Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has accused Peter Dutton of avoiding briefings from the AFP so he could continue to attack the government's response to the discovery of a caravan packed with explosives. New South Wales Police have subsequently confirmed the incident was a fabricated terror plot but it's not known when exactly that became clear.
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00:00Tony Burke's primary point of contention, or his argument, is that Peter Dutton avoided
00:08briefings from the Australian Federal Police.
00:11That would have revealed that the police investigations were leaning towards that this alleged plot
00:17was a hoax rather than any terrorist activity.
00:21If we cast our minds back to this point in time, we'll remember we're in the middle of
00:26a frenetic sitting week here at Parliament House, and each day the Coalition was peppering
00:31the Government with questions about who knew what when about the discovery of this caravan
00:37packed with explosives.
00:40The Coalition, they've been consistently critical about the Government's response to a spike
00:45in anti-Semitic incidents across Australia.
00:49We'll remember that the Government moved to get ahead of potential political attacks by
00:55actually going against its own party platform to introduce minimum mandatory sentences for
01:02some terror offences, so they passed the Parliament in early February.
01:08I have tried to get to the bottom of the timeline about when exactly the Government was made
01:14aware that the police investigations were leaning towards criminal activity rather than
01:20a terrorism offence.
01:21We did put this to Tony Burke in the corridors of Parliament House a little earlier and he
01:25declined to say, saying it would be ultimately inappropriate to do so.
01:31When it comes to whether briefings were rejected or deliberately avoided, Coalition sources
01:39have told the ABC that essentially they did request a briefing from the Government on
01:45the 29th of January.
01:47They then received a briefing from the Australian Federal Police on the 30th and in that room
01:53at the time was the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, James Patterson, as well as members of Peter
01:59Dutton's staff.
02:01I've since gone to sources both in Labor and the Coalition about whether subsequent briefings
02:08were either requested or offered and we're still trying to get to the bottom of that.
02:13But I put this to Tony Burke earlier and this was his response.
02:17They received a briefing right at the start and as it developed and as Peter Dutton kept
02:22going, we kept publicly calling him out and saying he hasn't received a briefing.
02:28We could not have signalled it more deliberately and more loudly.
02:32Peter Dutton would have understood exactly what we were saying and he didn't care.
02:37ASIO had publicly talked about lowering the temperature.
02:41We were publicly saying he should get a briefing from the Australian Federal Police.
02:45Peter Dutton made a decision to avoid the Australian Federal Police and to ignore the
02:50public advice of ASIO.
02:51Why did you allow the Jewish community to live in fear of the threat of a mass casualty
02:58terror event when you knew there wasn't one?
03:01To do anything else and to get in the way of an operation from the police would have
03:07been deeply, deeply irresponsible.
03:11Meanwhile Olivia, we've seen a war of words between US President Donald Trump and former
03:16Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
03:18Will this scupper Australia's chances of avoiding aluminium and steel tariffs?
03:23This does come at a critical diplomatic juncture for the Albanese government.
03:27As you say, they're trying at the moment to secure carve-outs from the Trump administration's
03:33proposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium products and they're supposed to come into
03:39play on Thursday, Australia time.
03:42But we have seen this war of words between the two, the US President Donald Trump essentially
03:48accusing former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of being a weak and ineffectual leader.
03:54This response was after Malcolm Turnbull had essentially described the US President as
04:02abusive, erratic, chaotic and rude and essentially playing directly into Chinese hands.
04:10Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull, it's not the first time that they've clashed.
04:13We did see another, I guess, spate of tensions between the two in 2017 over a refugee resettlement
04:22deal that had been struck by former US President Barack Obama.
04:28Now when it comes to whether this spat between these leaders is going to influence Australia's
04:35carve-out, we don't know just yet.
04:38For all intents and purposes, Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump did share a pretty friendly
04:43phone call just a month ago in which Mr Trump said that he would strongly consider Australia's
04:49request for a carve-out because the US does share a trade surplus with Australia.
04:58There is some nervousness in the government.
05:00There is some pessimism.
05:01That's because we have seen senior members of the Trump administration essentially questioning
05:08Australia's role here.
05:10They say that Australia's been flooding the US market with subsidised aluminium products.
05:17So certainly a bit of pessimism speaking with Labor sources today about whether we'll get
05:21that carve-out at all.