Key events
Sarah Basford Canales
PM cautions politicians on divisive rhetoric
Anthony Albanese has warned politicians against using fear to divide people amid a rise in anti-immigration sentiment in parts of Australia.
In an interview with Sky News aired this morning, the prime minister said it was important leaders worked to bring the community together rather than divide it.
Albanese said:
It’s important that people in positions of authority, including politicians, promote social cohesion … rather than seek to gain political benefit through opportunistically trying to divide people and trying to raise fear.
When asked whether immigration laws should be tightened to limit who enters the country on a visa, he said Australia already had “tight checks”.
This is something that politicians shouldn’t be allowed to say … things that they know isn’t true.
Because they know full well that we have checks on migration in this country and that we have checks on visas.
Car fires linked to botched kidnapping of grandfather
Police investigating the mistaken kidnapping of grandfather Chris Baghsarian are appealing for information about suspicious car fires that could be related to the case, AAP reports.
Hopes are fading of finding the 85-year-old alive, who was taken captive more than a week ago when three men stormed his Sydney home and bundled him into an SUV.
NSW detectives are urging the public to come forward with information about two suspicious vehicle fires on Good Street, Westmead, at 11.30pm on Tuesday that may be connected to the case.
Police said the vehicles were partly destroyed.
Detectives said the targeted vehicle was a 2022 Toyota Corolla bearing Victorian registration 1UZ2BU, reported stolen from a Victorian address on 13 January.
Officers searched a derelict property in the semi-rural suburb of Dural on Sydney’s north-west outskirts on Thursday night after identifying it as a makeshift stronghold for the kidnappers.
Investigators believe the Toyota Corolla is linked to the crime scene at the Dural address, which may be linked to the kidnapping.
Read more about the case here:
Burke calls Pauline Hanson’s inflammatory Muslim comments a national security risk
Asked about Pauline Hanson’s inflammatory comments about Muslims and the Lakemba night markets within his electorate, Burke said:
I was back in Lakemba on Friday night for the Lakemba night market during Ramadan, and a whole lot of people remembered last time Pauline Hanson went to Lakemba. She turned up with a TV crew from one of the commercial stations, expecting to be greeted with anger from people. They showed her hospitality; they were glad she was there. Some of the women gave her a hug. Really blew her mind. And afterwards, the security guard she turned up with stayed in the area and had a kebab.
I think what is happening here, is part of Pauline Hanson’s frustration with Lakemba is that it didn’t give her what she wanted. This is a generous community. There’s a whole lot of hospitality there and a group of people who sadly are used to being demonised.
But let me say this: It’s not just the cruelty of it, there’s a national security angle here as well. We’ve had a big national discussion about when antisemitism becomes normalised, it is more likely you get antisemitic violence, as we saw in Brisbane over the last night.
That is the same for any form of bigotry, including Islamophobia. I just say to people: don’t pretend to care about national security and then make it harder for our agencies and more likely that violence will occur.
Government preparing to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir
Burke is asked if there is progress on banning Hizb ut-Tahrir as part of the new hate groups laws passed last month.
He says bans were wanted for two main groups before the laws were passed, including a since-disbanded neo-Nazi group and Hizb ut-Tahrir, “which is an organisation I’ve been fighting since my first term in parliament”.
Asio have now provided the advice that that organisation meets the threshold that Asio requires for them to be able to be banned. So the next stage is the department prepares a brief for a minister, that brief is the second threshold that has to be determined, and then, after that, presuming that that’s determined, then the leader of the opposition is advised and the attorney-general has to sign off on it.
… But the first stage on the process of a prohibited group listing happening, for Hizb ut-Tahrir is now complete. The Asio advice is in. This is the first time we have been able to ban – potentially – a group which falls short of a terrorist listing. It says you don’t have to be specifically calling for violence, but you do have to be acting in way that increases the risk of communal violence or politically motivated violence.
Coalition didn’t ‘stop their passports at the critical moment’, Burke says
Burke emphasises “we are not the people who are holding them there.”
They’re being held there by Kurdish authorities. They are not being allowed over a border by Syrian authorities. They went there against what the Australian government wanted. The government at the time was the Coalition.
They didn’t have an attempt to stop their passports at the critical moment, which could have caused the protection that we all now wish had happened. And that is why they are there. This is not a situation where you’re showing the images where someone is there because Australia has put them there.
No legislative power to stop Australian citizens entering country, Burke says
Asked by Insiders host David Speers if they don’t pose a threat to Australia, Burke replies:
On the information that we have, the best way to protect Australians has not involved any further temporary exclusion orders.
Speers goes on to ask Burke if he is actively trying to stop them, and he responds:
We are actively making sure we do nothing to help them. Nothing to help them at all.
Speers:
Nothing to stop them?
