Morrison government staff pressured the Australian Border Force to draft and issue a statement about an asylum seeker boat intercepted on election day before the operation had finished, a damning departmental report has found.
Labor’s home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, released the report on Friday and accused the former Coalition government of having “sabotaged the protocols that protect Operation Sovereign Borders for political gain” in an incident “without precedent”.
The boat arrival, confirmed by Scott Morrison and then an ABF statement on 21 May, formed the basis of a last-minute text message scare campaign from the NSW Liberal party urging voters to “keep our borders secure by voting Liberal today”.
The home affairs department secretary, Michael Pezzullo, found it was within then home affairs minister Karen Andrews’ power to demand the ABF statement be released and the department was powerless to refuse.
According to a detailed chronology in Friday’s report, just before midday on election day, Andrews’ office asked the commander of the Operation Sovereign Borders taskforce to issue a statement, using words to the effect that “the prime minister wants a statement”.
The commander was told to finalise the statement within 15 minutes, it said.
Pezzullo found there was “pressure placed on officials to release a public statement regarding the interception of SIEV 915 prior to the conclusion of the operational activity”. It was exacerbated by the order to do so within 15 minutes.
At 12.34pm the department gave a draft release to the minister’s office, prompting revisions from Andrews’ office to add the vessel had arrived likely “illegally” from Sri Lanka.
The minister’s office requested the statement be emailed to a list of journalists identified by them but Pezzullo directed this not to occur.
“Under no circumstances is the department to drop the story to selected journalists,” he said at the time. “The release once cleared is to be posted to our news and media site – no more and no less.”
The ABF officials followed the direction to publish “a factual public statement on the interception” but refused to “amplify the public statement by posting it on social media and sending it directly to journalists”, Pezzullo said in Friday’s report.
Pezzullo concluded that refusal indicated the public servants had acted in an “apolitical” manner and did not breach caretaker conventions.
The department loaded the statement on the ABF website at 1pm before Morrison began a press conference at Lilli Pilli public school at 1.03pm on 21 May.
But the statement did not appear immediately, prompting a flurry of concerned texts from the minister’s office, including “is it live?? PM is speaking” and “a lot of people are furious”.
According to the election day boat scare chronology, Morrison was asked and answered the question about the boat BEFORE it went live online.
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) July 22, 2022
Please enjoy details of Andrew's staff flipping their lid about this.#auspol pic.twitter.com/yCzpNQMKxZ
At 1.06pm on election day, Morrison was asked about “reports” of an illegal asylum boat arrival, which he confirmed, adding: “I’ve been here to stop this boat. But in order for me to be there to stop those that may come from here, you need to vote Liberal and Nationals today.”
Morrison declined to take follow-up questions about whether the announcement breached protocols not to discuss on-water matters. His answer finished at 1.07pm and the statement went live online at 1.09pm.
Pezzullo’s report observed “the information may have made its way to the journalist separate to, and before, the ABF newsroom announcement”.
“When the request was made to publish the public statement there was no evidence to suggest that officials were aware of the Liberal party planning to tweet and SMS the message ‘BREAKING – Aust Border Force has intercepted an illegal boat trying to reach Aus. Keep our borders secure by voting Liberal today. Https://vote.liberal.org.au’.”
Pezzullo found that publishing factual statements was not without precedent – citing seven instances that former home affairs minister Peter Dutton had done so.
The secretary found such statements “can occur to serve the legitimate purposes of deterring the people-smuggling trade and for transparency”.
Andrews on Saturday denied there was any pressure to issue the statement.
“The report makes it very, very clear that there was no breach of caretaker conventions,” she told the Today show on the Nine Network.
“I asked the department to lawfully put out a statement – and actually it wasn’t the department, it was the head of operation sovereign borders. I asked clearly for the statement to be put out in a very situational-awareness type of report so it really just stuck to the facts, it just needed to be brief, it was just needed to be put out there so that it was clear that there had been a vessel that had been intercepted.
“There was absolutely no pressure put on the department.”
Asked if the prime minister’s office was pressuring her to get the information into the public domain, Andrews said: “I was asked by the prime minister to issue the statement and that is exactly what I did.”
“My focus was on getting the statement live, to make sure there was briefing of the opposition, and both of those steps were critically important,” she said.
“Now if you go back to the lead-up to the election, it was very clear that there was a lot of media reporting, there was a lot of social media reporting, about this being a scaremongering tactic by the Coalition government to create fear about whether or not there would be boat arrivals.
“I was advised earlyish in the morning of election day that a boat had been intercepted. Later we then went down the pathway of issuing a statement.
“It was a statement that was very operational in its focus and I think that was the appropriate way for it to happen.”
Pezzullo suggested the new government consider adding to caretaker conventions that “in the ordinary course, sensitive information that is potentially politically significant should not be released publicly during the caretaker period unless a threat to life exists or some other urgency concerning public safety and security is involved”.
O’Neil on Friday said the former government had “undermined the integrity of this complex operation, making it more difficult and dangerous”.
“The report found uniformed border force and defence force members, and public servants, acted with integrity and at the highest standards at all times,” she said.
“They should be commended for doing so. The profound compromise of a military-led operation is without precedent in Australia’s history.
“It was disgraceful, shameful, and characteristic of a national government which frequently pursued political interests above the national interest. That is something the Albanese government will never do.”
A spokesperson for Andrews late on Friday night said the report showed “caretaker guidelines were not breached”.
“Previous similar publications were done in the interest of transparency and deterrence, as also stipulated in the report,” they said. “The minister worked with department officials to ensure the opposition received a briefing within a timely manner.”
