A man has been granted bail after being charged with allegedly threatening federal Labor MP Tanya Plibersek in a social media post.
An Australian Federal Police National Security Investigations (NSI) team raided a home in Berridale, NSW, on Wednesday, seized a mobile phone, and arrested Shannon Bennett, 53.
The AFP said its dedicated squad of social media police carried out the search warrant after receiving a report of an alleged online threat to a federal parliamentarian on July 22.
Mr Bennett was charged with one count of using a carriage service to make a threat to kill or cause serious harm, and faced bail court on Thursday.
Judge Te’res Si granted bail after the court heard the alleged post was made on Facebook, and that Mr Bennett had no history of similar criminal offences, ABC News reported.
Mr Bennett, who is yet to enter a plea, is banned from social media as part of his bail conditions, must report to police once a week, and cannot go near Ms Plibersek, her electorate office in Sydney, or Parliament House in Canberra.
He faces a maximum 10 years’ imprisonment.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett established the NSI teams shortly after her appointment last year to “target groups and individuals causing high levels of harm to Australia’s social cohesion”.
The teams then carried out a series of high-profile raids over social media posts in November and early December while the Bondi Islamic terrorists were planning their attack undetected.
Among those arrested in late November was nationalist activist Joel Davis, who was remanded in custody over an alleged social media post asking his followers to “rhetorically rape” federal MP Allegra Spender, and spent 133 days in solitary confinement before being granted bail in the NSW Supreme Court.
The AFP’s funding priorities have since come under scrutiny after it was revealed counter-terrorism is less than 10% of its budget, and it spends about four times as much guarding politicians and government buildings.
A former senior AFP officer also told the royal commission on anti-Semitism that the command responsible for counter-terrorism was understaffed and had “critical vacancies”, and that there were concerns the agency was being required to “balance” Islamic terrorism and so-called right-wing extremism.
Header image: Tanya Plibersek with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (PMO).
