Subjects: The Prime Minister’s lack of leadership; release of foreign criminals from immigration detention into the community; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Chris Bowen’s energy policy crisis; call for National Cabinet to meet to condemn antisemitism in Australia.
E&OE.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you very much for being here today. I’m very pleased to be here with Dan Tehan to talk about a couple of issues.
Look, I think it’s clear to many Australians that the wheels are falling off the Albanese Government. There is disaster after disaster and the Prime Minister has been absent, as we know, for much of his Prime Ministership, and there are domestic issues here which really demand the Prime Minister’s attention.
The Australian public in May of ’22 voted for a man who they thought was going to provide stability and certainty in their lives, and since that time we’ve seen a Government that has delivered great uncertainty, economic decisions that they’ve made have driven up inflation and therefore interest rates, the housing crisis continues to impact everyday Australians, Australians can’t afford to pay their electricity bills and we now see that the energy regulator is predicting that there will be disruption, potentially over the course of this summer, to people’s energy supply. In Australia, in the year 2023, we’re talking about blackouts and brownouts under a Labor Government because they just can’t get the policy right.
The first charge of the Prime Minister is to keep the Australian people safe. We’ve now got a Government who was asleep at the wheel and has allowed 81 hardcore criminals out into the community at a time when there is already – in many parts of the country – very significant law and order issues where victims, as we see on the news every night, are suffering because the justice system is failing them. We’ve got a Prime Minister who can’t answer the most basic questions in relation to this issue and a Minister in Minister Giles, who is completely and utterly out of his depth.
There should have been a legislative response to this issue and the Government should have been dealing with this in the run up to the decision being handed down by the High Court, but none of that work has been done.
You’ve also got a Government that has created a very difficult situation here in Australia where we see a rise of the anti-Semitism – as we’re seeing in other parts of developed countries – and we don’t believe that our national interest is served when you’ve got a Prime Minister who should be showing strength of leadership and he’s in fact showing a very weak leadership model because he’s got a divided Party Room, a divided Caucus, in relation to the Israel issue – and that is giving rise to all sorts of community concerns and angst at the moment within the Jewish community that is unacceptable.
I’ve written to the Prime Minister and we’ll release that letter shortly, which calls on the Prime Minister to convene a National Cabinet to speak to the Premiers and to the Chief Ministers about what the joined up response should be, because I fear that there will be a significant act within our country that will cause harm to people in the Jewish community, or in the community more broadly at a time when temperatures are rising and the Prime Minister should be showing strong leadership to lower those temperatures, and he’s completely failed that test.
I’ll ask Dan to say a few words and then I’m happy to take questions.
DAN TEHAN:
Thanks Peter.
Yesterday in the Parliament, Andrew Giles promised the Australian people that he would tell us how many rapists, how many murderers and how many child sex offenders had been released out into the community. Now, we are still waiting to get that information and I call on Andrew Giles to honour his word, honour what he said in the Federal Parliament yesterday and release those details.
We also need to hear from the Government what are the conditions that these hard core criminals are being held under and how will those conditions be imposed? We’ve heard from the Western Australian Premier that about a third of the 31 who were released into a motel in Western Australia, didn’t have conditions placed upon them. So who have had conditions placed on them and how will those conditions be imposed and how will they be upheld?
We also sought a briefing from the Government on this issue. We are still waiting for that briefing, and how can we help get an immediate legislative fix if the Government won’t even brief us on this? We stand ready, this week, in the Parliament to have that legislative fix. As a matter of fact, the Parliament should not rise until we have a legislative fix.
It is the number one priority of any Government to keep the community safe. The Government is failing on doing this, it has been asleep at the wheel and continues to be asleep at the wheel on this issue.
QUESTION:
You suggested yesterday there was another option that could have prevented the release of these detainees. Can you explain what that option might be?
PETER DUTTON:
Well David, this issue has always been a live issue, and every Minister, including myself, had to deal with the issue of indefinite detention. There was a High Court case, as has been referred to in the media and obviously that case has been interpreted, or the facts of this matter have been interpreted in a different way, but that’s an issue that the Government has to deal with.
