: We’re joined now by the PM, Anthony Albanese, from Townsville. PM, thanks for your time, appreciate it. The floods in a moment. Look, your Government has backflipped on imposing mandatory sentences for hate crimes. What took you so long?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: No, we have one strong action. We’re the first Government to introduce hate crimes legislation. We’re the first Government to ever outlaw Nazi symbols. I want the perpetrators of antisemitism to be caught, charged, held to account for their crimes and put in the clink.
SARAH ABO, HOST: It’s kind of come out of nowhere for you, though, PM. Did you consult Caucus or did you just ram this through?
PRIME MINISTER: No, not at all. We go through all of our proper processes on these items. Caucus approve everything that we do, we have a Caucus committee process. But we believe that the strongest action is required here. We have, as I said, we introduced this legislation last year to outlaw Nazi symbols and hate symbols as well. Things like those flags that praise, essentially, terrorist organisations. We outlawed them before that. There wasn’t any legislation, it took our Government to do so. My Government will continue to take the strongest possible action, will continue to work with the AFP, with state police agencies, with intelligence agencies to make sure – and I can confirm as well that we have now a further arrest has taken place under Operation Avalite and those arrests are continuing, whether it be by state police agencies or now the AFP through the operation that we established.
STEFANOVIC: Still, the Coalition asked for this months ago. Do you concede they were right? This has all the hallmarks of their policy.
PRIME MINISTER: We have been the Government that has introduced this legislation. We’re the Government that outlawed these hate symbols. We’re the Government that continued to defend our laws, were there when the former Government was trying to water down racial discrimination laws.
STEFANOVIC: I don’t think there’s any escaping the fact that it was their idea.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it is our legislation. And our legislation was the first to outlaw any of these symbols.
ABO: All right. I think we can all agree it’s probably in at the right time, that’s for sure, now that it’s finally through. All right, well, moving on. The Middle East, you don’t really know how to handle Donald Trump, do you, PM? I mean, he makes everyone kind of a bit squirmish with anxiety.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’ve said that we’re not going to have an ongoing commentary on all of the President of the United States’ comments –
ABO: This is a big one.
PRIME MINISTER: We will determine our own. And our policy is clear and it’s been a bipartisan policy for a long period of time. And I note that both sides of mainstream Australian politics confirmed yesterday that we support a two state solution in the Middle East, the right of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security side by side.
STEFANOVIC: All right. I do think you wake up in the morning with anxiety and he makes you itch. But we’ll move on to his Gaza takeover plan to turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East. Sure, the US is one of our strongest allies, right. But do you support the relocation of an entire population? Surely that’s something you have an opinion about.
PRIME MINISTER: I do. Which is why I’ve said what Australia’s position is. Australia’s position is the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in their own states. And that remains our position. It hasn’t changed. And that indeed is a position that has been in place in the United States for some time as well. It’s certainly been a bipartisan position in Australia. And importantly, when the United Nations created the change in the Middle East in 1947, that came into effect in 1948, it was for two states. It was for a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. Ever since then, that has been a policy that has been supported by all of the major political parties in Australia. That remains our position.
STEFANOVIC: All right. Back home, I find it shocking that the Prime Minister of this country wasn’t alerted to an explosive laden caravan targeting Jewish sites. A threat with the potential to be Australia’s largest terror event. You must have been absolutely livid that you weren’t notified.
PRIME MINISTER: No, you’re making an incredible assumption there, Karl. You know what is important here? 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, spoken about all of that. These are ongoing investigations. And you know what’s important? What’s important is that perpetual perpetrators of crimes be held to account. And in order to find out who is responsible, you’ve got to allow the intelligence agencies to do their job. Common sense tells you that, Karl. You need to know who was it, who’s making payments to people. Because the AFP have said publicly that some people who are criminal elements are being paid here. We need to know and you’ve got to follow the trail. And what we have here is you don’t have to be an avid observer of CSI to know that you’ve got to allow people to do their job. And quite frankly, Karl, it is totally irresponsible what the Coalition have done. 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.
ABO: Yeah. I’m not sure that anyone’s concerned about you revealing what’s in the briefing. It’s just really a matter of timing. There have been talks then about an inquiry into whether this was an embarrassing communications failure. Would you support something like that or is there nothing to see here?
PRIME MINISTER: What? So, stop the investigations? Stop doing the work to track down the perpetrators of these crimes and engage in politics?
STEFANOVIC: All right, that’s a no.
PRIME MINISTER: Do you think that that is a sensible use of resources?
STEFANOVIC: I think that it needs some focus. If the Prime Minister of this country is not told about something of this magnitude, I’d be scratching my head going, you know, why not? That’s just me. I mean, you’ve been let know a whole range of things that you can’t talk about. But it’s when you are actually informed about something of this magnitude, that’s important.
PRIME MINISTER: Karl, what’s important is tracking down the perpetrators of these crimes. It is, I find it, frankly, absurd that people think, for example, that resources should be diverted, that the AFP and intelligence agencies should be engaged in a political process rather than doing their job. And you know what my job is, Karl? It’s really simple. It’s to back our authorities to do their job. And that’s what I do.
STEFANOVIC: You’ve made it clear. Let’s talk about all that stuff that’s happening behind you. They’ve been in for a torrid time in Townsville, especially around Ingham. And we’ve seen the lineups of folks, you know, the power is not on there, food supplies are dwindling. There’s a lot of help that’s needed up there. There’s a bit of looting that’s going on. A lot of anxiety, PM.
PRIME MINISTER: There sure is. We know that North Queenslanders are tough. But these are tough times and that’s why I’m on the ground here. You can probably see behind us there’s torrential rain coming down now. And these are really difficult times. I met the Premier, David Crisafulli last night. We’ve already provided – income support is available for those who have lost their income. We’ve made that declaration last night. We signed off on eight local government areas getting additional funding. I’ll go to the Emergency Management Centre this morning with the Premier and the local MPs and the Acting Mayor. We also have choppers on ground providing those resources that are needed. A shout out to Singapore who’ve made two Chinooks available who are here for training as well this morning. I’ll go with the Premier – there’s a bridge that’s been knocked out, the ADF will be helping to build a temporary structure so that we can open up that passage into Ingham as soon as possible. And as well, one of the things we need to do is to make sure that we build back better so that this bridge isn’t just wiped out every time there’s a flood. We need to do what is necessary and my Government will work with Queensland to make sure we do just that.
ABO: Absolutely. All right, PM thank you so much for joining us this morning. Appreciate your time.
