Subjects: ABC Four Corners; Amnesty International; National Firearms Agreement.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
GARY ADSHEAD:
Thanks very much for your time Minister.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Gary. How are you?
GARY ADSHEAD:
You're saying that there was either selective vision used from a while back or just ridiculous vision used from YouTube of people fighting that had nothing to do with asylum seekers on the island, is that right?
PETER DUTTON:
Well that's right and the ABC wasn't able to answer these questions at Senate Estimates yesterday. The difficulty is that we've got the national broadcaster who has become an advocate and somebody who is running political games and the difficulty for the ABC is to try and justify that.
GARY ADSHEAD:
How does that make your job more difficult then?
PETER DUTTON:
It makes it more difficult Gary because we are presiding over a situation where we want to get women and children, in particular, but everybody off Nauru. We want to get people off Manus. We want to do it in such a way that the boats don't recommence and that we don't have those drownings at sea again.
The trouble is that a lot of advocates who get their information from the ABC or The Guardian or these other fringe newspapers and bits and pieces that are online. They want to tell people up there not to accept the settlement packages, don't go home, don't go back to your country of origin, you'll eventually come to Australia.
The Government has been very clear for a long period of time that if you seek to come to Australia by boat you will never settle here and essentially, sadly, they are prolonging the difficulty of people who are staying on Nauru – angry because they've paid money to a people smuggler to come to Australia – and we've been very clear that they are not going to come.
We want to provide assistance for them to return back to their country of origin and when you've got the ABC and others running these sorts of reports which are mischievous at best it makes the job very difficult.
GARY ADSHEAD:
That YouTube stuff, I mean I know that has copped a fair hiding because isn't it…I don't know how old it is, but isn't it just locals having a blue?
PETER DUTTON:
Well and you could take that footage in an Australian park or outside an Australian pub at three o'clock in the morning on a Friday or Saturday night, that's the reality and the reality that the ABC doesn't want to run is frankly some of the information that we provided to them.
I offered to do a live interview with Four Corners because I didn't trust frankly doing a pre-recorded interview where they could have only run part of the interview. They refused to have me on. Normally they would ask us to be interviewed, which they did, but they wouldn't do a live interview. I said I wanted to see the programme and then they comment at the end of it and they wouldn't allow that to take place.
We had sent them details about $8.4 million of Australian taxpayers money that had been spent to build eight new class rooms and to provide $27 million for a new hospital, but despite the fact that we provided some footage to them and information and facts, or offered to, they didn't take it up and they've chosen deliberately to go with old footage which I think frankly is pretty shabby journalism.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Just what about of course accompanying it was the Amnesty International Report which said you know the intentional torture of refugees. I know the Prime Minister has spoken to that. That can't help our reputation though?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the difficulty is that I think people need to look at the facts and to try and remove themselves from the emotion. It is sad when you hear the stories of these young children. It's very sad to when you hear the stories from the sailors who were pulling bodies of children out of the water who had been eaten by sharks or attacked by sharks with boats that had gone to the bottom of the ocean. We don't want that situation to restart. We want to deal with people humanely.
Because we haven't had a successful people smuggling venture, we haven't had a boat in 800 days successfully arrive in Australia, we are in a position we think where we can start to look at third country options and send people to those third countries.
But we have been very clear, and part of the reason we have stopped boats is that we have been clear that people will not come to settle in Australia. If we follow Labor's line, if we follow the ABC's line and allow people to settle in Australia then the people smugglers will be back in business tomorrow.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright and just can I ask you as well, I was speaking to David Leyonhjelm a bit earlier on, which was quite an interesting discussion Minister, but can I ask you do you wish you had never sort of gone into any negotiations, discussions at all about this Adler 110 shotgun?
PETER DUTTON:
Gary I think this is a complete distraction from the big issue in Parliament this week and that is the Australian Building and Construction Commission. I mean the work of the CFMEU – and you would see it in WA as I see it in QLD, people see it in Victoria – where you've got these bikies and union thugs who are running around on building sites harassing good hardworking subcontractors.
Labor has thrown this out as a bit of a red herring. The email has been released I think on a number of occasions and the Bill that we were negotiating with Senator Leyonhjelm on was a national security bill where Labor had moved amendments to weaken it and we wanted to get Senator Leyonhjelm's support.
So I think people need to look at these things for what they are – but for Labor to be lecturing us when they ripped out $700 million out of Customs and sacked 700 staff – I mean it is just ridiculous.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Why does he say he was dudded then?
PETER DUTTON:
Well that's an issue for Senator Leyonhjelm. I mean we are not going to water down John Howard's gun laws. I've got a lot of respect for David. I've worked closely with him over the years and he's a good person to deal with.
We obviously want the support of the Senators in a Labor-Green Senate and we need to be able to work with and negotiate with the Senators, but in relation to the issue that you raise, we've been very clear that under no circumstance will we water down John Howard's gun laws and that's been demonstrated by the fact that we haven't allowed the importation of these guns.
GARY ADSHEAD:
And just hoping back to the Four Corners story, can I ask, are you going to file a formal complaint? Will this go further now?
PETER DUTTON:
Well there were questions that were asked at Senate Estimates yesterday and I think the first step is to have those questions properly answered and the ABC Managing Director needs to explain why there was a break in the professionalism at Four Corners. Why did Four Corners allow themselves to be turned into emotional advocates when if they reported the facts they would demonstrate very quickly that the taxpayers of Australia provide considerable support to people both in education, in health, in housing. Nobody is in detention on Nauru, there are no children behind the wire, we've closed 17 detention centres here in Australia – Labor had 2,000 kids in detention when we came into government and we've cleared those 2,000 out.
So I think if the ABC can start to answer some of those questions sooner than later, I think Australians would start to have some more faith in the national broadcaster.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Minister, thanks very much for your time this morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure, thanks Gary.
[ends]
