Who knew and who didn’t: Inside the caravan bomb discovery that blindsided federal ministers

There was deep concern in Canberra as soon as news broke on Wednesday that police had discovered a caravan in an outer Sydney suburb loaded with explosives and a piece of paper with the address of a Sydney synagogue.

The leak about an active police investigation caught federal ministers by surprise because the discovery had not been discussed at national cabinet or the national security committee of federal cabinet.

Authorities had kept the operational details secret for days, and they feared the revelations this week would compromise their work and put personnel at risk.

“This is a leak that should not have happened – because it endangers investigations,” said one federal source.

Premier Chris Minns and NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson on Wednesday evening, after the news broke. Credit: Rhett Wyman

The national security committee of federal cabinet was briefed on Thursday morning, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and others hearing from federal authorities about the investigation.

The leak and its aftermath have highlighted the tensions in the work of federal and state authorities in combating the growing number of antisemitic attacks in Australian cities as all sides seek to prove they are on top of the problem.

NSW Premier Chris Minns held a press conference in Sydney soon after the leak to show the police were acting, while Albanese issued a statement to condemn the threat to the Jewish community and back the state police in their investigation.

But the statements raised questions about who was briefed, and when, about a threat that could have caused a blast with a radius of 40 metres – or what Minns called a potential mass-casualty event.

With NSW Police’s Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson taking the lead in briefing the public on Wednesday and Thursday, the Australian Federal Police chose not to make any public comment.

That decision followed a sharp escalation in the public warnings about antisemitism last week, when AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw revealed that investigators were looking at whether “overseas actors or individuals” were paying local criminals to launch the attacks.

He took some NSW police by surprise and triggered a degree of territorial sensitivity – common with federal and state investigations – about how much the federal police were revealing.

But events over the past week, including the arrest of suspects with no history of antisemitism or extremist ideology, have tended to support Kershaw’s warning about the use of “criminals for hire” to intensify the attacks on Jewish Australians.

Political pressures have also heightened the anxiety about public disclosures when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has challenged Albanese to do more to halt antisemitism and called for months for a national cabinet meeting on the problem.

Minns pointed to that problem in a television interview on Thursday morning when he said it would be better if all leaders kept the politics to one side.

The timeline of the investigation shows that Minns knew of the threat for nine days before the news leaked in an online news story at The Daily Telegraph.

NSW Police went to the property and found the caravan on January 19, and Minns was informed the next day. Albanese convened a national cabinet meeting, which was held online on January 21, but the state and territory leaders were not told of the discovery in Dural, in Sydney’s north-west.

Police believe the caravan had been parked on the roadside from December 7 and went undiscovered until a local decided to move it from a “hazardous” spot and peered inside before alerting police.

The explosive, known as Powergel and often using in mining, was not wired to explode, but had the capacity to produce a 40-metre blast wave had it been detonated, police said.

One of the most troubling questions is how a powerful bomb could be assembled and placed on a suburban street without anyone noticing.

There was no report of the Dural discovery until January 29, when The Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed the terror investigation.

The key decision was that details of the investigation had to remain under wraps, which meant political leaders could not know. “If you go into national cabinet with information like that, you may as well put out a press release,” said one NSW source.

But with Dutton seeking to turn up the heat on Albanese, there was pressure in Canberra to reveal more about the federal response to a growing danger to Jewish Australians.

‘We believe criminals for hire may be behind some incidents.’

AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw

Kershaw issued his statement about “overseas actors” after the national cabinet meeting, at a point when the AFP knew about the investigation into the caravan, but he did not mention the danger of a mass-casualty event. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO, was part of the joint counter-terrorism team on the investigation but made no comment.

With the media asking questions about the threat from overseas actors, Kershaw clarified on January 22 that the investigation was also looking at people within Australia who were paying others to commit the attacks.

“We believe criminals for hire may be behind some incidents,” he said in Parliament House. “There is still a lot of investigative work to be done, and we are not ready to rule anything in or out.”

On the day he made that statement, a NSW court sentenced Guy Finnegan, 31, to 10 months’ imprisonment for damaging property by fire at the Curly Lewis brewery in Bondi last October. Court documents revealed messages to Finnegan from an anonymous person who used the name “James Bond” to order the attack.

AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw in April 2024, at a press conference after the Bondi stabbing attack. Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

With evidence like that, there was a growing consensus among federal and state police that low-level criminals were being hired to launch attacks. There are differences about whether the money is coming from overseas or domestic sources.

Some police chiefs want fewer statements, not more. When federal and state police commissioners met on the afternoon of January 22 – hours after Kershaw’s warning about “criminals for hire” – they could not agree on a public statement for hours. There were so many tweaks to the draft that it was released a full day later.

With the Coalition seizing on every fact, Albanese has declined to say when he was briefed on the Dural caravan. Minns and NSW Police leaders have defended their decision to keep the discovery from the public.

Authorities do not routinely brief political leaders on operational details. As a result, two members of the national security committee of federal cabinet, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, said they learned of the caravan and its explosives only on Wednesday.

“I’ve not been specifically briefed about this,” Marles said in the hours after the leak. “But this attempt is disgraceful and it is another example of the kind of hate crimes that we have seen too much of in the last few months aimed at the Jewish community.”

Chalmers said he was told of the caravan “in a preliminary way in the course of the developments being made public” on Wednesday.

While Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson has demanded answers from the government about what it knew, he has not committed to release information in similar situations in a Coalition government.

“It’s very important to understand when the prime minister was briefed about this because, firstly, we need to know that our counter-terrorism framework is working seamlessly in the face of one of the most serious domestic terrorism crises in living memory for most Australians,” Paterson said on Thursday.

Observers said there was a case for the police to tell the federal political leaders as soon as possible about the caravan because of the scale of the threat.

“People who were in responsible positions in the federal government should have been told,” said Professor Clive Williams, a terrorism expert in Canberra.

“Should it have been kept from the public? Yes, that was desirable because the police and ASIO were still conducting their investigation.”

Middle East analyst Rodger Shanahan, a former army officer and contributor at this masthead, said it would have made sense for federal political leaders to be briefed when their agencies knew of the threat.

“It seems strange that something of this nature would not have been alerted to senior federal ministers at the earliest opportunity,” he said.

Once the joint counter-terrorism team was brought into the investigation, Shanahan said, it would make sense for the ministers responsible in each portfolio to be informed. He added that it was not clear who had been briefed at each stage.

Those arguments do not sway authorities, who believe they were right to limit the number of politicians who knew about the Dural caravan.

“There are certain things you have to hold tight to protect your investigation,” said one.

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