Subjects: Labor’s border bill ticks toward $14 billion; changes to citizenship laws.
E&EO......................................................................................................................
TOM ELLIOTT:
Peter Dutton, good afternoon.
PETER DUTTON:
Good afternoon Tom.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Two days ago I spoke to one of the lawyers of Slater and Gordon who I guess won the court case against the Federal Government with a settlement of $70 million for 1900 refugees on Manus. Of course Slater and Gordon got another $20 million on top of that. Why did you agree to this large sum of money?
PETER DUTTON:
Well it’s been an incredibly frustrating and infuriating process because, as you say, Slater and Gordon, a no win no pay firm, took this case up and it resulted from people who have been put onto Manus Island and there was a Supreme Court case in PNG which went to the issue of whether or not people were held lawfully there in detention by the PNG Government and that gave rise to a claim being made here.
So the bottom line if that all of the legal advice had – despite my advice to our solicitors to find any way to defend, to limit the liability that the Australian taxpayer might have – met with the advice that we weren’t in a strong position and the $400 million dollars that had originally been claimed could be ultimately negotiated down and it was negotiated down to $70 million and the $20 million, as you say, for Slater and Gordon.
So it has been a very frustrating process and like all Australian taxpayers I’m angry about the process, angry about the outcome frankly, but to be honest, all of the legal advice I got meant that we were left
TOM ELLIOTT:
So you were concerned, or was the advice that you received that if you hadn’t taken this offer and if you went back to court, you might have ended up losing a whole lot more money on behalf of the taxpayer?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s exactly right and, as I say, the claim was originally in the order of almost $400 million which is an obscenity really and like most Australians I am frustrated. I have been trying to work through this issue for a number of months to make sure that, as I say, we could limit our liability or walk away from the case and we have not admitted liability. We don’t believe that we’re in the wrong, but the advice from the solicitors to me was very clear and this is the reality of the legal system.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Do you think these people in Manus were actually badly treated?
PETER DUTTON:
I think there are some cases up there where obviously there has been, particularly some people within the centre, that have acted out in frustration against the guards up there, against other people within the regional processing centre and some people have refused to go home for a long period of time because they’ve got advocates here telling them that one day they will come to Australia and I think that builds up frustration. So no doubt there have been incidents….
TOM ELLIOTT:
…but how is it our – I mean, look, I know there is a lot of legal technicalities here, but I mean they were actually detained in New Guinea. I mean, I know a deal was done with the PNG Government, but I don’t understand why is it the Australian Government’s fault if they were detained in New Guinea?
PETER DUTTON:
Well it is a complicated legal explanation of that Tom, but there was a case that went to this issue about unlawful detention in PNG and then that gave rise to a claim being made here because of the PNG court decision. So that’s the difficulty and of course Slater and Gordon decided to file in Victoria and they thought perhaps their prospects were better there, but these are the questions that of course Slater and Gordon can answer.
But it is frustrating when you are left with no other alternative then the one that we had.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Ok now there are still people on Nauru, correct?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Is there likely to be another lawsuit surrounding those detainees?
PETER DUTTON:
No the circumstances are different. In fact there has been a High Court case here in Australia in relation to some people on Nauru. Now, there are actions been brought all the time by some of these no-win no-pay firms and there’s a lot of pro bono work in this space as well so not to say that further actions couldn’t be taken, but this relies on different facts than might exist in other jurisdictions like Nauru.
TOM ELLIOTT:
If our border protection policies somehow stopped working and we were faced with more boat people trying to cross our borders, where would you send them now?
PETER DUTTON:
To Nauru.
TOM ELLIOTT:
You would send them to Nauru?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes. So we’ve got an ongoing arrangement with Nauru to accommodate people there. And again this is a frustration and like all Australians I am unbelievably frustrated by it because we have stopped boats, we haven’t had a boat arrival now in over 1000 days, but we still have this legacy to clean up.
When John Howard left office in 2007 there were four people in detention including no children and when Kevin Rudd undid the policies 50,000 people came on 800 boats. We’ve still got 30,000 people here that we’re paying for, that we are providing support too – many of whom are not refugees. And as you saw only a few weeks ago, we announced almost 7500 people who were refusing to provide information or answer questions about their claim for protection. So this has cost us $14 billion…
TOM ELLIOTT:
Fourteen billion?
PETER DUTTON:
Fourteen billion since the boats policy was trashed back in 2008 and it's costing us about almost $2 billion a year until we can clean it up. So I'm working through it as quickly as I can, but that's the reality of what we've got.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Alright, just very quickly, I've been looking at your new Australian citizenship policies – extension of one year to four years of residency before you can have citizenship, a values test, which I sat today and which I think is reasonably tough, but I was also interested in the English language test. How tough is it? What level of English are we going to require wannabe citizens to reach before we accept them?
PETER DUTTON:
Well at the moment it's basic, but it's not really enforced which is the reality and on a scale of one to nine we're saying it should be at six which is competent. So it's in reading, writing, for example, as well as listening.
It is a tougher test, there's no question about that, but the reason for the extension of the one year to four years is that over the course of that period of time we do expect people to improve their English language skills because it's not only better for people when they go to school to be educated, it's better for people in the workplace, they can get better jobs. It's better frankly for people that might be in relationships where there's domestic violence and they need to seek help or understand that there's help available...
TOM ELLIOTT:
...so will it get through the Parliament though?
PETER DUTTON:
I believe that it will. I think we'll get support from Labor in the end. I think there's reluctance at the moment and, as I pointed out in the Parliament this week, there are Labor Party members who have come out in opposition to this and a fair number.
But as there was in relation to the boats policy, I'm hoping that Bill Shorten can show the leadership to support the Bill in the Senate because I think it's important to have a bipartisan position so that people know that whatever government we have in this country, they support a strong citizenship test.
And now more than ever, we need to make sure that the people we're welcoming to become Australian citizens are the right people and 99 per cent of them now are, but the one per cent that is not, we need to recognise that reality and we need to deal with them. That's part of the reason that the test has been toughened.
TOM ELLIOTT:
We'll leave it there. Peter Dutton, I do appreciate your time.