Anthony Albanese fires up at Scott Morrison's 'low' final act as PM

Anthony Albanese has fired up at Scott Morrison, saying the former prime minister ordered the ABF (Australian Border Force) to announce it had intercepted a reported asylum seeker boat on election day — before a mass of robo-texts were sent to voters — in one of his final acts as leader.

Speaking on Radio National this morning, the Prime Minister said there was "nothing normal" about what happened on Saturday.

"There was nothing normal about the protocols that were not observed here.

"We had a circumstance whereby the prime minister's office contacted my office in the middle of Saturday, and we indicated it would be entirely inappropriate for this event to be politicised. It's a clear breach of the caretaker conventions."

He said Morrison used to stand up and say that he would "not comment on on-water matters".

"Very clearly this statement was made so that it could facilitate the sending of – we are not sure how many – but potentially many millions of text messages to voters in a last-minute scare campaign," Albanese said.

"It was an entire abuse of proper processes and a disgraceful act from a government which was prepared to politicise everything but solve nothing."

The matter is now subject to an inquiry by Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo, ordered this week by the new Labor government.

"It was extraordinary that this statement was made to enable those text messages to be sent to people. People were wondering what was going on when they were receiving that text message," said Albanese.

"It just showed that the government had really lost perspective – they were prepared to politicise anything and everything.

"This was a real lowlight amongst many – there was some competition in the recent period by the former government, but this was a new low."

Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered the ABF to announce a boat had been intercepted on election day, in breach of regular protocol, Albanese claims. Photo / Getty Images

News.com.au has reached out to the ABF and Morrison's office for further comment.

Days before the messages were sent, Morrison had warned voters that people smugglers were preparing to fire up their businesses in the event of a Labor win.

On election day, Morrison announced an asylum seeker vessel had been intercepted apparently en route to Australia, and robo-texts were sent out shortly after alerting voters of the interception.

The texts were sent to voters in marginal seats. Photo / news.com.au

The message read: "BREAKING – Australian Border Force has intercepted an illegal boat trying to reach Australia. Keep our borders secure by voting Liberal today. https://vote.liberal.org.au."

The move outraged senior Labor members, who questioned the timing of the announcement and the Liberal Party's immediate mass text messages to voters in marginal seats.

A spokesman for the Liberal Party confirmed it sent text messages to an undisclosed amount of mobile phone numbers on Saturday afternoon advising people to vote Liberal to "keep our borders secure".

Screenshots of the messages were shared widely on social media and were received by voters in tightly contested seats including Gilmore, Corangamite, Hughes and Bennelong.

The Australian Electoral Commission said it was aware the texts had been sent out but these types of messages were not prohibited by the electoral act, with political parties exempt from privacy and spam laws.

Not long before the messages were sent, Morrison used his final media conference of the campaign to announce a boat had been intercepted on Saturday morning after making its way from Sri Lanka.

It is understood about 15 people were on board the vessel that was stopped by Australian authorities off the west coast of Christmas Island after almost making it to the mainland.

On Saturday afternoon those people were on board an Operation Sovereign Borders vessel having their credentials verified.

Morrison claimed he wanted to share the information with Australians in the spirit of "full transparency".

"I've been here to stop this boat, but in order for me to be there to stop those that may come from here, you need to vote Liberal and Nationals," he said.

"In the interests of full transparency, in the middle of an election campaign, the Labor Party was advised of this and a statement has been issued by the border protection authorities."

Morrison had previously declared there would be no public discussion of "on-water matters", when he was immigration minister and Australia began turning back asylum seeker vessels at sea in November 2013.