Villawood bomb 'should have set off alarm'

SYDNEY (AAP) - The discovery of a homemade bomb at a Sydney detention centre should have triggered the government's alarm bells that violence at the facility was a possibility, the opposition says.
The materials were found at the Villawood Detention Centre southwest of Sydney on March 19 after NSW police were called to investigate a fire in a computer room.
Almost a month later, on April 20, a riot at the centre involving up to 100 detainees resulted in nine buildings being gutted by fire and 22 inmates being questioned by police.
Police on Wednesday said investigations were continuing after Bankstown local area command officers found an aerosol can, a bottle of Johnson's baby oil and a bottle of canola oil in the room.
"Police discovered a homemade device consisting of a number of potentially flammable items," a spokesman told AAP.
"The fire does appear to be deliberately lit."
However, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, on Wednesday, appeared not to know about the incident or the investigation when questioned on Macquarie Radio.
"That's a very serious allegation which I will have examined with the appropriate seriousness," he told the network.
But opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the March incident should have set off warning bells for the government that trouble was brewing at the centre, after a spate of incidents at another facility - on Christmas Island off Western Australian.
"This incident should have triggered a series of actions from this minister," he told journalists in Sydney.
"I can think of few bigger warning signs that there was a riot brewing and people looking to destroy property, than people having made a bomb in a detention centre."
After the April 20 riot, three detainees seeking temporary visas staged an 11-day rooftop protest after their applications were rejected.
Jamal Daoud, from the Social Justice Network, on Wednesday said he had spoken to detainees about the homemade device, but they dismissed the allegations.
"They all were laughing loudly," he said in a statement.
"They told me that at that time, flames came from one of the computers.
"When the police arrived, they searched the room, then they closed it and left."
Asked about the device on Wednesday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard also seemed to be in the dark and said she would not "speculate".
"Of course, we have our detention centres overseen by contracted body SERCO and there are a set of contractual obligations that require them to provide appropriate security," she told reporters in Sydney.
"We will take appropriate advice about it. Sometimes, things said on radio stations prove on analysis not to be 100 per cent right."
NSW police are carrying out fingerprint and DNA tests on the items and investigations into the fire are ongoing.