Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister stands up every single day, takes questions and answers questions from any journalist that turns up to his press conferences—unlike Mr Dutton, who never does. If there is anything about leadership that I've understood, it is that a leader is a person who is principled and who stands up, answers and is accountable for every decision that they take. Every time he has been asked about this, the Prime Minister has said that there are two issues that he is focused on: (1) the safety of the Australian people and (2) not to be involved in or to provide commentary on or speculation about an ongoing investigation that is being led by the security agencies and involves combined effort between the AFP and New South Wales police, which, of course, involves some of the other national security agencies.

It is not the Prime Minister who is out trying to politicise this; it is Mr Dutton and his team over here. It is outrageous. It is a new low in Australian politics—the desperation and recklessness and arrogance of the opposition!—that they would choose to take an issue like this and run and play politics with it. That's exactly what they are doing. All the lectures that we heard from those opposite around national security and supporting the security agencies and letting them do their jobs, which is exactly what we are doing, have been forgotten by those opposite—no, no, let's do a running commentary on it; let's try and make it the Prime Minister's fault. That's not leadership.

We've got Mr Dutton, who stomps around the country creating division, who's never met a culture war that he doesn't want to jump on and who seizes an opportunity to play politics with an issue like this, the national security of Australia. You question—