Tanya Plibersek comes to PM’s defence on anti-Semitism response

Tanya Plibersek has been grilled over the Prime Minister’s handling of an alleged foiled anti-Semitic terror plot in Sydney.

Tanya Plibersek and Barnaby Joyce have traded verbal blows after the Labor minister defended Anthony Albanese’s handling of a foiled alleged anti-Semitic terror plot in Sydney.

Pressure has been mounting on the Prime Minister to confirm when he was briefed on the police discovery of a caravan on Sydney’s outskirts packed with mining explosives.

Officers also found a list of targets, which reportedly included the Great Synagogue in Sydney’s CBD and the Sydney Jewish Museum.

In a morning show appearance on Monday, Ms Plibersek refused to say who knew what and when.

“It’s a very concerning discovery,” she told Seven’s Sunrise.

“But what we don’t what we don’t do is give running commentaries during police investigations.

“The job of the police is to catch the criminals involved. That is their focus, and that’s our focus.”

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has defended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s handling of a foiled alleged anti-Semitic terror plot in Sydney. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

She went on to detail some of the Albanese government’s response to rising anti-Semitism in Australia that has been increasingly manifesting as attacks in the country’s biggest cities.

“We’ve backed Operation Avalite, we’ve put $100m extra into counter-terrorism, $57m extra into protecting synagogues and schools and other Jewish institutions,” Ms Plibersek said.

“We’ve criminalised doxxing, we’ve criminalised the Nazi salute, we’ve got laws in the parliament right now to further criminalise hate speech, to put stronger preventions in against hate speech.”

It has been reported that Mr Albanese was not informed of the explosive-laden caravan until just before it was made public last week, whereas NSW Premier Chris Minns has said he was briefed on January 20, the day after its discovery.

Pressed on whether Mr Albanese should have known sooner, Mr Plibersek responded: “Should the police be giving a running commentary on their investigations?”

Pressed further, she said “police and the security agencies work hand-in-hand with the Prime Minister and with the government at all times”.

“What we don’t do is give a running commentary about ongoing police investigations,” she said.

“The NSW Police made clear that the fact that this information was leaked compromised their investigations, and now we’ve got other people saying, ‘Oh yeah, we should chitty-chat about it in public’.”

The opposition has been calling on Labor to give more details on when Mr Albanese learnt of the caravan, with Peter Dutton, a former home affairs minister, saying it was “significant”.

“What we do is change our laws, resource our police and our security agencies, take their advice and actually go after the people who are frightening Sydneysiders and Australians every day with this completely unacceptable behaviour,” Ms Plibersek said.

“And when Peter Dutton was last in a position to do something about this, he wanted to weaken hate speech laws.

“He voted in this parliament against criminalising doxxing.

“He’s got the opportunity, instead of just big mouthing, to go into the parliament now and vote for stronger hate speech laws.”

Indeed, the now-Opposition Leader has had a spotty record on hate speech laws and served in a government that tried to loosen protections under the Racial Discrimination Act on the basis of freedom of speech.

But Mr Joyce pushed back against the criticism of his boss, calling Ms Plibersek’s response “the biggest non-answer on breakfast television”.

Coalition frontbencher Barnaby Joyce says it is ‘quite obvious that the police trust (NSW) Premier Minns more than they trust the Prime Minister of Australia’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Coalition attack dog said it was “quite obvious that the police trust Premier Minns more than they trust the Prime Minister of Australia”.

He also said Australia “wouldn’t be going down this path if the Labor Party had been more efficacious in their pursuit of anti-Semitism right from the start, rather than the ambivalence we had”.

“We’re getting bits and pieces,” Mr Joyce said.

“What we do know is that briefing has not been offered to Peter Dutton.

“And what we do know is that at this point in time, Premier Minns obviously did have the details and Prime Minister Albanese didn’t.”

NSW authorities revealed that they found the caravan 10 days after the fact.

The explosives inside had an estimated blast radius of 40m.

NSW Police have made several “peripheral” arrests, but it remains unclear who was behind the alleged plot.

In a rare statement on Thursday, domestic intelligence chief Mike Burgess said he did not expect to raise the terror threat level from “probable”, though he did say Australia’s security environment had changed “almost exactly as we expected”.

Originally published as Tanya Plibersek comes to PM’s defence on anti-Semitism response