Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. On what date was the Prime Minister first advised of the planned mass casualty terror attack against Sydney's Jewish community?

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

I thank the member for his question. It goes to national security issues, and, on national security, there are two priorities. The first priority is, of course, keeping the public safe. The second and related principle is that we engage with the Australian Federal Police and the national intelligence agencies. We don't go out there and brief about National Security Committee meetings. We don't discuss those details, because it's an ongoing investigation. What you do when you have an ongoing investigation is that you take the advice of the Australian Federal Police and the ASIO director-general, and that is precisely what I have done the whole way through.

Now, the Leader of the Opposition always has briefings made available when they're requested. He has not requested a briefing at this time. He said on Sunday that he'd had text messages with the ASIO director-general. When asked by David Speers what was in those text messages, he quite rightly refused to say, because that's how you deal with these things. This isn't some game, and it should not be about politics. And, quite frankly, it is astonishing—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business on a point of order.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance, we've asked for the date, not the detail—the date. Premier Minns made the date clear, so I'm sure the Prime Minister's not accusing Premier Minns of having done anything improper.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister is being clear about the question he was asked and particularly giving reasons perhaps why he's not releasing that date. So he is being directly relevant, and it's up to him whether he chooses to release a date or he talks about the question and why that is the case. The Prime Minister has the call.

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

There are some people who in the past have understood why these issues are important—that we back up our national security agencies rather than seek to undermine them. One of those was indeed quoted in February 2022, when the former government was in place:

The chair of parliament's joint committee on intelligence and security, 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.

Of course, that was when the Leader of the Opposition was claiming both 'open source and other intelligence' confirmed that Labor was somehow, according to him, Beijing's pick at the 2022 election. That of course was before he became pro-China just last week.