Subjects: Labor’s visa and immigration policy shambles; the Prime Minister’s weak leadership; the CFMEU and Labor’s rackets, rorts, and rip-offs in the construction sector; Tom Tate.
E&OE.
PETER FEGAN:
Well, there’s one thing you have to credit Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with, he doesn’t mince his words. And there has been another example of the Leader of the Liberal Party telling us how it is. And I would argue that the majority of Australians, well, they would agree with Peter Dutton on this one, whether they would admit it publicly or not.
Peter Dutton has never been keen on the idea of Australia accepting Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Gaza. And of course, for Peter Dutton, it’s as straightforward as his passion for this country and, of course, in a national security sense and politically. The Opposition Leader is a supporter of Israel in this war. He recently made a special visit there and was granted an hour with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now, the ABC first revealed this story back in November of last year, and it’s this: Australia had approved more than 800 visas for Palestinians. Dutton labelled it as quote; ‘reckless’ and called for the immediate pause. He warned the lack of adequate security checks could lead to catastrophic outcomes in our country. Yesterday, well, he called for a complete halt once more.
The Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton, joins me on the line. Opposition Leader, good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Pete. How are you?
PETER FEGAN:
I’m very well. Is your latest criticism of the Government accepting Palestinians, Peter Dutton, the Opposition Leader, or is it Peter Dutton, personally, as a supporter of Israel?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s Peter Dutton as a defender of what is right for our country, and somebody who’s very interested in making sure that we can keep our country safe. When I was Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, we had some pretty robust arrangements in place to make sure that people who might do us harm don’t come to our country. The Government’s had none of those arrangements in place. It turns out that they haven’t even done face-to-face interviews with some of these people as they’re coming in, and how you could take people in from a war zone without conducting the proper checks is beyond me.
PETER FEGAN:
It’s a very fair point you raise, and I think Opposition Leader, deep down inside, there are many Australians that would agree with you, whether they admit it publicly or not. Pete, considering that we’ve just had the terror threat raised here in Australia. But I’ll put this to you, there are innocent Palestinians that have now lost family members, they’ve lost their homes and do we not as a country, along with other countries, particularly in the UN, have a responsibility to help?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Pete, we are the second most generous nation on a per capita basis in the world, next to Canada. We have a Refugee and Humanitarian Programme where we bring people in, but proper checks are conducted. In many cases, it takes months to get the biometrics tests conducted and the results back. When we brought people out of Syria, I was criticised at the 12 month mark when all of those people hadn’t been brought in because the Labor Party was saying, ‘Well, why haven’t you brought them in yet?’. Well, it’s because we were checking their backgrounds and whether or not there were any issues, and we were running checks in the United States where the intelligence holdings were held, etc..
So the fact that these approvals have been granted in a 24 hour period – and don’t forget they were granted by the former, now disgraced Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, who’s been sacked. He’s the bloke who released 152 non-citizens from immigration detention – the hardened criminals, some of them who’ve gone on to commit more crimes. This all happened when he was Minister.
So he’s issued visitor visas, the same as you would to somebody coming from New Zealand, or from the United States, or the United Kingdom. He’s issued people with visitor visas. And now of course the problem is they haven’t got work rights, they haven’t got welfare, they haven’t got housing. So, the Government’s scrambling around as to how they can do and what they can put in place to help people – it’s a dog’s breakfast.
Anthony Albanese yesterday misled the Parliament when he was talking about being a similar process as we operated when we were in Government. It’s not. In addition to that, the Government’s decided that it’s okay for people to come in and potentially become Australian citizens who are sympathisers with a listed terrorist organisation. Imagine if we said we were going to bring people in that supported Al-Qaeda, or ISIS, or ISIL. Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation like those organisations, and I just don’t think the Prime Minister’s got a clue as to what he’s doing at the moment.
PETER FEGAN:
Do you agree that there are innocent Palestinians?
PETER DUTTON:
Of course, and it really hurts and pains me to see anybody hurt, anybody injured. I want peace tomorrow in the Middle East. But the reality is that 1,200 people were slaughtered in Israel. It was the biggest attack on the Jewish population since 6 million people were gassed in the Holocaust. No neighbouring country has taken anybody from the Gaza Strip, and our Government has taken people with either a desktop assessment, no intelligence checks really being undertaken, and they’re prepared to take people who are sympathisers of a terrorist organisation. The polling in the area says that between 40 and 75 per cent of people living on the Gaza Strip have a sympathy for Hamas.
