The Dural caravan affair stinks to high heaven. If I were Anthony Albanese, I would bow, with every appearance of reluctance, to Peter Duttons demands for an inquiry. Far from shrouding this inquiry with a cloud of secrecy of the sort so beloved by the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and his department, I would opt for an open inquiry of the NSW ICAC type, if one that permitted the identity of security agents to be suppressed.

Not an inquiry of the National Anti-Corruption type, and certainly not one conducted by anyone recommended by any people on the commission, or by Dreyfus himself, or Attorney-General’s department officials of the sort who wanted entirely closed criminal trials of people such as Bernard Collaery and Witness J on trial mostly to cover up misbehaviour by Commonwealth officials. An inquiry into the caravan could, after all, be looking at matters such as Dreyfuss judgment, about the communications between Dreyfus, ASIO and the AFP, and the lines of communication in the security environment. Much the same is true of Albanese himself.

Albanese is presumably briefed by now on the broad circumstances of the caravan case, and about what state and federal investigators now know or believe about it. There is no suggestion of any misconduct by Albanese, or negligence by him in failing to personally involve himself or direct the investigation. Dutton is a former Queensland policeman of no great rank or reputation, either or after being minister for home affairs. In government as much as opposition, he has never hesitated to over blow a security issue, often at fabulous public expense, to make Labor seem weak, or soft, on protecting citizens from such threats as refugees, immigrants, terrorists and Aboriginal activists.

Over the past two weeks he has implied that the failure to notify Albanese immediately occurred because investigators, and their leaders, did not trust him. He has implied from Albaneses silence some indication of a guilty conscience, indifference to Jewish safety. Perhaps Albanese is antisemitic and doesnt care about them. Loyal Jewish spokesmen can be heard to this effect. During these smears, for which there is precious little evidence, an impressionable public is being persuaded that the government is dragging its feet on public safety. If a part of the slur, that Albanese was not well briefed on the affair (or that he neglected to get informed, it reflects ill on the AFP and ASIO, not to mention the premier of NSW. But Dutton is not looking at their negligence, if any, but making everything the result of some character defect of Albanese.

Perhaps Albanese should be regarded as missing in action because he did not immediately take charge. Perhaps he should have shoved the police commissioner and the ASIO officers aside and personally directed arrests, made operational decisions, and decided who was guilty. Its the sort of thing that a tough man like Dutton, with his police background and his police culture experience, could have managed.

The caravan case, based on what has been said, is far from convincing as a terror plot

Dutton and some of his frontbenchers have suggested that what was before the cops and ASIO was the prospect of the most serious act of terrorism in Australian history. The coalition critics, the investigators and the media seem unanimous that the threat of an explosion was against Jewish Australians, designed to destroy lives and property, and to cause a wave of panic, terror and fear. Nothing can yet be ruled out, but the evidence for the worst possibilities is far from overwhelming. I remain to be convinced that there was a plan to blow up any sort of Jewish centre in some sort of Oklahoma bombing event, or that, if there once was, it was a vast conspiracy, incidentally capable of justifying further restrictions on freedom of speech. I have an open mind, but my dial starts with a presumption of innocence.

In 1973, about 600 ACT cops supplemented by others from NSW, lined the streets of Canberra from the airport to the Lakeside Hotel, down Commonwealth Avenue and Adelaide Avenue to Government House, and between Government House and the old parliament. It was during a visit by Dzemal Bijedic, the Yugoslav prime minister. Helicopters flew overhead. The security precautions were about triple those during the visit, some years before of the American president. Police and ASIO forecasts warned of a serious risk that some anti-communist zealot, probably Croatian, might take a pot shot at him.

I had some doubts, although Croatians galore were having a great time mocking the visit

As a motorcade of Yugoslav armed security guards and ACT cops drove along Commonwealth Avenue, helicopters overhead, with police on the roadside poking into bushes, Frank Cranston and I, both from the Canberra Times, moved on ahead to watch the spectacle. Just over Commonwealth Avenue bridge are two roundabouts allowing people from Treasury to get on and off Commonwealth Avenue. We drove under the bridge, where a fellow in a ute was using a shovel to dig a hole in the grassy lawn. He looked vaguely of Balkan appearance. As Frank and I stopped and wandered over for a yarn, a cop came over to warn us off, though he seemed to have no interest in the fellow with a shovel. We made some remark about him, and the cop, recognising Frank, almost an honorary ACT cop, went over to ask the man with the shovel what he was doing. It turned out that he had some sort of tree-planting contract. The cop idly looked under a tarp in his ute, revealing more shovels, crowbars, several mechanics tool boxes bolted on to the top, cement He had bags of cement and sand, and, in the corner at the top, about three sticks of very sweaty dynamite. A standard Croatian builder’s ute, in short. The fellow said he had had it about two years, mostly to break up clay, and had forgotten it was there. At about this moment, the Bijedic vehicle passed over us. The fellow in question, who was never charged, had been oblivious to the state visit and it had been purely by coincidence that he was at work on his contract that day. I was pleasantly surprised he did not have a .22 rifle, handy for most Canberra for shooting the rabbits which were (and again are) in plague proportions.

The ASIO chap, when he wandered over, was mostly amused. A part of the Bijedic story involved a dispute between Attorney-General Lionel Murphy and ASIO about whether ASIO was alarmed enough about the threat to Bijedic from Croatian terrorists. ASIO thought the risks overblown. The Commonwealth Police persuaded Murphy otherwise. The dispute led to Murphys raids on Canberra and Melbourne ASIO HQ about a week before.

