Subjects: Anzac Day service at Eatons Hill State School; jailing of people smuggler in WA; Sri Lankan Navy intercept people smuggling venture; Sione Taufahema; David Mulligan; federal election; Bill Shorten's negative gearing policy; Godfrey Zaburoni.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
RAY HADLEY:
Peter Dutton joins me every Thursday. He's on the line. Minister good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
Now they tell me that you've been at a school function for the Anzac Day ceremony have you?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes mate. I'm just at Eatons Hill State School. They have for many, many years conducted a really great Anzac Day service. They've got about 110 kids who go to the school who are from families where mum or dad or both are serving in the Defence Force, most of them based out at Enoggera. It was a really good ceremony actually this morning. The kids did really well, they should be very proud.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. A couple of things I need to address with you. I've got a tip from Western Australia; a people smuggler jailed last week in WA for his role in bringing people to Australia in 2010. No one has reported that in the media. Is that true?
PETER DUTTON:
You've got a good tip; it is true and it's a pretty good outcome.
It was a boat of about 50 people who came in 2010 and he went to Germany. We extradited him from Germany – and we're very grateful for the work that the Australian Federal Police have done – because he was sentenced to 10 years in jail, which is a pretty good sentence and it sends a clear message to all those people that are involved in people smuggling or that want to get back into the business, that the Government is serious about, not only stopping these boats but making sure that we prosecute the criminals who put the ventures together and this is a pretty good outcome in relation to this individual.
RAY HADLEY:
So it is confirmed from
6PR, our Perth station, it happened in a West Australian court and I'm not quite sure whether it's 10 years maximum or minimum. Are you able to throw any light on that one?
PETER DUTTON:
The penalty was, as I understand it, it was10 years with a minimum period served of around about seven years…..
RAY HADLEY:
….seven at the bottom end, 10 at the top end….now one that's also come to my attention from – and this has come from within the Sri Lankan community and they have contact with their relatives and the like back in Colombo – I'm hearing that Sri Lanka, not us, the Sri Lankan Navy or the equivalent may have stopped a boat trying to come to Australia. Is that factual?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes it is and we obviously do a lot of work with Sri Lanka because I think when people think about boats and when the 50,000 people came on the 800 boats, they weren't just from Indonesia – and I think people just think about Indonesia – but many people came from Sri Lanka. We have problems out of Vietnam, potential problems out of India and elsewhere and this is really good work by the Sri Lankan Navy and it was a boat that had left the port there and the Sri Lankan Navy intercepted that boat, turned it around and took them back to shore.
It just shows you that the people are still there willing to pay their money and the people smugglers are willing to take it and we're dealing with these on water matters all the time, and whilst they don't play out on the television screens every night, I think people get an idea of how serious the situation is behind the scenes when you see what's happening in Europe.
RAY HADLEY:
Now, this would mark a really good level of cooperation between the Australian and the Sri Lankan Government obviously. I mean they've got a lot of things to look after for a small nation, relatively, you know with a large population but you're telling me that they're paying attention to it and they stopped the vessel before it got to international waters?
PETER DUTTON:
That's right and we've got a very good relationship with them. I was up there about six months ago and we have a lot of contact with the High Commission here in Canberra but we also work very closely on an officer-to-officer level within Australian Border Force and the Australian Navy with the Sri Lankan authorities.
So there's a really good relationship that we've got there and I really am very grateful to the Sri Lankan authorities and we want to keep working together.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Now, yesterday we broke the news that the second of the Taufahema brothers, who served 11 years for the manslaughter of police officer Glen McEnallay had been deported.
Now, for people that don't understand the story, this man, this officer was ambushed by a group in this car, including Sione Penisini who pulled the trigger, shot the man in the head and in the chest, killed him – Glen McEnallay – he's in jail until 2029. These two paluccas were found guilty of murder, they appealed and it was overturned – the sentencing of these blokes on murder – they did a deal with the DPP and pleaded guilty to manslaughter, for which I think they served 11 years.
Now, I understand that Motekia Taufahema via your advice went back some time ago, but his brother had challenged being deported back to Tonga, but I believe on Monday or Tuesday of this week he went back.
Now, when I last spoke to you about John Taufahema, you couldn't say too much because there were some legal issues. Now that he's gone, can you annunciate the legal issues you confronted in relation to this murderer?
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, firstly, it's a good thing that these people have gone. Our community is a safer place for not having these criminals walking amongst us.
The work we're doing – and we've spoken about it a lot over the course of the last 12 months – a lot of work we're doing in cancelling visas of people who are here as non-citizens, they commit crimes and our numbers are up by hundreds of per cent over the last 12 months. I'm really proud that we've been able to kick out some pretty serious criminals, who I think would have reoffended.
Now, the difficulty of course is that we've got a generous legal system, there's lots of pro-bono work around, lawyers that do work for free in this area and the Commonwealth spends millions of dollars each year – in fact I think I'm the most litigated person in the Commonwealth, the Minister for Immigration gets sued all the time, we get injuncted and we fight these cases – in the end, in many of them we're successful and that's been the case in relation to this matter.
This person has gone back and good riddance really, I think we're a better place without them.
RAY HADLEY:
And he won't be coming back here…..
PETER DUTTON:
….no…
RAY HADLEY:
…..and of course his family has come to the attention of the authorities, not just over that matter, but many other matters in the past.