Now, I’m sure there are many, and the vast majority, who are good people, who just want to flee a war zone. I get that, and we help people in that circumstance, but we do it in the right way. The way that Mr Albanese has presided over this, bringing people in on tourist visas, people will now make protection claims, we don’t know who they are, many of them will go on to be citizens. I just think it’s a complete debacle. The motivation for me is to make sure that you make decisions, and yes, they’ve got to be tough decisions, but they’re decisions that are in our country’s best interests. I don’t care whether you’re – whatever religion you are, or whatever political persuasion you are – the job of the Government, of the Minister of the day, or somebody who wants to be Prime Minister is to be able to make the tough decisions to keep our country safe.
Anthony Albanese has been weak, he’s prevaricated and I just don’t think he understands the process of how our security agencies operate.
PETER FEGAN:
I want to move on if I can Opposition Leader, to the CFMEU. I’m out at the Ekka today. You, as a proud Queenslander, would know how much Queenslanders love the Ekka, but unfortunately we have a beautiful, brilliant new train station built here to help the people of the RNA Showgrounds, to help people enjoy it, but it’s not open and that’s because the CFMEU are once again holding Queenslanders to ransom.
I want to ask you this: we still see Labor leading Premiers across New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, in particular, that are calling out the CFMEU. But Opposition Leader, that’s because they were caught out by Nick McKenzie as a journalist, not because they think the CFMEU is doing something wrong. Do you agree?
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, 100 per cent Peter. I think you’re dead right. The CFMEU is the most prosecuted registered organisation in Australia. There are many, many cases – they’ve been in The Courier Mail, they’ve been in The Australian, they’ve been published all over the place – of findings by judges in the Federal Court. Millions of dollars of fines have been imposed. The CFMEU is a rogue union. There are many good unions out there, but the CFMEU is a bad union. They have associations with bikies. We’ve talked about this in the Parliament before, as I say, it’s been in the papers. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to Steven Miles, or anyone else; and for Labor Premiers to pretend that, ‘Oh, you know, what’s happened here? I didn’t know anything about the CFMEU. And well, what do you mean that bikies are involved in extortion and assault and stand over?’. They’re up to their necks in it. They take millions of dollars of donations from the CFMEU and they know exactly what’s going on.
But as you point out, Nick McKenzie, and some of the other journalists within the Nine Network, have really uncovered this in a big way. It is forcing up building prices, it’s forcing builders to go broke, and when you’re driving up the prices for stop and go people to over $200,000 a year, you’re drawing tradies away from building sites at Ashgrove, or at Enoggera, or Inala, or wherever it might be. And those tradies are saying, ‘Bugger this, I’m going to go and work on a CFMEU site where I can earn $200,000 a year’, and the local electrician, or plumber, or builder can’t get the staff, or is having to pay thousands of dollars more each week or each month to keep that tradie.
That’s why people know it costs a fortune to get a house built, or to get a renovation done at the moment. Builders are going broke because of it. So the impact on the economy, the inflationary impact on the economy, which is keeping up interest rates, it’s phenomenal. Labor won’t do anything about it because they’re getting the donations from the CFMEU, and the CFMEU, as we know, is one of the unions that decides who the Premier is in our state.
PETER FEGAN:
And just finally, before I let you go, this seems to me like the world’s gone mad. Tom Tate is in strife for using the word ‘ranga’ and in no way, shape or form am I having a go at you, Opposition Leader. But I’m assuming you’ve never been called one. And is it offensive?
PETER DUTTON:
Oh mate, honestly, I think this is the most ridiculous story and the whole woke agenda has gone mad. I wish I could be called a ranga. I’d be happy to mate.
PETER FEGAN:
Yeah, well, I’ve never been called by – yeah, yeah.
PETER DUTTON:
I get stick all the time for being bald – not bald by choice. But ranga is a great Australian term, and you know, as I say, I get called Potato Head or whatever – water off a duck’s back. Seriously, if the integrity commissioner or whoever it is that’s made this stupid decision has nothing better to do with their time, frankly, they should give the money back to the taxpayers and provide a savings and shut up shop because I think it’s ridiculous. Tom Tate’s a good bloke and that he was doing something offensive here, if that’s their finding, that is a complete and utter farce.
PETER FEGAN:
It’s ridiculous, yeah.
Opposition Leader, really appreciate your time this morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you mate. Enjoy the Ekka.
[ends]