05 December 2023
Subjects: Labor’s immigration detention shambles; the Prime Minister’s weak leadership; Labor’s Big Australia Migration Policy; the barbaric attacks on Israel and the ramifications around Australia; calls for National Cabinet to condemn anti-Semitism.
E&OE.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
The Opposition Leader Peter Dutton joins me on the line.
Mr Dutton, g’day.
PETER DUTTON:
Good afternoon, Chris. Good to be with you.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Good to have you on. So, let’s start with this story out of South Australia. I can hardly believe it. An Afghan refugee attacks three elderly women between 2013-2014, was deemed a danger to the Australian community by a South Australian judge in 2016, now walking free in the Australian community, allegedly offends again, indecently assaulting a woman in her hotel room. We feared it would happen, and here we are.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Chris, tragically, we are, and these are very serious allegations. The most tragic part of it is that it was completely avoidable. We knew that people being released from custody who had very serious criminal offences, and you’ve covered this, people have really written a lot about it, and I think Australians are shaking their head at the fact that these Ministers made decisions which were negligent. They allowed people out into the community when there wasn’t a requirement to do so by the court and the inevitable has happened. People, particularly those who are offended against by people with sexual offences in their history, become victims time and time again – and that’s the difficulty that we’ve got here.
It’s tragic, and it’s sad, but it also makes a lot of us angry, but we were warning the Government about this. It was avoidable, they just didn’t take the steps necessary and they left – as you rightly point out – they’ve left the Australian public in a more unsafe position and that’s just unacceptable.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
I was thinking about this on the way into work today, have we seen before – certainly I can’t remember one and correct me if I’m wrong – but if we seen before, contingency plans set up for High Court decisions; pieces of legislation to happen as a Plan B?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, when I was Immigration Minister and Minister for Home Affairs, we would regularly have matters before the Full Federal Fourt or the High Court, and we would anticipate the outcome one way or the other, particularly where the prospects weren’t great and maybe a witness hadn’t provided evidence sufficiently, or just the facts of the case weren’t in favour of the Commonwealth. We did take positions, ultimately, which shored up our own position in the case, either by legislation or by change of an executive order, and that kept Australians safe. It meant that we had a record number of deportations, particularly those who had sexually offended against girls and young boys, paedophiles and rapists, etc.
This Government changed the laws in relation to the deportation of criminals, so it’s harder now to deport those criminals, which means particularly those sex offenders will go on to offend against more Australians, and in the case that we’re dealing with before the courts at the moment, they’ll decide on this matter – and they’re as I say, serious allegations – but in these matters, the Ministers made a decision to release these people into the community, which has not been instructed or directed by the court. A really important point to make: in relation to the individual NZYQ, I don’t think the Minister should have conceded that it was inevitable that this person will be held in indefinite detention, but he did that. I think it was a grave error…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
And that was where it fell over.
PETER DUTTON:
…and the second point is that the case didn’t need to apply to these other cases where these individuals have been released.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
In the instance, do you have any sympathy for the Albanese Government, in the sense that they say their hands are tied? Clearly you don’t believe that, but do you have any sympathy for them in the sense that you’ve got a High Court decision making a determination based on the constitution of our country and that determination has been made that we can’t just keep people in immigration detention indefinitely?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Chris, my sympathy is with the lady who’s the victim in relation to this latest offence, and I fear that she won’t be the last victim as well. I think the Prime Minister, frankly, has got to try and demonstrate the strength that we haven’t seen in his character so far: stand up and demand that these Ministers fix a problem of their own making.
As I say, the High Court deals with issues in a normal way on a regular basis and Governments have to respond to that. They have to respond within the rule of the law, you have to respond in accordance with the Constitution, of course, and nobody believes that there should be indefinite detention, but in cases where the Minister has been able to negotiate a third country outcome, or has been able to deal with the matter before the court makes a ruling, that’s how the system operates.
Unfortunately with Minister Giles – don’t forget he was a former lawyer in relation to the Tampa matter against the Government of the day, against the Howard Government, and I suspect he’s been rubbing his hands together because the court has made a decision that he would want to make himself, and that is to err on the side of the human rights of these criminals against the rights of the individuals, including the poor lady that we’ve seen in South Australia, and he’s bound by that decision in his mind, but I think there are other decisions available to him which would have seen him supporting the broader Australian community and I think that would have been a better outcome.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Well you’ve got this legislation ready to go now. You’ve obviously been briefed on it, you’ve had a look at it. You can make it law and you can get some of these guys back into jail – it’ll be state jails under these arrangements. Are you going to support it?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, so this is a preventative detention regime, which, again, we’ve been talking about for weeks and they should’ve…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Well, it’s very, very similar to the arrangements that you had for terror suspects, correct?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that’s exactly right. But I think we should be mindful of the fact that this is likely only to apply to a handful of cases. The majority of these people won’t go back into custody because of the preventative detention orders. I think the High Court has made that clear in their reasons. They spoke about people who committed sexual offences and so there will be a number of people within this cohort that that doesn’t apply to.
The difficulty is that the Government will have to manage these, they say, at a cost of $250 million to monitor these people, and I just think at the moment, after the Government’s wasted $450 million on the Voice Referendum, another $250 million monitoring criminals that shouldn’t be out in the community…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
But you’re going to support it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, of course we’ll support a bill that makes the community safer, but I think there’s a lot more that they could be doing.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
I’m speaking to the Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton.