Burke:
Other than a temporary exclusion order, there isn’t a legislative power to stop an Australian citizen from entering Australia. Effectively, that question goes to are we breaking the law and the answer is no.
Burke says government’s information on Australians detained in Syria ‘very strong’
Burke stresses the women are “not a coherent cohort”.
I can give the complete confidence to community [that] we know the different individuals; we know the state of mind and the effective ideology of different individuals – they are not a coherent cohort. That is why the person where a temporary exclusion order has been issued is in a different category to other members of that group.
… our information is very strong. That’s how you can single one person from the others.
Coalition ‘plain wrong’ over passport rights of Australians in Syria, Tony Burke tells Insiders
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, says the coalition is “just plain wrong” on the passport rights of Australian women and children in a Syrian detention camp.
On Monday night, 34 Australian women and children – the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters – left from al-Roj camp, in north-eastern Syria, after being released by Kurdish authorities for their expected repatriation to Australia.
Appearing on ABC Insiders, Burke says:
Under Australian law, if you’re a citizen and you apply for a passport, you get a passport. I heard the opposition claim ‘there’s this clause or that clause’. Anything would have to be under Asio advice. Of course, if our intelligence agencies said that [a] different part of the Passports Act had been activated, then we would respond to that, if they had intelligence to that effect. But the claims from the opposition that somehow the standard right for any citizen to have a passport has been suspended here is just plain wrong, and they know that.
The host, David Speers, then tells Burke that the act is “pretty clear that a passport can be denied if someone might prejudice the security of Australia”.
There’s been no advice from Asio that the Passports Act provisions have been activated. There has been advice for one of the people that has come to me that the threshold for a temporary exclusion order has been activated, and I have acted on that and issued the temporary exclusion order. One of my concerns with how the opposition have handled this is they’ve effectively said the minister should be able to make it up. Michaelia Cash did a long media release saying, ‘This is all the minister needs to do’, as though somehow in [the] national security portfolio, you should ignore your national security intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Federal police seize 28kg of cocaine hidden in luxury bus
Authorities have found more than 28kg of cocaine on a luxury bus in South Australia, concealed behind the vehicle’s television.
The discovery came after Australian Border Force (ABF) officers intercepted a vessel berthed at Outer Harbor, examining a roll-on/roll-off vessel on Monday 16 February.
A forensic search using technology including videoscopes and detector dogs, identified “several one-kilogram packages of a white powdered substance hidden behind a television inside a luxury bus,” Australian federal police (AFP) said in a statement.
Border force officers referred the detection to the AFP who seized the illicit drugs and commenced their inquiries.
This amount of cocaine, had it reached the Australian community, had an estimated street value of about $9m, with the potential for about 140,000 street-level deals.
AFP Det Acting Supt Simon Lalic said the AFP – together with its state, commonwealth and international law enforcement partners – was committed to disrupting and dismantling organised criminal syndicates threatening Australia. He said:
Criminals are driven by their own greed and profit and will attempt any method to import harmful illicit substance into our country. No matter how creative these criminals attempt to be, our message is clear – we are on to you.
Be bold in May budget, roundtable guests urge Chalmers
It’s been six months since the treasurer, Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable and the economists, business heads and union figures who attended are feeling cautiously optimistic, AAP reports.
The Productivity Commission chair, Danielle Wood, says she hopes the roundtable laid the foundation for broader changes in the budget and beyond.
Dr Chalmers did an “amazing job” of marshalling disparate views, finding consensus in the room and communicating it to the public, according to the ANU Crawford School of Economics and Government research fellow Shiro Armstrong.
The Grattan Institute chief executive, Aruna Sathanapally, says the budget must build on the momentum of the roundtable and lead to proposals to take to the next election.
While declining to be interviewed, Dr Chalmers says via a statement that the budget will be the “main game” for economic reform.
Following Labor’s landslide election win and with the maximum distance until voters return to the polls, the timing of the budget is ripe for genuine reform, says the independent MP Allegra Spender. She says:
If you’re ever going to do something meaningful, this is the budget to do it, because it’s the budget where you can take the greatest risk.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog this Sunday.
The Australian federal police have seized more than 28kg of cocaine hidden behind a television on a luxury bus in South Australia.
Meanwhile, guests of Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable are urging the treasurer to be bold in the May budget, acknowledging the government has already taken some important steps.
The Winter Olympics is coming to a close. It’s Australia’s most successful campaign to date, with six medallists. The Moguls champion Cooper Woods and the aerial skiing silver medal winner, Danielle Scott, were selected as the flag bearers for the closing ceremony, to take place in Verona early tomorrow morning.
Parents in NSW will be able to access a new personalised childhood vaccination schedule tool launched today by the state government amid increasing measles cases circulating in the community and decreasing immunisation rates.
Amid heightened immigration tensions in Canberra, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, will appear on the ABC’s Insiders.
Let’s get into it!
