Defence minister Kevin Andrews has failed to name the leader of ISIS the day before 300 Australian troops were sent to Iraq to join the fight against the terrorist group.
In an interview on ABC's 7:30 program Tuesday night he said that Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi's name was an "operational matter". But as Leigh Sales points out in the interview, it's really not.
In fact, the man Kevin Andrews refused to name is so well known, the United States has a $10 million bounty on his head.
Sales pointed out to Andrews that it's pretty worrying that he couldn't say the name of the ISIS leader, given that he's "responsible for putting Australian men and women in harm's way."
The defence minister said he couldn't name the leader because ISIS is made up of "a combination of groups".
"It's not just one person involved, there's a series of people involved and we must ultimately destroy all of them if we're going to degrade their operations in that area." he said.
The Australian government has rolled out the "operational matters" line to dodge questions from journalists before.
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The catchphrase "on water matters" was used repeatedly by the commander of Operation Sovereign Borders when asked about asylum seekers being intercepted at sea in 2013.
The minister later tried to fix it all with some gaffe-tape by sending this tweet after the interview:
Focussing on individuals ignores the threat that extremist organisations present. We remain firm in our resolve to defeat Dae'sh #auspol
But people on social media had already jumped on it, tweeting about other things that could be classified as operational matters.
I am not going to tell you what my breakfast is, that's an operational matter
Kevin Andrews What is the name of your hair dye? Andrews: "I'm not going into on head operational matters"
@Colvinius @leighsales I decline to name any of these individuals, due to operational reasons.
Some took it a step further, likening the defence minister's memory block to Woolworth's ill-fated "Fresh in Our Memories" ANZAC campaign.
#Auspol @kevinandrewsmp @Woolworths Fresh in your memories ...@leighsales pls RT Cheers knedo
Remembering names is hard, so for the record, this guy is definitely the leader of ISIS.