Let’s just talk about immigration. I had my say on this earlier. I noticed in the United Kingdom, the Government in the UK has effectively cut the migration intake by about a third. I’m a bit concerned that Australia is suffering a similar migration crisis. Do you think we’ve got the balance right at the moment?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t think we’ve got the balance right. I think the Government’s spoken about a decision that’s imminent as to what the number should be, but our number at the moment, on the latest figure I saw, is up around 5 or 600,000 people a year. As we know, our cities are full, the roads are congested, the infrastructure can’t keep up, the planning hasn’t been undertaken, which is a fault, frankly, of the three levels of government and both sides of politics, and we’ve got a housing crisis because you can’t get builders, people don’t want additional density in their local community, and the Government, I just don’t think has a solution for it.
So, when you’re fueling demand for housing through a big migration program and you’re choking supply at the other end, well, it doesn’t end well, and we’re seeing that at the moment.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
What’s the number then?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, again, I mean, the Government will be doing that modelling at the moment. I think it’s difficult, particularly when you’ve got a lot of people who are coming in who want to live in capital cities and not move out to regional areas. So, the Government needs to look at what they can do…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
I think net migration in 2019 was what, 200,000 people? and now it’s at around 500,000 people. What number would you be comfortable with?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, again Chris, I think you need to look at the modelling and you need to make a decision in relation to that. It’s something we’re looking at at the moment, but…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
But less than what we’ve got now.
PETER DUTTON:
It’s certainly less than what it is now, and I think that’s the reality, and most homebuyers, most young homebuyers will tell you that they think the number’s too high because there’s just no housing stock available, you can’t rent a home, and a lot of people are really struggling at the moment to get into their own home.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Now, before I let you go, I was a little bit disappointed with this, and it makes me sad as a country that this is where we’re at now. Israel upgrading its travel advice for Jews travelling to Australia. It’s now at level two simply because of concerns by the Israeli Government that there would be anti-Semitic attacks here in Australia. Very disappointing.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s disappointing, and I think it’s a national shame, to be honest.
When you look at some of the countries that we’re grouped with, again, I just don’t think the Prime Minister’s been on top of this issue from day one. You had Penny Wong out there saying that Israel should show restraint. I think the scenes that we saw on the steps of the Sydney Opera House and the very poor response from the Police Commissioner and at the time the Police Minister – Chris Minns apologised for that – but it sends exactly the wrong message.
We’ve seen in Victoria, just over the weekend, these neo-Nazi lunatics out marching and the police aren’t doing anything. The Victorian police force was happy to jump in and take the names and addresses and issue fines for people during the COVID period, but that people could be out performing the Nazi salute, worshipping Hitler and chanting, as we saw on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, ‘gas the Jews’ or ‘F the Jews’, that needs to be dealt with very, very swiftly.
Again, I just don’t think the Prime Minister’s shown the strength of leadership that’s required and it’s given rise to other incidents of anti-Semitism in our country and that we’re on that list issued by the Israeli Government, I think is a national shame. That’s why I called on the Prime Minister to list this as a priority discussion for tomorrow with the Premiers and Chief Ministers at the National Cabinet so that they can be an absolutely unifying moment of clarity, that these protests, that these moments of hate, that this anti-Semitism, is not to be tolerated in our country, and people of Jewish faith should live freely in our community, as any Australian should be, regardless of their background and the targets of young Jewish people, people living in Jewish communities, attending synagogues and the rest of it is completely and totally deplorable and unacceptable.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
I’ll tell you a story. I was on the phone this morning with a former colleague of mine, she’s a Jewish woman, got two young boys. One of the boys – I think he’s about sort of 14, 15, goes to a Jewish school here in Sydney, I won’t name the school. He went home to his mum the other night and said, ‘Mum, I don’t want to wear my school uniform on the bus. I’m scared’. That’s where we are as a country, and geez it makes me sad.
PETER DUTTON:
No, it really does, mate. It’s sad and upsetting, and again…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
What is it, though? Where’s this come from?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think there’s an element of the internet here, where a generation ago the hate material would have been sent through the mail or a young mind would have been being indoctrinated by an older mind. But now kids and people of all ages are picking up all sorts of conspiracy theories and nonsense and hate online, but it needs to be dealt with according to the law. The Prime Minister’s got to stand up for our values and our country or not, and I just think over the last few weeks, since October 7, there’s been the lack of that moral clarity.
Those kids, I don’t care what school they’re going to, but they shouldn’t go in fear, they shouldn’t go in trepidation, and where there has been an act of hate or an act of anti-Semitism, there are laws that exist now for that to be dealt with, and the police need to be given very stern instruction…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
To do something about it!
PETER DUTTON:
…that they need to enforce the law. Nobody’s asking them to go outside of the law, but they need to enforce the law, and if I think the Premier or the Police Minister in Victoria doesn’t want them to do anything other than keep the peace, well, that’s what they’ll do. In that sense, it’s not the fault of the police by any stretch of the imagination, it’s the fault of the weak leadership. I think Chris Minns says the right things, but he’s got to put it into action.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Peter Dutton, I really appreciate your time. All the best for Christmas.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, Chris. Thank you mate, and to you. Bye bye.
[ends]