The Government’s got Solicitor-General advice, they’ve got a whole department within the Attorney-General’s remit to come up with the advice, to draft legislation. Any responsible Government would have been looking at the options, knowing that there was a risk. They would have had advice in relation to prospects in this matter and they would have had a true understanding of the nature of the individuals who were likely to be released into the community. They did nothing about it and the Prime Minister has been asleep at the wheel, and what’s happened? Eighty one hardcore criminals have been released into the community.
We’re not talking about people here who have been low level offenders, we’re talking about murderers and rapists and paedophiles and people who would pose a threat to our national security. What higher order priority could the Prime Minister have than dealing with this issue? We don’t know whether the matter was considered by the National Security Committee, the Government refuses to provide a briefing to us, and as Dan points out, the Parliament this week should not rise until the Government comes forward with legislation. We will sit down with the Government, we will sit additional hours through the night – whatever it takes – to get these people back into custody, which is where they belong.
It’s obvious that if they breached the conditions of their visas, they can’t be taken back into custody, so what’s the response here? You see in WA, in Perth, you’ve got these people having a holiday in a motel at taxpayers expense, and the Minister yesterday misled the Parliament when he says that there are rigorous conditions imposed on these people. How are they being enforced? None of this detail is being provided, but all of the solutions should have been drafted in the run up to the announcement, or the judgement in the High Court, and the work hasn’t been done.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, when you were Minister, did you ever receive advice, if the High Court went a certain way, about how to respond with legislation? And also, can I just ask, how can the Government respond with legislation when the High Court hasn’t released its written decision yet?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, every Minister has had to deal with cases before the Federal Court, the full Federal Court, the High Court. The Minister for Immigration is the most litigated Minister in the Commonwealth, it’s just the nature of that portfolio, and there are cases every day that give rise to a broader impact and you need to deal with those issues as they arise.
That’s exactly what we did when we were in Government. There were many complex issues that were dealt with and the response could be by legislation, within the constraints of the law, obviously. They’ve got a whole department of KCs and lawyers to deal with these issues.
The legislation should have been in draft form before the finding of the High Court. That would have been prudent – but this Prime Minister, I don’t even know that he was aware of this problem – and so now you’ve got 81 hard core criminals, including paedophiles and murderers and rapists out in the community because the Government hasn’t done its job. The Prime Minister has failed the single most important test of the leader of our nation, that is to keep people safe.
Australians are less safe because these people are walking amongst us now and we’re not talking about people of low level committing, these are very significant criminals and the Government needs to deal with them.
QUESTION:
Do you believe that Australians should see the names of the 81 individuals? We know that there’s one murderer who’s been written about in the media, there are two other murderers – we don’t know the names of those murderers. Should we know who they are? And related to that, the reason the Malaysian individual is in Australia is because if he was sent back to Malaysia, he’d face the death penalty. We have a policy of not doing that. Is it time for Australia to reconsider that policy and send that Malaysian man back to Malaysia?
PETER DUTTON:
Well David, I’m not going into individual cases, but there are plenty of negotiations that can take place for a person to be returned and assurances given about the death penalty or about penalties otherwise. That has happened in a number of cases over a long period of time.
The fact that the Government hasn’t negotiated that, again, in the run up to the likely outcome in this High Court case, shows that the Prime Minister has been asleep at the wheel. I think we need to be very honest about this: there are solutions here, there’s a legislative solution and the Government hasn’t done that work.
So, what is the consequence of the Prime Minister failing? Well, sadly, there will be more victims of these criminals because these are repeat offenders, these are people that haven’t just raped or molested one individual, and if we need to advise communities to keep them safe, that’s what should happen. What is paramount here is the safety of the Australian public. That is my first consideration, and it should have been the first consideration of the Prime Minister as well.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, if the conditions placed on these individuals at the moment are insufficient, what conditions do you want to see imposed? Are you talking about ankle bracelets or constant monitoring surveillance? What do you want?
