Subjects: The High Court decision to allow 80 criminals out of detention and onto Australian streets; Labor asleep at the wheel on community safety.
E&OE
BEN FORDHAM:
This is a real worry and we’re already seeing messages from people right around Australia indicating their concern. This is the High Court decision that’s been laid bare now, involving up to 80 violent offenders who’ve been held in immigration detention, who are now released into the community, and it happened in the blink of an eye.
Most of these people have failed character tests, they’ve been deemed a risk to national security – some of them. But now, thanks to the High Court, they’re free. The High Court has ruled that keeping these people in immigration detention indefinitely is illegal, and we’ve been highlighting some of the people who are now allowed to walk free, like Sirul Azhar Umar, who faces the death penalty in Malaysia for murdering a pregnant woman. He’s been let go, and is apparently hanging out with family in Canberra. Then you’ve got Aliyawar Yawari, a violent predator with a record of attacking elderly women. He’s now walking free in Perth.
The Coalition is accusing the Federal Government of falling asleep at the wheel in the lead-up to this High Court judgement. Peter Dutton is the Opposition Leader. He joins me on the line.
Peter Dutton, good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Ben.
BEN FORDHAM:
Did you see this coming?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, no, nobody saw it coming except the Minister and the Minister’s done nothing about it, which is quite unbelievable. In these cases, Ben, the Commonwealth Government, the solicitors, obviously deal with the courts and they would have been given a heads-up as to the likely decision and the Department should have been planning for options and whether Parliament needed to pass urgent legislation to address whatever the concern was that the High Court had. All of that work should have been going on in the background before any decision was made, but it seems now that the Government’s just happy to accept the decision, happy to see these people out on the streets committing more crimes, and they couldn’t care less for people’s legitimate concerns about having these people released into the broader community.
BEN FORDHAM:
You were a long-term Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs. Your Government would have had regular legal advice. So, were you ever warned that the day would come when these criminals would be released?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, there are all sorts of court cases that you have to deal with, and the Minister for Immigration is the most litigated Minister in the Commonwealth, so you’re in the courts every single day. I mean, there’s a Bill before the Parliament now that the Government has asked us to support, which of course we will, in relation to an issue around the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and those bills pop up all the time to address quirky outcomes that the courts provide for, decisions that we can’t really agree with or understand, but you can patch it up with a change to the law. But that’s not what’s happened here.
The Minister hasn’t explored the options available to him by legislation, and this problem potentially can be addressed by a change in the Act, but the Prime Minister hasn’t inserted himself into the issue, the Minister hasn’t sought that advice, they haven’t come to us saying ‘here’s the solution and we need your support to get it through the Parliament quickly’, and you’ve got these people getting out onto the street. These are the worst of the criminals that you can imagine, Ben, and they shouldn’t be roaming the streets in a way that will see more victims falling prey to their evil mind.
BEN FORDHAM:
Okay. But just give me an answer on this. Were you ever warned that the day would come when these violent criminals would have to be released?
PETER DUTTON:
No, Ben. We relied on – there’s a case that goes back a couple of decades, and that’s been referred to in this judgement, they’ve overturned that case, and as I say, this happens regularly in the courts. So, under the Constitution there are limitations in relation to whether somebody can be detained indefinitely, but there are ways to deal with that – and we dealt with them.
BEN FORDHAM:
Alright, well what about dealing with it now? Because we’re not talking about low level crooks, we’re talking about murderers and violent offenders and people who’ve done all sorts of horrendous things, including to a pregnant woman. So, has the Prime Minister reached out to you since last week, or Andrew Giles, the Immigration Minister, and said, ‘hey, listen, we’ve got a major problem here, this is putting community safety at risk, we need your help’?
PETER DUTTON:
No, nothing at all, and the Prime Minister rolled his eyes in Question Time yesterday when we asked the question of Minister Giles and they just say, ‘well, this is the decision of the Courts’. But as I point out, the Immigration Minister has to deal with these matters and these problems every day, and a good Minister will ask his Department or her Department for advice about the likely options and they’ll be looking at prospects, and if your prospects are poor in a particular case, then are you going to appeal that? What response would you have?
As Immigration Minister, I dealt with plenty of cases where people were on the cusp of being released out into the community, they’d been multiple offenders, multiple victims that they’d been committing multiple rapes or convicted of multiple rapes over a long period of time. Like other Immigration Ministers, I took decisions to keep that person in custody. You have to do everything within the law to make sure that you can stop these people from getting back out on to the streets.
BEN FORDHAM:
But should they have been let out at the end of last week?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, no. If there was another option available – which I honestly believe that there is – then they could have prevented these people from getting out onto the streets. We’re talking about the most serious offenders here and people you don’t want roaming the streets and people who should otherwise be deported. I mean, Minister Giles is a great left wing advocate within the Labor Party, he doesn’t believe that people should be locked up and has got this view that, you know, keeping people incarcerated is impinging on their human rights. But I think the higher priority here is the concern about the next victim.
The Government has, I think, a sovereign responsibility here to deal with a very serious issue. They should be taking advice from the Solicitor General on what the legislative fix is. They could come to us overnight with a draft Bill, which we would support instinctively. They haven’t done that and Australians are going to suffer as a result.
BEN FORDHAM:
If this isn’t fixed, is there a chance that people smugglers will take advantage of this news and say to people, ‘well, here you go, here’s a development in Australia. Let me sell you a ticket on a boat’?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, yes, and the Government’s already dealing with these issues on water. They’re not talking about it publicly, but there are boat arrivals and the Government’s having to deal with that. Now, I suspect they’ve got it fairly contained, they’ve sent people to offshore detention for the first time, but they’re not publicly releasing that detail.
I think there’ll be a lot of people here as well who are saying, ‘well, we thought we were going to be deported’. When the Coalition was in Government, we deported people at a record rate, because I don’t believe that people who are here as non-citizens who sexually abuse a child or a young girl or a woman deserve to stay here. They should be deported.
BEN FORDHAM:
Well, what about the case of Sirul Azhar Umar, who was freed from Villawood over the weekend? He faces the death penalty back in Malaysia. He committed a callous crime against a pregnant woman, ended up shooting her and then blowing up her body with explosives.
Now, Malaysia wants him back. They want him back in Malaysia to face justice there. Would you be happy to send him back?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Ben, I’m not going to comment on individual cases because in some of those cases, I will have been a decision maker, and in relation to that case, I believe that I was. So, if the matters go to the Court again, I don’t want to interfere or taint that process.
But I’ll just make a general comment in relation to people who are here on visas, they’re not Australian citizens, they’ve committed crimes against Australian citizens or they’ve been found to be of bad character – they don’t deserve to be in our country. The Government has the power, and if they believe the power has been tested or the legislation has failed – courts find loopholes in legislation all the time – the job of the Prime Minister and a good Minister is to deal with that. The point here is that they haven’t done that. They’ve got an option before them to legislate, to make sure that not just these 80 or 90, but many behind them, who will be now testing these matters before the courts and the lawyers will be lining up saying, ‘well, you know, my client’s in the same situation, shares the same facts as these 80 or 90 people’. Potentially there are many hundreds more who are in immigration detention at the moment who will be released because the Albanese Government won’t act.
BEN FORDHAM:
We appreciate your time. We’ll see what comes out of Canberra today. Thanks for joining us.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, Ben. See you, mate.
[ends]