Crazed maniacs were targeting the Lodge this week, we were told.
No, not the Liberal Party.
Details of the Canberra bomb scare are sketchy because the holder of the information is the Australian Federal Police close personal protection unit and they are a secretive bunch.
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That’s not surprising because they’re our equivalent of the US Secret Service, the bullet catchers who protect the president.
What we do know is the Feds reacted after they received information that the prime ministerial residence in Canberra was the target of an assassination plan connected to a New York-based classical Chinese dance and music performance.
That’s not a sentence you get to write very often.
Three hours of panic started about 6pm on Tuesday.
The threat, which came via email, claimed nitroglycerin explosives had been placed around the Lodge.
There was a warning that “blood will flow like a river” if a performance by dance troupe Shen Yun went ahead the next day.
Shen Yun is affiliated with Falun Gong, a relatively new religious movement banned by the Chinese Communist Party because they reckon it’s a cult, which even Xi Jinping must surely find a little pot/kettle-ish.
Falun Gong is pretty active in Australia, which drives Beijing nuts.
You often see devotees in city centres protesting against what they say is the state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from prisoners by the Chinese government.
Anti-CCP newspaper, the Epoch Times, broke the Lodge story. The news report said organisers of the Shen Yun concerts were sent warnings that “if you insist on proceeding with the performance, then the Prime Minister’s Lodge will be blown into ruins”.
Those emails were then forwarded to the AFP, which went into full-blown SWAT mode, whisking Anthony Albanese away and conducting a three-hour sweep of the house and grounds.
They found nothing and it appears we were the victims of a hoax.
Bomb or no bomb, it was further evidence that the political temperature is rising. Politicians on every side agree we need to take it down a notch and yearn for when this country could have disagreements without immediately going to a Spinal Tap-esque 11.
There’s little doubt that contemporary politics is a particularly willing environment but let’s not kid ourselves that there was some kind of halcyon period during which politicians — and the public — had passionate but rational debates in the style of The West Wing.
We’ve always been quick on the draw when it comes to lashing, verbally and sometimes physically, our elected representatives.
Albo’s scare was not the first rodeo for the close personal protection unit and its predecessors.
During the Depression, Joseph Lyons faced multiple public scares.
There was step change in security at the Lodge when Robert Menzies was there, because of opposition to military conscription.
Bob Hawke was targeted when he committed Australian forces to the first Gulf War.
John Howard was in the sights of gun-owners who opposed his post-Port Arthur firearms crackdown.
Who can forget watching him shriek at that angry mob of gun nuts?
“I’m sorry about that, but there is no other way, no other way!” he said, while wearing a bullet-proof vest under his shirt (and probably over his singlet, knowing John).
John Howard speaking to a crowd in 1996 following the Port Arthur massacre. Credit: Colin Murty/Fairfax
Albo hasn’t had to don that kind of PPE (yet) but the writing’s on the wall.
If the old saying “the trend is your friend” holds true, the bullet catchers better double-check their Kevlar vests.
The AFP estimates the number of instances of harassing or threatening communications aimed at Federal parliamentarians jumped to more than 1000 in 2023‑24. That was a 42 per cent rise on the previous year’s 709.
Lord knows, the war in Gaza means that figure will be significantly higher now.
Proper assassination attempts are few and far between Down Under.
NSW State MP Percy Brookfield was shot dead at Riverton railway station in South Australia in March 1921 but it was more a case of wrong place, wrong time than being the victim of an assassination plot.
Brookfield was killed by a deranged gunman who was firing at bystanders and was not the target.
The first genuine political assassination attempt was made on Labor heavyweight Arthur Calwell. He was sitting in his car after a rally at Mosman Town Hall in Sydney in June 1966 when he was shot at close range by someone wielding a .22 rifle.
The shooter, Peter Kocan, fired through a car window, wounding Calwell with glass and bullet fragments but the long-serving opposition leader survived. He later publicly forgave his attacker.
Australia’s best known assassination victim was NSW Labor MP John Newman, who died after being shot twice in the driveway of his Cabramatta home. He was killed on September 5, 1994.
Local powerbroker Phuong Ngo was later convicted of ordering Newman’s murder.
Halcyon? Not so much. There are a lot of blood-stained pages in this country’s political history books. Here’s hoping the upcoming chapters don’t become more violent.