And secondly, the accommodation they’re being given in motels and so forth, if that’s inadequate, what sort of accommodation should they be held in?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again Mark, nobody knows the detail because the Government’s provided no briefing. They’ve promised a briefing, the Minister promised to provide detail yesterday. None of it’s been forthcoming. So, we’re happy to be part of the solution, and if the Government can’t work it out, we’re happy to try and sit down with them to work it out and to support the legislative fix. But they’re not prepared to do it and they haven’t done the work.
The Prime Minister has been distracted. He’s been obsessed with the Voice over the course of the last 15 months. It’s completely dominated his Prime Ministership, and not only has it resulted in cost of living blow-outs for every Australian, because the Prime Minister just hasn’t done his job, but we’re now seeing…
QUESTION:
What sort of conditions are you (inaudible)?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, let’s look at the individual cases, but that’s what a Minister is in the job to do. The Minister is there to look at the individual cases with the advice and to work out with the authorities what the best response is, but the best response for the Government, at the moment, should have been taken before these people were released into the community.
You’re talking about 81 hardcore criminals. We don’t know the details of the 11 that they won’t yet release, and the Minister wouldn’t answer the basic question yesterday, that if the High Court compelled the Government to release the 92 people, why are 11 still held in custody? And if you can hold the 11, why not the 81? Again, no explanation.
The High Court didn’t distinguish between the 81 and the 11, but the Solicitor-General’s submission refers to 92 cases, and we know that there are 92 individuals here. On what basis does the Government hold the 11, but they can’t hold the 81? These are basic questions that the Government should be asked.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, will you offer bipartisan support for whatever Labor bowls up to respond to the High Court, or do you reserve the right to make the regime stricter on the beneficiaries of the High Court decision?
And secondly, just on your interest in social cohesion, do you regret the Liberal Government’s attempt to water down or repeal 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, I’ll let you live in the past, but I can say that in relation to this matter, what would we do? I will support whatever legislation is lawful in our country to protect Australians, and if the Prime Minister can’t do his job, then he should tell the Australian public he’s not up to it – because at the moment he’s demonstrating that he doesn’t have the ability to make basic decisions to keep Australians safe.
We’re talking about 81 of the hardest core criminals who should not be on the streets, and we’ve got a Prime Minister who’s incapable of keeping Australians safe. So we will support whatever it takes within the law, and that’s why Parliament should continue to sit this week until the legislation is passed.
QUESTION:
You said in your opening remarks, you accused the Prime Minister of being largely absent. Are you suggesting he should cancel his trip to APEC today and stay back (inaudible)?
PETER DUTTON:
The Prime Minister should not go to APEC until this issue is dealt with. Let’s be very clear about it.
The Foreign Minister can represent the Prime Minister at APEC. The Prime Minister said to me when he cancelled Parliament for a week that he was cancelling Parliament because Richard Marles, as the Deputy Prime Minister, was going to be with him in Washington and that Penny Wong was going to be absent as well, and that was the basis for which he was going to cancel a week of Parliament. Now, as it turns out, Richard Marles was in Australia for the week as the Acting Prime Minister and Parliament should have sat for that week and Penny Wong was here for at least part of the week.
So, I don’t know why the Prime Minister doesn’t want to hold Parliamentary Sitting days. I don’t know whether he’s scared of the scrutiny or he doesn’t have the answers to the basic questions. But now is a time for the Prime Minister to be here to deal with what is a very significant issue, because these people have offended already against Australian citizens and I don’t want to see more victims in our country of these individuals who are non-citizens, who have demonstrated they’re very capable of committing serious crimes. The Prime Minister should stay here, and Parliament should sit until this issue is dealt with.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, why did the Liberal Party not deport these people when you were in government?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, in some cases they cannot be deported until the matters are dealt with, until there is a solution for those individuals.
The fact is that we dealt with thousands of people that were protracted cases, complicated cases, and we found a solution, and that’s exactly what the Minister is charged to do.
So, some will be under appeal, for example, and not able to be dealt with until those rights have been exhausted, and that legal process has to be followed. In cases where they’ve taken the matter to the High Court and they’ve failed in their attempts to stay in our country, then they were deported. So, many of those cases will be in that category.
