‘Terrorism’, ‘massacre’: How Australian press covered the fake terrorist caravan plot

An abandoned caravan found laden with explosives earlier this year was part of a “fabricated terrorism plot”, and what the Australian Federal Police is now calling a “criminal con job”, the force’s deputy commissioner has revealed.

Police were first tipped off on January 19 about a suspicious caravan in the outer Sydney suburb of Dural. Inside it they found what was later described by various media outlets as enough explosives to “create a 40-metre blast wave”.

A piece of paper featuring the address of a Sydney synagogue and antisemitic slurs was also found inside.

NSW Police said at the time it was considering whether the situation was a “set-up”, while the AFP is now saying its experienced investigators “almost immediately” believed the plot was fake. According to AFP deputy commissioner of national security Krissy Barrett, this was due to how easily the caravan was discovered, how “visible” the explosives were, and the crucial lack of a detonator.

Nonetheless, columnists, editors and political leaders on all sides pushed on, labelling the discovery “terrorism” and saying it was “primed for a massacre”.

Crikey looks at how the situation unfolded in the press, and how easily the theory that it was a “set-up” was lost.

January 19

Police are tipped off by a local man to a caravan in the outer Sydney suburb of Dural. It contains what journalists will come to describe as enough explosives to create a “40-metre blast wave”, and paper with antisemitic slurs and the address of a synagogue written on it. The explosives are decades old and there is no detonator.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns is briefed the next day, but does not share the information with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

On January 22, before information regarding the investigation is made public, AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw reveals that his agency suspects organised crime groups are involved in carrying out antisemitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney, but that it has not yet uncovered any evidence of the involvement of foreign governments or terrorist organisations.

January 29

Information regarding the Dural caravan is leaked to The Daily Telegraph. In response, NSW Premier Chris Minns holds a press conference regarding the investigation. He says police had thwarted a “potential mass casualty event” and calls it “terrorism”:

It’s very important to note that police will make a decision about enacting terrorism powers if they require that … however this is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event, there’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism. There’s bad actors in our community, badly motivated, bad ideologies, bad morals, bad ethics, bad people.

The state’s assistant police commissioner David Hudson also addresses the media. He does not make an official call on whether the act constitutes terrorism. Pressed on whether the trail of evidence found in the caravan was so obvious as to indicate the caravan could be a “set-up”, Hudson replies: “Obviously, that’s a consideration that we’re looking at, as well.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responds to the news, saying the caravan “was clearly aimed at terrorising the community”.

In a social media post, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton calls the news “as sickening as it is horrifying”, adding it was a “grave and sinister escalation”. The shadow minister for home affairs James Paterson says the discovery was an “incredibly disturbing development in an escalating domestic terrorism crisis”. Both Paterson and Dutton call on the government to reveal when Albanese was briefed.

The Sydney Morning Herald publishes an editorial that evening, under the headline “A caravan packed with explosives? Sydney’s Jewish community deserves better than 10 days of silence”:

The chilling discovery of a caravan containing the address of a Sydney synagogue and laden with enough stolen mining explosives to create a 40-metre blast radius will turn existing fear into outright terror.

Minns is asked why the apparent threat was not made public as soon as he had been briefed and pushes back: “There’s a very good reason that police don’t detail methods and tactics and that’s so that criminals don’t understand what police are getting up to in their investigations,” he says.

“Just because it wasn’t being conducted on the front pages of newspapers does not mean this was not an urgent — in fact, the number one priority of NSW Police.”

January 30

The Daily Telegraph runs a front-page story on the discovery, with the headline “Primed for a Massacre”.

The story has a double-page spread on pages four and five under the headline “Cops stop caravan of carnage”.

Paragraphs 22 and 23 of the piece note a “source involved in the operation” is quoted as saying “some things just don’t add up. Leaving notes and addresses are too obvious, likewise leaving it on a public road makes us believe it could well possibly be a set-up.”

Alongside the reporting, on page five, is the headline “An act of terrorism, premier declares”, repeating Minns’ assertion that the event was terrorism.

