Hyperbole after the great Lobby Restaurant Massacree of Australia Day labelled it as the most serious lapse of security involving a prime minister since the 1970s. I very much doubt that - and it was certainly not as good as the egg in the face of William Morris Hughes in Warwick, Queensland, in 1917 which led to the formation of a Commonwealth Police. But so far as it was a breach, the focus on minder mischief is distracting attention from how anyone decided that the Lobby had been a good place for the PM to be.
And the affair may well drown out a far more serious security breach involving the Syrian Embassy last weekend. At about 9.30 last Saturday night about 30 men forced their way into the Syrian Embassy in O'Malley. Three embassy employees locked themselves into a back room to avoid being assaulted while the invaders trashed the building. They decamped only minutes before a roving police car arrived for a routine check.
Police have been quiet about their investigations, with no one so far reported as being arrested.
There are a number of deeply embarrassing aspects of the debacle. Australia has obligations to protect diplomats under the Vienna Convention, but there was no protection around when the raid occurred, even though there had been any number of indications that the risk of an incident had suddenly increased. I am told that those directly responsible for providing security had upped their precautions, and stationed a single policeman at the embassy. After nothing happened for some time, however, someone apparently decided that there were more important calls on Canberra police time, and ordered instead that a police car go past from time to time. The raid, I am told, occurred between patrols.
Before then there had been raids on the Syrian Embassy in London, Berlin and in other places. Before the night was over, there were been raids at seven separate Syrian embassies. The raids followed Western press reports of a massacre of more than 200 civilians by Syrian security forces in Homs. Those reports had stirred demonstrations by Syrians in exile all around the world. ASIO and others monitor the news wires and the internet, as well as intelligence traffic. Warnings went out. The fault, in short, almost certainly lay in decision-making after the need for precautions was obvious.
The lapse involves diplomats, for whose security Australia has very specific obligations under the Vienna Convention. That Syria, or its leader, is currently unpopular in Australia is not the point: if we accept its envoys, we have obligations towards them. We failed them badly. Diplomats from other embassies around Canberra make it clear they are appalled.
The affair is eerily similar to a raid on the Iranian Embassy in April 1992, when about a dozen men charged into the embassy chancelry, some with sticks, bashed staff, set fires, painted slogans on walls and generally wrecked the joint. That led to a major inquiry into security arrangements, including into liaison between ASIO, the protective security centre and police. The report, made public, showed that the warnings systems had worked - ASIO, in particular, had raised the alarm about extra risk to the embassy - but that the follow-up was poor.
Everyone claimed to have learned from the affair, but Saturday inspires little confidence in that. Since 2001, there has been exponential growth in ASIO, the protective security bureaucracy, and police resources and heightened focus on the need for quick and nimble responses to security incidents.
No doubt those responsible for responding to security warnings were juggling scarce police resources on a busy Saturday night. But the AFP budget for ACT policing contains explicit provision for extra police to cover the protection of diplomats, or the need to deploy teams for sudden security incidents.
Indeed, only a few days before, the AFP was telling everyone about ''a major shake-up'' of their ''elite specialist response units'' in a move that would see the ACT get better access to the AFP security resources. The existing ACT AFP Specialist Response and Security Unit would be merged with the federal operational response group to create the largest specialist police team of its kind in Australia, almost exclusively based in the ACT.
A cynic might wonder whether the primary purpose of this was to shift the cost of maintaining such force-in-being on to the ACT, as opposed to Commonwealth Government. The squad - essentially created at its size when the terror about terror was at its height, and all manner of cowboy paramilitary teams were being planned and approved - has never been deployed as such, in Canberra or elsewhere. No doubt members have had their outings saving Sydneysiders from terrorists during the APEC meeting, and, perhaps, helping to protect President Obama in Canberra, and, perhaps, in round-ups of real or suspected terrorists identified by ordinary police work.
But it is not only police management of such matters that deserves independent review. As I pointed out a fortnight ago, the terror industry has also spawned a vast industry of bureaucrats, ever seeking to interpose themselves into the system as coordinators, controllers, chairmen, facilitators, managers, and people there to keep other agencies and ministers or to suffocate the passage of accurate information to the public. They do not add value.
If one confined oneself to the reading of grandiose statements about agency functions, one might think, for example, that numerous groups inside the federal Attorney-General's department have something to do with embassy security. One of the better ways of finding out just what authority they do have, or just what accountability they are prepared to accept, can be seen in the aftermath of fiascos like last Saturday.
An open inquiry is needed, if only because so many of the players have become adept in blame-passing, pretended ignorance, or the AFP habit of holding responsible only the most junior person able to be found.
An inquiry by a competent outsider - an Angus Houston, for example - might also look at the lapses of personal security for the Prime Minister on Australia Day.
The Opposition, via George Brandis and Christopher Pyne, have already called for a police investigation into this, but seemingly only into whether a prime ministerial press secretary, or trade union organiser incited a riot, or committed some other offence, or, indeed, whether the rioters committed one.
The answers are pretty obviously no. First there was no riot in any sense of the word, even if there was a loud and noisy demonstration - as demonstrations sometimes are. At no stage was anyone in any danger of assault, and even as the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and police exited, no demonstrator made any threatening or dangerous move towards them.
An impression to the contrary was given by film footage of a moment when Gillard tripped and lost a shoe as she was being hurried out. As she stumbled, one of her guards steadied her, and, for a moment, she was virtually horizontal in his arms. But she had not been pushed, or even touched.
To say that she was in no actual danger is not to criticise the judgment of her detail. They had been ambushed - neither expecting a demonstration (nor aware of the role of a Gillard staffer in bringing it on). Perhaps 50 people had come from the embassy, with more coming. It could only get worse, and delay in leaving could cause a siege. In my opinion, the ordinary police on the scene should have cleared the way for the guard escorting the Prime Minister. But that he was prepared to lead the procession out with Gillard by his side, is a measure of his (correct) judgment that there was no actual danger.
Most journalists familiar with Dark Arts would readily accept that Gillard's minder intended to cause bad publicity for Tony Abbott in drawing the attention of Aborigines to Abbott's embassy statement, and his presence. But I very much doubt that he intended to provoke a riot. And, anyway, it had been virtually inevitable that people at the Embassy commemoration would become aware of the presence of Abbott and Gillard, even without the intervention of a silly minder.
Minders - coalition as well as Labor ones - are forever tipping off journalists and third parties to statements made by the enemy, in the hope of provoking those tipped off to doing or saying something.
At the security level, however, there's still a big question about who selected the Lobby for the bravery awards ceremony, and why, and how those who study prime ministerial engagements from a personal security point of view missed the risks involved. These risks were there from proximity as much as sabotage by minders. The AFP officer who claimed that AFP security officers do not express opinions on such matters is obviously unaware of how things work. Perhaps he is not in the loop.
AFP security details are intimately involved in the assessment process. Not only that, but their advice is almost invariably followed. In his later years in office, for example, John Howard did not speak at the National Press Club because of AFP security concerns. The Club convened at Parliament House.
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