Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of Labor, I want to again express my utmost condolences to the families of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson, who tragically lost their lives in the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014. This was a terrible event, which must never be repeated. Yesterday, the final report of the State Coroner of New South Wales into the siege was released. It contains a number of recommendations. One of those concerned a letter written by the gunman, Man Haron Monis, to the Attorney-General two months before the siege in October 2014, asking whether it was legal to contact the head of Islamic State, described by Monis as Caliph Ibrahim. This letter was not passed on to ASIO.

It has been a battle getting this government to own up to this failure. First the letter was not passed on to a government review and then the foreign minister wrongly told parliament it had been. It took a week for her to correct her statement. The Senate inquiry held into the matter was damning, highlighting several failures in process in the Attorney-General's office and in the Attorney-General's Department. This failure to alert ASIO was unacceptable. It should not have taken the Attorney-General more than two years to say he regrets that failure. Let us hope we can trust the Attorney-General when he assures the Australian people that this will never happen again, and let us hope that the coroner's recommendations about government-wide processes for this kind of referral are put in place.