There’s one case, at least, that we know of publicly where that person arrived on a boat under Labor’s watch and went on to commit very serious, heinous offences. The Prime Minister needs to provide a response to these 81 individuals because we know with certainty that they’re capable of committing crimes again.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, wouldn’t it be reckless to pass legislation this week if the court hasn’t explained why the previous regime was declared unconstitutional?
PETER DUTTON:
No.
QUESTION:
Wouldn’t you be part of a risk in passing those?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no, because again, this is not without precedent. This is not the first time that the High Court has handed down a decision. There will have been arguments, there will have been understandings by the government solicitors in relation to the matters and the facts of this case.
It is well and truly within the grasp of a competent government to respond in a nimble way, but that hasn’t happened, and the Prime Minister is negligent in his duty and Australians are going to suffer tragically as a result of that. That’s why the Parliament needs to sit this week, and it’s why the Prime Minister needs to delay any further international travel until this matter is dealt with.
QUESTION:
On cyber security, China has been named as the most prolific state actor when it comes to cyber attacks on Australia. The PM’s just been in China. How should the Government respond to this latest ASD report?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that’s really a question for the Prime Minister. I presume he raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart and no doubt he would have been briefed by Mike Burgess, who, as you know, had given advice only a week or two before that when he was in Washington with the FBI Director.
It’s one of the major concerns, when you’ve got unprecedented cyber attacks on our country, on our institutions, on our infrastructure. There is a very significant resource in a finite pool of our intelligence agencies being applied to counter that offensive when we’ve got national security threats of a terrorist nature that need to be dealt with. That’s always the difficulty because there is such a growing resource within ASIO and ASIS and the other agencies to deal with the reality of espionage and cyber attacks and theft of intellectual property, etc. and that detracts away from their ability to be able to deal with the other very pressing issues that tragically can result in loss of life as well.
QUESTION:
Are Australia’s cyber defences robust enough to protect nuclear submarine secrets given AUKUS is making us a bigger target?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, when we were in Government we put $9.9 billion into the Australian Signals Directorate for exactly this reason and to try and bolster our systems, but also to provide support to Defence to protect what will be an increased attack on their systems and people in the supply chain, people who are involved in AUKUS – both pillar one and pillar two, will be very significant targets because countries want those details and want that advice and intelligence and IP. The Government has every support from the Opposition to make sure that those systems are robust enough to deal with it.
But the reality is that we live our lives online, we do our banking online, we communicate online, we speak with our loved ones and our kids and what not through FaceTime and the sharing of videos and the rest of it, but we need to understand it’s very vulnerable and you need to be very careful about the information you share.
QUESTION:
What more do you think the Government could be doing to prevent anti-Semitism intentions getting out of control? And do you think the Prime Minister should go to Israel?
PETER DUTTON:
I think the Prime Minister should show the leadership that he should have demonstrated from the 7th of October, but he didn’t. I think the Government should be speaking with one voice and they’re not.
You’ve got a Foreign Minister who’s been reined in by the Prime Minister and he’s walked back some of the reckless comments that she’s made, but that has given rise to a lot of uncertainty within the Jewish community.
You go out and speak to Jewish community leaders, they’re absolutely horrified by the approach of this Government. The Government should be speaking with a united voice so that every Australian can hear that any act of discrimination, that any act of anti-Semitism, is completely and utterly intolerable.
It horrifies me, to be honest, and I’m sure it does every good Australian, horrifies me the scenes that we saw on the 7th of October where people are cowering in their homes, being dragged out of wardrobes into the street. They’re scenes that we saw during the course of the Second World War and that I thought would never be revisited in our lifetime, and that that lesson of history had been learnt, but it hasn’t. And that level of hatred continues today, and it’s present in our country as well. Talk of gassing the Jews or ‘F the Jews’ has no place in our country whatsoever.
This is a time for the Government to show resolve and to speak with one united voice against the anti-Semitism. That has not been the approach of the Government, I’m sorry to say. That’s the view – not just of the Opposition, but of many Jewish leaders within this country as well.
Thank you very much.
[ends]