PM defends excluding intelligence chiefs from national security meetings

Anthony Albanese has in a fiery exchange defended excluding intelligence chiefs from National Security Committee meetings during his first term of government.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister finally called a royal commission into anti-Semitism after weeks of pressure following the December 14 terror attack in Bondi, that killed 15 innocents and injured dozens more.

He had previously announced a departmental probe into policing and intelligence services

With intelligence and policing services facing heavy scrutiny in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, the Prime Minister was on Friday asked if he had made a mistake by excluding the spy chiefs.

“The premise of the question is wrong,” Mr Albanese told the ABC.

“We have completely engaged with all of the national security (agencies).”

The heads of Australia’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies were made non-permanent members of the NSC in 2023 and only attended meetings on a case-by-case basis.

They were reinstated as permanent members in 2024 after their exclusion sparked widespread criticism.

He was pressed further, with it put to him that ASIO director-general Mike Burgess did not attend national security committee meetings for two years.

Mr Albanese did not deny that but pointed that the journalist peppering him was not at the meetings and that he was.

“What Mike Burgess didn’t do was sit through all of the meetings when we were doing the AUKUS arrangements,” he said.

“But any time that there was anything to do with intelligence or anything else, Mike Burgess is always in the room – every single occasion.”

More to come