Subjects: The Prime Minister’s ongoing immigration detention shambles; Laura Tingle and the ABC; the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia; Josh Frydenberg’s ‘Never Again’ documentary and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s comments.
E&OE.
RAY HADLEY:
Now I’m about to be joined by the Federal, of course, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. On the way to Peter Dutton, Sabra Lane has interviewed Andrew Giles this morning:
[excerpt]
SABRA LANE:
With respect, Minister, you’ve been the Minister for two years and I circle back to where we started. Many Australians would be scratching their heads this morning and thinking, ‘why do you still have a job?’.
ANDREW GILES:
Well, there is so much to be done to repair a broken system, a system that was broken fundamentally under Mr Dutton…
SABRA LANE:
Minister, thanks for…
ANDREW GILES:
I’m determined day and night, to keep working to repair and rebuild a system that works in the interests of Australians.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
And Peter Dutton, it brings me no joy to welcome you this morning and say, you rotten mongrel. How dare you! How dare you subject us to Direction 99 and leave us where we are today? It’s just absolutely incomprehensible. Mr Dutton, what have you got to say for yourself?
PETER DUTTON:
‘Morning, Ray. All these mystical powers that you have from Opposition telling the Government that Direction 99 is a good idea. I didn’t realise we had that much influence, I’ve got to say…
RAY HADLEY:
Well, everyone said to me yesterday, about Direction 99, it conjures up Get Smart, and it was a bit like, ‘would you believe’ it was Peter Dutton’s fault? ‘Would you believe’ I didn’t have anything to do with it?
PETER DUTTON:
There is a little bit of Get Smart about this Government, in fact, about this Prime Minister as well. It’s sort of a hapless operation. Look, the problem Ray, is that when you read out these horrific stories, it makes you shudder. But when you think about it, there’s a victim behind each of them, or in many cases, multiple, multiple victims. What the Prime Minister was trying to do here – and I don’t want to come to Andrew Giles’ defence – but this was conjured up by the Prime Minister. He was absolutely determined – and remember the footage from the time? But he was determined to make sure that he pleased Jacinda Ardern. She pressured him, as she did Scott Morrison and Prime Ministers before that – but they never fell for it. But Anthony Albanese wanted to please Jacinda, and he introduced Direction 99.
But the problem is that it didn’t just have an impact on people who were New Zealand born criminals, it was also obviously applied to the rest of the system. So you’ve had people now from all over the world who are here as non-citizens, committed these crimes and the Government’s now allowed them to stay or to be released into the community. I don’t believe that Andrew Giles’ position is sustainable. I think we’ll get out of Parliament at the end of next week, and then you’d imagine there’d be a reshuffle from there.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, the thing about it is – and I was pointed towards this by listeners yesterday and then I noticed people are saying that Michael Kroger had said the same thing last night on Sky News. He was so intent, the Prime Minister, on dismantling the arrangement you had in place and it related only to, at that time he said, New Zealanders. He went and saw the New Zealand Prime Minister, who’s now long gone, and said, ‘we’ll rectify this horrible, horrible injustice where people have lived here for a long time and they shouldn’t be sent back there. We’ll make sure we fix it’.
Now, I don’t know whether he even thought – because he’s not the smartest bloke in the joint down there in Canberra – I don’t know whether he thought of the ramifications when he did that, that all of a sudden we’d see rapists, child sex offenders, cocaine dealers, large drug importers, from every other part of the world captured by the same Direction 99, that he intended to capture the New Zealand people he wanted to export back; the bikies, the murderers, the rapists that we wanted to send back to New Zealand – under your reign – whether he actually extrapolated it out to think, ‘well, hang on, it’s going to catch a lot more’. I don’t think he did.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I just can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have got the advice though from the Department, from his Department. Even if you look at some of the appointments that were made by the Labor Party, or when we were in government to the AAT, it didn’t really matter. In the judgements from any of those AAT members, they cite this Direction 99.
As you rightly point out, Ray, New Zealand had been pressuring Australia for a long time to water the law down. We never would and Anthony Albanese did, and that’s the reality of it. Andrew Giles is just operating under the system that Mr Albanese instructed that would be the case, but of course there are consequences. In The Australian, I think there’s advice there that their prediction was, the Department’s prediction was, that there’d be about 2,800 people who would be eligible to be released.
There are all sorts of problems. I mean, we now find out in addition to this, that 153 people who have been released, including the murderers and rapists and others, we were told that were going to be monitored, curfews have now been lifted, murderers are out there without ankle bracelets on – it’s a dog’s breakfast – and unfortunately, as we say, there’s a human face to each of these crimes.
RAY HADLEY:
The victims.