Later that day, Albanese appears on ABC Sydney. Asked by host Craig Reucassel whether he agrees with Minns’ assessment, Albanese does so unequivocally:

I certainly do. I agree with Chris Minns. It’s clearly designed to harm people, but it’s also designed to create fear in the community. And that is the very definition. As it comes in, it hasn’t been designated yet by the NSW Police, but certainly is being investigated, including by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team.

Later that day, NSW Police commissioner Karen Webb says the investigation has been compromised by the leaks to New Corp.

“The fact that this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation and it’s been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used,” Webb told a press conference.

Tele crime editor Mark Morri defends the coverage, saying the paper would have delayed publishing if they’d been asked to do so by police, and that they withheld parts of the story at the request of investigators.

On January 31 and February 1, the Tele runs further consecutive front pages on the caravan. The first is dedicated to the search for the “mastermind” who recruited “a couple arrested at the ‘periphery’” of the plot, while the second highlights “exclusive” comments from former prime minister Tony Abbott regarding the “nine days” between the discovery of the caravan and Anthony Albanese’s briefing on the “foiled antisemitic terror plot”.

February 2

Dutton claims, without evidence, that the delay in Albanese being informed resulted from worries about the security of information in his office.

“I suspect what has happened here, if I’m being honest, is that the NSW Police have been worried about the prime minister or the prime minister’s office leaking the information,” he says.

“It’s inexplicable that the premier of New South Wales would have known about this likely terrorist attack with a 30-metre blast zone, and he’s spoken to the prime minister over nine days but never raised it.”

In reporting these comments, The Australian describes the event as a “foiled Sydney terror plot”.

Dutton continues to push Albanese on when he was briefed, raising the question in Parliament on February 5.

February 6

Dutton announces that he has “written to the prime minister today asking for an independent inquiry in relation to the fact that the prime minister of our country wasn’t notified for nine days, 10 days of what was believed to be the biggest planned terrorist attack in our country’s history”.

“What’s important here is that we don’t play politics with national security, and when it comes to a range of the issues related to the antisemitic attacks, what I haven’t done is gone out there and reveal intelligence,” Albanese tells Nine’s Today program in response.

“Peter Dutton has chosen to not get a briefing, because if you don’t get a briefing, you can just talk away and not worry about facts.”

That day, the government passes new laws concerning hate crimes. The legislation creates offences for “threatening force of violence against particular groups, including on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or political opinion”. It contains a last-minute capitulation to the Coalition’s demand for mandatory prison sentences for certain offences. The move, a breach of the ALP’s platform, is criticised by academics as well as former Labor MP Kim Carr, crossbenchers Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan, as well as independent MP Andrew Wilkie.

February 15

Police confirm that the explosive material discovered in the caravan was degraded and “up to 40 years old”. Further, “legal sources” tell the Nine papers that “underworld crime figures offered to reveal plans about the caravan weeks before its discovery by police, hoping to use it as leverage for a reduced prison term”.

“The link to organised crime has become a stronger line of inquiry for state and federal authorities despite early concerns about terrorism triggered by a written list of Jewish sites discovered in the caravan, including a synagogue,” the papers report.

Throughout the remainder of February, Labor politicians and officials from various security agencies are questioned at length about the caravan. Both Coalition and Greens MPs allege a “cover-up”.

March 10

AFP deputy commissioner Barrett issues a statement regarding the agency’s investigation, revealing “that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit”:

Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the [NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team] believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot — essentially a criminal con job.

This was because of the information they already had, how easily the caravan was found and how visible the explosives were in the caravan. Also, there was no detonator.

March 11

The Tele runs an “exclusive” front-page story under the heading “It was all a vile hoax”:

The piece notes doubts about the authenticity of the plot were raised back in January.

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, doubling down on posts he made the evening before, claims that Dutton had been “conned” by the plot:

His recklessness has caused him to make claims about national security which are now demonstrably untrue time and time again. Mr Dutton, without seeking a briefing, simply asserted a large-scale planned terrorist attack.

Burke does not mention the comments made by Minns or Albanese on the 29th and 30th of January.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece said that Liberal MP Andrew Hastie had voted against Labor’s hate crimes legislation owing to opposition to mandatory sentencing. That was in fact independent MP Andrew Wilkie. The piece has been updated to reflect this.

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