitism. No more databases, monthly police meetings and assurances of everything being under control.
Does this fix the problem? Of course not, but it would show a prime minister taking it seriously, not blaming his failure to seize the day because he was in a car or a plane, or because he was exercising, or because a meeting couldn’t happen because the room wasn’t secure, or he was in the wrong town.
After nearly 16 months of this nonsense I harbour no illusions that Albanese will, or even can, grasp the nettle. He has not done so up to now. He won’t in coming months.
“No ongoing threat to the community”? What absolute unremitting nonsense. We are a coin toss away from a mass casualty attack. People are planning it. They are itching to do it. It will finish off Albanese’s leadership as sure as it will harm the innocents among us.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-12).
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