I have been on the site of any number of terrorist atrocities, including the Hilton bombing incident about two hours after, but have ever since begun my job with a certain scepticism.

The federal model of royal commissions of recent days involves narrow, tightly defined terms of reference, on the lines of the Wheat for Oil Royal Commission, called to investigate allegations of trade of Australian wheat with Iraq in knowing breaches of sanctions. The trade liberated money for Saddam Hussein that was used to buy arms later able to be used against Australia and American allies in the 2003 Iraqi war. There were ample implications that officials in the department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, minders and ministers, were aware of the illegal deals. But John Howard wrote the terms of reference so tightly that his commissioner was not allowed to investigate what ministers knew and what they did. Kevin Rudd did an excellent job in keeping the scandal to the fore, but, after becoming prime minister, decided to leave it alone. Later, of course, relevant ministers and officials were able to suggest that the reports silence on connivance issues meant they had been, in effect, vindicated.

An inquiry is not needed to second guess a jury or to compromise a trial. That can wait for later, if there is any need. What the public wants to know is what happened and whether the guardians are up to the job. The public has been fed alarm, grandstanding and panic. If they vote for one side of politics, we are, I am afraid, up for a lot more of it.

Weaknesses in the idea that there was a plot on foot

First, the caravan at Dural, said to have been stacked with explosives, appears to have been abandonedperhaps twoweeks before it was found. That may not discredit the idea of the potential of the stash of explosives, but it does suggest that any project had been abandoned long before the discovery of the stash.

There has been coynessabout a note with the stash said tomentiona location pointing to potential use against some Israeli, or Jewish target,possibly aJewish school or synagogue. The context and the plan should be part of the subject matter of the inquiry, as well as the analysis made of its meaning by the various investigators. It would not be the function of an inquiry to itself make its own analysis of the clues. But its job would be to look at the words themselves and the deductions about what they meant, as well as how other information in their hands supported such conclusions as various stages of the investigations.

The need for this is not to test any conspiracy theory of a set-up job, or a false flag operation, with planted evidence and credulouscops. Therewill alwaysbethose who will believe such things. Some will claim that ASIO and anti-terror squads working in Australia are professionally predisposed to seeing security matters from Israels perspective, and to have mentally come to assume that terror and bombs are most likely to have come from supporters of Palestine.

There is a long Australian history of such rushes to judgment on inadequate evidence, and of tunnel vision in remaining attached to such ideas even when the evidence falls far short of being compelling. Witness, for example, how , for a long time, Commissioner Mick Kelty and AFP detectives (and the DPP and Liberal ministers) could not be shaken from their belief that Dr Mohammed Haneef was a terrorist. By contrast, a more professional ASIO, reading exactly the same evidence, proved the AFP fixation to be false.

ASIO itself has made serious mistakes, sometimes the worse these days because it now has executive powers, and often (as now) leaders who yearn for places on the public stage. If it was merely a matter of publicity hounds (like some police commissioners also) they might be a screen behind which the worker bees use experience and judgment. Alas, as in any institution, there is always internal pressure to make judgments agree with the latest pronouncements from above. And, over the years, ASIO has sometimes found it difficult to escape pressure from politicians for the agency to participate in party political stunts.

Intelligence assessments are not like bills of criminal indictment. Some can never provide proof beyond reasonable doubt, or even on the balance of probabilities. Even material of doubtful probity must be considered carefully because of the risk to human lives. Nonetheless, assessments must be reasonable, the reliability (and logic) of information weighed against the risks involved. In the modern day, when investigators have access to all manner of means of electronic surveillance, computer matching, and massive data banks and metadata, there is more pressure on analysts to be able to show the logic behind tentative conclusions.

Is it just a typical smear byDutton?

Those in custody seem to be at the bottom of any hierarchy planning a seriously disruptive act. Cops have yet to find individuals who can persuasively link different sets of suspects, let alone some common purpose. Nor, it seems, have they so far found any sort of mastermind, organising genius, or even evidence of a co-ordinated project.

On the basis of what we now know, the case looks weak. It is not, of course, greatly assisted by police leaking, selective briefing of decision makers (possibly based in part to a tendency to lap up whatever they are told.)

Nor has it escaped the eye of Labor figures that all of the major investigative players are appointees of Coalition governments. They are independent statutory officials, and not to be regarded as political pawns at the direction of the opposition. But some Labor paranoids note that the Commonwealth officials were all appointed by Peter Dutton. They tend to share his views about the security environment . They have a common propensity to hector and warn the general population about alleged threats to it, and a pessimistic outlook about what the future holds.

Labor is preparing for an election focused on the cost of living, and major health and social projects; Dutton by contrast wants the election to be fought on his grounds, which includes focusing on threats to national security, personal safety, alleged criminality by immigrants, and alleged crime waves. Caravans at Dural, and suggestions that Albanese has been weak, hopeless and indecisive about them exactly suit his purpose.

Likewise the NSW police has a less than stellar record of good deductions, and good judgment, in anti-terrorism matters. Their intelligence, their conclusions and their operational tactics in the Lindt Cafe affair made them appear amateurs. The NSW Police are uncommonly politicised and participate in the premiers publicity stunts, including over antisemitic behaviour.

Onereason whyAlbo ought to find a royal commission an attractive prospect is for the politics of it all. I know the old argument that royal commissions often go wrong, and should never ask questions to which one does not know the answer. But Idontexpect that anyone in the government has much on his or her conscience, or much fear of embarrassment. Indeed, the inquiry is not only an opportunity to make the coalition put up or shut up, but toestablishthat they are smearing Albo for partisan purposes in ways that invite questions about their fitness for office.