Now, in relation to the Prime Minister now saying, ‘oh no, no, no, we’re going to fix this’. What happens to all those that have been listed in The Australian – and God bless The Australian for listing these people. What happens to all those people now that the Admin Appeals Tribunal’s made their decision? Is that where it’s left, or can the Prime Minister do something to reverse the decision of the AAT?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the Minister can certainly reverse the decision. The way that it operated when I was Minister is I issued a direction to the Department to say, ‘I will deal with and make a personal decision in relation to matters that relate to child sex offences, to rapes, to serious assaults, drug trafficking, etc.’ and then the lower level ones were dealt with by the Department.
If the Minister makes a personal decision, the AAT can’t overturn that. But in the circumstance where the AAT’s made a decision, the Minister can call that case in and then overturn that decision with a freshly made decision of the Minister. That’s the way the Migration Act works.
So the problem here, Ray, is not only that Direction 99 made it easier for the criminals to get out because the AAT relied on Direction 99, it’s also that Giles hasn’t intervened in any of these cases until, as you say, The Australian’s pointed it out and we’ve put pressure on them in the Parliament. So, that’s even more egregious because he’s been asleep at the wheel, or has refused to overturn the decisions. Now he says he’ll overturn some of them, but not all of them. It just shows the different approach.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, surely, for instance, the 30 or more listed in The Australian this week, you wouldn’t think there’s one of those that shouldn’t be overturned. They should all be sent packing, but you’re saying that he’s saying he’ll overturn some of them, but not all of them. I mean, you can’t cherry pick it. I mean, they all deserve to be sent packing.
I mean there’s one bloke I dealt with yesterday, and I said this and I’ll correct what I said now, he’s a person that comes from Khartoum who came here and formed the relationship with an Indigenous woman who he then bashed, and she took out an AVO against him. Then when he went before the tribunal, he said that he had identified as Indigenous, self-identified as Indigenous because he had a relationship with an Indigenous woman. It was then reported he had three children. I’ve since ascertained they’re not his children, they’re three of her children by another man who he apparently is a stepfather of – and so that was misreported by me and others – but the thing is, he identifies as Indigenous, so he gets to stay here because of that, even though the AAT admitted that he had bashed the tripe out of the Indigenous woman who he had a relationship with. I mean – and there were other crimes he committed. It wasn’t just that, there were other crimes. I think there were crimes in relation to robbery, armed robbery and a whole range of other things, but he gets a stay here.
I mean, it seems to me, regardless of Direction 99, that there are members of the AAT who just want everyone to stay here, no matter who they rape, who they murder or who they may exploit as children.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that’s definitely the case. There are people, I don’t know the particular case, but there are people who try it on every day. They’re con artists and they’ll lie and deceive, and don’t forget that Andrew Giles was a lawyer representing some of these people. That was his job before he came into the Parliament. So, what was the Prime Minister thinking in appointing Andrew Giles in the first place? He doesn’t believe that these people should be in immigration detention, and that’s why it was too convenient for him to have the High Court rule in relation to NZYQ on indefinite detention, he just used that as cover to say, ‘oh well, what can I do? The High Court’s decided this way’. But as it turns out, he didn’t present the evidence to the court that would have seen the judgement go the other way.
All of these things have knock on consequences. They set a precedent and Direction 99, which the Prime Minister devised, is being used to advantage of these criminals, and it’s made our country a less safe place.
RAY HADLEY:
I’m sorry I called you ‘mongrel’. You mean you didn’t do it?
PETER DUTTON:
No, I don’t know…I mean, we’ve been in Opposition for two years now, just for their information, but I cancelled about 6,300 visas, and they’ve spent the last 10 years telling people how tough and horrible I am and that I shouldn’t have been cancelling these visas. Now they’re trying to say that I was a soft touch. I think people can draw their own conclusions, but it’s a pretty flimsy argument. And for Andrew Giles to get basically bounced off the ABC in that train wreck interview, it tells you how bad his argument is.
RAY HADLEY:
By the way, it’s working both ways. A change in Government in New Zealand, but my New Zealand listeners online have sent me this as of this morning – and it works both ways, and they’re blowing up over there now – ‘Christchurch rapists Danny and Roberto Jaz will not be deported when their jail terms ends.’ The Australian brothers were last year found guilty of rape, drugging, drink spiking, stupefying and filming women in their teens and early 20s. More than 20 women were sexually assaulted at the brothers’ family business – ‘Mama Hooch’, which I suspect is a bar of some description. One was sentenced to 17 years in prison, another one was given 16.5 years – that’s at the top end. Immigration New Zealand said it cannot remove them because of the length of time they lived in this country. So it’s come back to bite them on the bum as well, and the Kiwis’ unhappy about it.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I mean, first point, you wouldn’t want them back in Australia, but the fact is we’ve got a responsibility because they’re Australian born and that’s how it works for every other country.
