The Abbott government has defended its correspondence-handling procedures after Labor seized on revelations the Sydney siege gunman had written to the attorney general, George Brandis, two months before the deadly attack.
The opposition raised the issue nine times during parliamentary question time on Thursday, prompting the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, to denounce the “utterly contemptible” attempts to “make political mileage out of a national tragedy”.
The political dispute related to a letter Man Haron Monis wrote to Brandis on 7 October 2014, disclosing his intention to contact “Caliph Ibrahim” – referring to the head of the so-called Islamic State (Isis) in a way that appeared to recognise his status as leader of the self-declared caliphate.
“I would like to send a letter to Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the Islamic State, in which making some comments and asking some questions,” Monis wrote under the letterhead of Sheikh Haron. “Please advise me whether the communication is legal or illegal.”
An official in the Attorney General’s Department responded on Brandis’s behalf on 5 November, pointing out that Islamic State was listed as a terrorist organisation but that the department could not provide specific legal advice. Monis was responsible for the Lindt cafe siege in Martin Place the following month.
Brandis said the letter had not come to his attention at the time and long-established procedures in the Attorney General’s Department “did not identify anything in the letter as raising concerns”.
“I have today spoken to the director-general of Asio. He has examined the letter. He told me that, in his view, since the letter was a request for legal advice, it seems appropriate to him that the matter was referred to the Attorney General’s Department,” Brandis said.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, directed a series of questions to Bishop – who is responsible for answering questions for Brandis in the lower house.
Dreyfus suggested the letter should have raised alarm bells since it referred to the Isis leader by an honorific title and arrived a month after Australia’s terrorism threat level was increased to “high” in September.
When Dreyfus asked what protocols were changed in ministerial offices as a result of the terrorism level being raised, Bishop said the procedure followed to deal with Monis’s letter was “exactly the same” as the one that had been in place when Dreyfus was attorney general in the previous Labor government.
In answering the parliamentary questions, Bishop repeatedly criticised Dreyfus for “reprehensible” and “loathsome” attempts to make political points from the Sydney siege.
“If [Dreyfus] continues to wish to make political capital out of a national tragedy I will feel obliged to remind [Dreyfus] that it was a senior leader of the Labor party who wrote a reference for this man,” Bishop said, referring to an issue that led to the resignation of the former New South Wales Labor leader, John Robertson.
She did not respond directly to a question asking whether the protocol for correspondence containing a reference to Isis had been revised.
Bishop also refused to be drawn on Monis’s reference to “Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the Islamic State” and whether it contradicted Brandis’s claim that the letter did not “contain any statements of support or affiliation for Islamic State”.
“I am advised that all proper protocols were adopted and proper practices were followed in this case,” she replied.
In one exchange, Dreyfus asked: “Does the minister agree with the attorney general that a letter received from a convicted felon known to security agencies and on bail for violent criminal offences requesting advice about contacting the head of what the prime minister describes as ‘the death cult’ within a month of the threat level being raised to its highest level in Australia’s history can be classified as routine correspondence?”
Bishop responded with a barb for Dreyfus: “I note the member for Isaacs [Dreyfus] is concerned with the use of a particular title in this letter. Well, it’s quite evident that titles can be quite misleading. The member for Isaacs is referred to as ‘the honourable’.”
“I am advised that all proper protocols and appropriate practices were adhered to in this matter.”
The line of questioning prompted outrage among government members, with Liberal whip Andrew Nikolic becoming one of the few Coalition MPs to have been sent from the chamber by the speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, for interjections.
Bishop told parliament Monis had also previously sent letters to Dreyfus and also to the former prime minister Julia Gillard and the former attorney general Robert McClelland.
Speaking on Sky News, Dreyfus said the letter to Brandis was sent after the terror alert level had been increased and should have raised a “red flag”. He believed the correspondence should have been referred to Asio or the Australian federal police.
“I would have thought particularly after the prime minister’s exhortations to Australians on 12 September [to be vigilant about terrorism] that more should have happened, that we should have seen a change in protocols,” Dreyfus said.
“When the prime minister has gone and given nationally televised press conferences to call on all Australians to do more, it seems that the government itself wasn’t doing more in this sense.”
The letters came to light at part of the coronial inquest into the deaths of Sydney siege hostages Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson and gunman Monis on 16 December. Monis held staff and customers hostage inside the Lindt Cafe for about 17 hours.
