Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

for five years, following his appointment by the previous government. So we have the same security agencies in place with, indeed, the same personnel. I will continue to take his advice, and I will continue to trust our security agencies to do their job. I table the interview by Mr Burgess on Insiders.

Earlier today, we had a motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition that asked for the information to be given in this chamber about which visa applicants are the subject of a security assessment by ASIO and what the criteria for ASIO is to carry out security assessments. That is a pretty extraordinary thing for the Leader of the Opposition to do, as if we could have this conversation and a kind of silence would descend upon this chamber. This was full Get Smart from the Leader of the Opposition.

But, of course, he has form, because it was reported by the Guardian in February 2022:

… the Liberal senator James Paterson, has rebuked the defence minister, Peter Dutton … for referencing classified information during last week's hyper-partisan brawling over national security.

Indeed, further back it was reported by the ABC in January 2020:

The office of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton was suspected of leaking information it was told was classified about the cost of medically evacuating refugees to Taiwan …

It went on to say—so there's a gap here, okay, just to be clear. It went on to say:

The disclosure of the information concerned the secretary of the Home Affairs Department … so greatly that he requested the matter be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.

And, of course, we know that on election day 2022, in an extraordinary act, the Leader of the Opposition at 1.26 pm was busy tweeting out information that was national security in an attempt to politicise, once again, information that the then government had.

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