So, it’s a nonsense really. I mean the UK doesn’t say, or Germany doesn’t say, ‘oh well, just because you came here as a child, or as an infant, you can stay here’. They say ‘no, no, your country of birth is the responsible country, and that’s as international law operates’. Why the Prime Minister departed from this? I don’t know, but he’s pretty tetchy at the moment, and it’s because he knows that he’s made a catastrophic mistake and he should apologise, which so far he’s refused to do to the victims of these individuals who he has direct responsibility for releasing into the community.
RAY HADLEY:
Now, Laura Tingle is now backing away from her comments in relation to you and me and every other person listening – we’re all racist, apparently. But you see she’s been tickled with a feather. Her news boss has said, ‘don’t do that again. Who’s a naughty girl, Laura?’. Now, she’s one of the most senior broadcasters at the ABC. She’s the, of course, staff representative on the board. They don’t come any more senior than him, than her, rather. Kim Williams told us when he came to the chair, he wouldn’t tolerate this sort of behaviour and it had to finish. But she gets cautioned and counselled, and not much else. Then she backs away from what she said at that meeting by saying, ‘oh, I didn’t mean everyone, I just meant some of you. You’re not all racist, just some of you are racist’.
PETER DUTTON:
I mean it’s almost comical, Ray. I couldn’t care less one way or the other, to be honest. You wouldn’t expect much more from the ABC now. I think their viewer numbers have just fallen through the floor, and most Australians are rightly angry about the money that’s wasted at the ABC on wages for people who are obvious political players.
Laura Tingle’s outed herself now as somebody who is a partisan, she’s a Greens/Labor supporter. She is political in nature and therefore her credibility as a journalist really is shot. I mean people can wear their political colours, or their views on their sleeve and that’s fine, but when you’re at the ABC and you’re saying that your professional journalistic traits are dependent on you being not biased and approaching things with an open mind. I mean, she’s just now completely destroyed her credibility, but they’ll keep her on because that’s what happens at the ABC. But, as I say, I think it’s comical, and you just let them play their games.
RAY HADLEY:
Now, just in relation again to the ABC – and this was something I reported earlier this week. So we’ve got the Australian Federal Government and every other Western nation recognising Hamas as a terrorist organisation who invaded Israel October 7, raped and murdered, and as I’ve said earlier, Screams Before Silence is a YouTube presentation everyone should watch and we should all have watched what Josh Frydenberg presented on Sky News this week, and you can still stream it or download it. The Prime Minister was as weak as water, Julia Gillard, yourself and John Howard very, very strong. But after, of course, it was reported and then the Israeli Prime Minister apologised for a misdirected rocket, in retaliation, after a barrage of rockets were fired by Hamas into Tel Aviv, and it was in retaliation to that, the headline on the ABC website was ‘Hamas Fires Rockets into Tel Aviv as a ‘show of resilience” – a show of resilience! They’re a terrorist organisation. Does the dope that wrote it have any idea of history?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no they don’t. Again, it’s appalling. It’s appalling, Ray. Thanks for calling out Josh’s documentary. I thought he did a great job, and I agree with you, I thought Julia Gillard was exceptional. I mean she showed a strength of character and leadership that you would want to see in a Labor leader. She did a good job, actually.
I think the difficulty at the ABC is that they see this through the lens of trying to impress the left because that’s now who’s listening to the ABC. It’s what the PM is doing as well, trying to win votes in Western Sydney, in communities there. I don’t know what can be going through their minds because as you rightly point out, they are a terrorist organisation, a listed terrorist organisation in our country and elsewhere in the world.
I know this for sure, if we had people who were still held captive after having been taken from their homes in October of last year, being kept in a tunnel somewhere in our country or elsewhere in a neighbouring country, I think the Australian public would rightly be disgusted, outraged, and demand of their Government that everything should be done to bring them home.
Unfortunately, there’s a double standard that applies, and when you see in that documentary of Josh on Sky, when the interviews there – which I thought were incredibly powerful, watching them with the Holocaust survivors, these are people who left after the Second World War, they came to Australia as a place of safe haven, they’ve lived here without any harassment and they’ve contributed wonderfully to our country, kids and grandkids they’ve raised, and they’re saying now, for the first time since they were in Germany, they feel like Australia has abandoned them, that they have been abandoned by their friends, by the community, they feel unsafe. When you hear those words, we’ve got a real problem, and the PM does need to start standing up and showing some strength instead of weakness and start leading the country because we’re in a bad place at the moment.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, we’ll talk next week. Thanks for your time, as always.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray, see you mate.
[ends]