The leader of the Australian opposition, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Friday that his family home had been the objective of an alleged plot of bombs, but said that the concerns for his personal safety did not restrict his electoral campaign.
Dutton is campaigning to replace Prime Minister Anthony Albanian in the elections on May 3.
Both leaders are accompanied in public by the security teams of the Australian Federal Police while crossing the country during the week.
“I am incredible grateful to the AFP that my family remains safe. I have never felt insecure one day in this work, particularly with the protection of AFP. It has prevented me from doing anything, and it won’t.
“This work is a character test: do you have the strength of character independently of what they throw you to deal with problems and act in the best interest of our country?” Dutton added.
Teenager accused of horror
Dutton’s security focused after a 16 -year -old boy received Thursday who was tried in the Supreme Court of Queensland in Brisbane accused of planning a terrorist law.
The child was arrested in August last year and cannot be appointed due to his age. He faces a possible life sentence if he is convicted.
Dutton’s house, where he lives with his wife and three children on the outskirts of Brisbane, had been the objective of the alleged plot that involves explosives and a drone, said unidentified sources to the Australian newspaper on Friday.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanian said he had contacted Dutton for the news. Albanian said he also had the objective of a “quite serious incident”, but refused to elaborate.
“It is a fact that the number of threats that have made the leg to parliamentarians have been in recent times,” Albanian told journalists in Darwin.
“There is no place at all in politics for none of this and I have assured that every time any member of Parliament, regardless of who they are, have requested support, that has recovered it,” Albanese added.
Threats against Australian legislators increasing
Albanese’s office in Sydney is one of the several offices of legislators who have been destroyed by pro-palestinian activists since the Israel-Ahamas War in 2023.
The Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Reece Kershaw, told a Senate committee last month that the police responded to 1,009 threats against legislators in fiscal year 2023-24.
That total was on the way to being surpassed in the current fiscal year, which was in July 2024, with 712 threats reported in March, he said.
The spokesman for the campaign of the Conservative Liberal Party of Dutton, James Paterson, said that the family of the opposition leader “requires personal police protection throughout the day.”
Dutton said he had been receiving the same level of protection as the prime minister since 2014, when he was appointed Minister of Border Immigration and Protection and began deporting criminals.
“I canceled the visas of many bikies and rapists and figures of organized crimes and would not change that,” Dutton said. “There is an impact on the leg on my family. They have a stoic leg and never complained about the security that surrounds me and my family.”