Yesterday I spoke about a bloke called David Mulligan – now this is not your problem but it becomes your problem – an Irish national convicted in Sydney over a vicious assault. He got 12 months. Well of course he didn't get 12 months originally, he got it from the Court of Appeal when the sentencing Judge wouldn't look at the CCTV.
Now, the only problem is they can't find him now. He's been given a suspended sentence in Ireland previously on a charge of assault. How do people like this come to our country, you know and obtain visas of some description to get here in the first place?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, again it is hard to talk about individual cases until they are finalised, but many people will come on a tourist visa, some may come on a working visa and they come on a partner visa. So we obviously have millions of people moving across our borders each year and we scrutinise applications as best we can within the law. We do a lot of work with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but some people come across our borders who are intent on doing the wrong thing.
In these cases, we work with the police authorities to try and track individuals down and there are different ways in which we can try and locate people and if it's possible, very quickly, cancel their visas and deport them.
So it will depend on the individual circumstances to what visa they came on but we have pretty significant powers under the Migration Act to cancel visas of people that have committed crimes or that have done the wrong thing by Australians.
RAY HADLEY:
In relation to this bloke, one would imagine he probably has got some sort of work visa or holiday visa. Once he is caught, serves the 12 months, it would almost be a fait accompli, you just pack him off, wouldn't you?
PETER DUTTON:
If there is a 12 month sentence, then it will be an automatic revocation of his visa because he fails the character test. If he is involved in a motorcycle gang, if he's a child sex offender, there are a number of ways in which – and we've cancelled over I think almost about 1,100 in the last 12 months from memory – so a pretty significant number and again I want to ramp that number up over the next year.
I think this has been one of the really significant achievements of this Government; we've been able to make our society a safer place and that's what getting control of our borders is about. We want to welcome people that want to come here, spend money, do business, we want to welcome them in record numbers, but we want to at the same time cancel visas of people that aren't going to do the right thing.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, just quickly, a couple of other issues domestically for you in Queensland.
The Courier Mail carried a story yesterday that Labor is going to target Queensland with 16,000 voters needed to change across Bonner, Brisbane, Capricornia, Forde, Leichhardt and Petrie, in order to give Labor government via Queensland. Do you see Bill Shorten will spend a lot of time in your patch up there?
Peter Dutton:
I think he will and I think it is an important ground for them because obviously Anastasia Palaszczuk is in government up here, so they have got lots of resources to help Mr Shorten out. The CFMEU were out closing down the streets of Brisbane yesterday – so they have got a big network in the unions up here – so they will use all their resources to target seats as well.
Look, we have got some great candidates. If you look at Luke Howarth in Petrie, Trevor Evans in Brisbane, you can go around, Wyatt Roy, all of these people, Andrew Wallace who is a great bloke that we've just preselected on the Sunshine Coast. I think we can defend these seats; a), because we have got a good record in Government and b), because we have got good local members and there is a lot for us to talk about.
I don't think people have yet heard about this housing tax that Labor are proposing Ray, where it is going to force house prices down and rents up and that is going to hit hardest in the outer metropolitan areas where Bill Shorten thinks he can win seats, but people aren't going to vote for a Labor government that is going to introduce a policy which will see their house prices go down.
I think that will be a big issue in the election and there is a lot more that we can talk about over the coming weeks I guess, but I think this is a real show stopper for them in marginal seats, particularly in Queensland where tradies and mortgage brokers and all those people involved in real estate depend on a strong building market. I think that will suffer greatly under what Mr Shorten is proposing.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, just one final one; this circus acrobat that we have spoken about previously, Godfrey Zaburoni. The High Court upheld the appeal, which I can't understand, that he didn't deliberately or intentionally infect his former partner with HIV despite the fact that he had unprotected sex with her and she didn't know he was HIV positive.
He is now going to be resentenced. He has already been in for three years and it is obvious, come I think Friday or early next week, he will be released.
He got an Australian visa 16 years ago, what do you do with him? Can he be sent back to Zimbabwe from whence he came?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, I don't want to prejudice a case, but this guy from what I have seen publicly is just a grub from start to finish. I think we need to have a very close look at this case with the police. We will wait and see what happens with sentencing and all the rest of it.
But people, again without commenting on an individual case, if you look at these sort of facts in a case it makes it pretty compelling for us to cancel visas, but I want to have a look at it in detail because, we'll see what options are there and again, we don't want people of bad character here.
We want to welcome with open arms good people who visit our country, but we are going to continue to clamp down very hard on criminals and people that really do a great deal of harm to people in the Australian society.
RAY HADLEY:
I don't expect you to put yourself at odds with the High Court and nor would I but I would simply repeat what I said before. When they upheld his appeal, finding he didn't intentionally infect his former partner with HIV, given he knew he had HIV, didn't tell her he had HIV, had unprotected sex with her, I don't know where intentional doesn't form part of what the High Court should be all about. I was just stunned by the decision, I can't believe the decision.
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I think people will make their own judgments when they look at these cases and no doubt they can provide their feedback to wherever it might be; the courts or wherever else – but you and I get into trouble all the time for talking about court cases, where we are completely at odds with, you know, just disbelieving of outcomes – but look, I think this case obviously is still before the courts. So let's hope it is a sensible outcome.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, thanks for your time as always. Thank you.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks mate, take care.
[ends]