Subjects: Administrative Appeals Tribunal; Labor's failed border protection policies; Apex Gang; 501 Character Cancellations; putting Australian workers first – abolition of 457 Visas; Budget 2017; Tony Abbott.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
NEIL MITCHELL:
Minister good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Neil.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Well who's deciding who lives in the country, you or the tribunal?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the legal process, the way in which it operates, is that the Department – either the Minister or a delegate of the Minister – makes a decision knowing all of the facts in a particular case and then people under the legal process can appeal that to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. There's then the ability in some cases for the Minister to overturn that decision. It can then go through the Federal Court all the way to the High Court – so many of these cases can be around for a number of years.
There are lots of pro bono lawyers out there willing to give free legal opportunity to people to test these cases and from my perspective, on many occasions, it becomes very frustrating. But we continue to work hard and I believe very strongly that where we're deporting criminals from this country who are committing crimes against Australians, in the end we're making our country a safer place. So the fight's well and truly worth it.
NEIL MITCHELL:
In the end are you deporting everybody you want to deport?
PETER DUTTON:
No and you never will, but that's the beauty of working in a democracy. We have the ability for courts to review the decisions that I make or the delegates within my Department make in relation to these cases.
Look, my approach is that I think people should have their fair day in court. I think they should have in a legal system like ours the opportunity to contest the matter. Where I get frustrated is we go through layer after layer after layer and there's more opportunity in migration law frankly, than there is in many aspects of the criminal law and it is costly to the Australian taxpayer. In the end I believe very strongly that people that come to our country have an onus to abide by the law, abide by our values etc, and if they don't, then they can expect to be deported.
NEIL MITCHELL:
How costly is it? How much is this costing us?
PETER DUTTON:
It's costing us tens of millions of dollars a year. The Immigration Minister has always been the most litigated Minister in the Commonwealth; many administrative decisions made by the Department and that's going to continue to be the case. These matters will always be contested.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Thirty nine per cent of the decisions are being overturned. That's a huge percentage. I mean who's wrong? Either the Department and the Minister are wrong or the tribunal is wrong?
PETER DUTTON:
The tribunal will look at these cases and it will come down to the judgement; the professional judgement of some people within the AAT and obviously those appointments are made by the government of the day, as is the case with the judiciary across the court system otherwise.
So this Government's made a number of decisions not to renew the appointments of some of the AAT members that may have been appointed in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years and in some cases we've made fresh appointments ourselves. So that success rate if you like or the rejection rate will change over time.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Are you saying that political appointments influence it?
PETER DUTTON:
I think if you look at the composition of the AAT without being critical of the AAT at all, they've got a job to do, I think you'll have individual people from time-to-time who have judgements that I wouldn't agree with, they wouldn't agree with mine, but again that's part of the legal process. In the end…
NEIL MITCHELL:
…you'd hope a decision being made by judges in the tribunal would be above any political influence.
PETER DUTTON:
Well once matters go to the Federal Court for example then there's a different process that takes place there. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal appointments are made by the government of the day, that's the reality and there's a lot of volume that they deal with in migration law, in social security law, elsewhere.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Okay. As you say you make a decision, it can be overturned, you can then appeal it and take it further, it can even end up in the High Court. How many of those…what is it, 4,389 or the 39 per cent, how many of those have actually been further challenged by you to go to the High Court?
PETER DUTTON:
Well a significant number will be challenged and in some cases as Minister I can overrule the AAT decision and substitute a new decision in certain circumstances…
NEIL MITCHELL:
…but [inaudible] challenged…
PETER DUTTON:
…and then that can be challenged in the Federal Court. It's a generous system Neil. This is what I say…I think people should have, rightly have their fair day in court, but I think…and this was a problem back to Philip Ruddock's day and before; we've got constitutional issues and restrictions about what legislative changes we can get through the Parliament. I would like to see it tighter than what it is and I think there is an argument for there to be a reasonable legal process where people have their day in court, they present all of the facts, if they're found they're not to be a refugee or the deportation decision is upheld, for example, then I think that should be an end to the matter and people should go from there.
NEIL MITCHELL:
And what if you are overruled, should that be the end to it as well?
PETER DUTTON:
No, if it's a court process, then we should abide by the court decision. That's my judgement. No Minister of the day is above the law and we apply the law equally to all of the cases before us, but if a court makes a decision yes or no, each party should be bound by that decision and that's the way the system should operate. At the moment, as I say, it goes on and on and on and it costs taxpayers many millions of dollars each year.
NEIL MITCHELL:
What about the case reported today in The Herald Sun, Keith Moor's case, six Iranians claiming to be refugees and in danger if they return to Iran, but in one case somebody went back three times and got married there. I mean this just looks like another con.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Neil, I don't want to comment on the individual cases because I may well be a decision maker in some of those cases, but I'll just make this general comment: the 50,000 who came on the 800 boats during Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard's period in government; those people were issued, if they got to Australian shores, with a permanent visa. In that circumstance they were able to go back to the country from which they'd fled, from which they claimed they face persecution.
We have implemented a Temporary Protection Visa arrangement. That means that we can cancel their visa once the threat has passed and that's been a very significant part of the success we've had with now not having a successful boat arrival in over 1,000 days and turning back boats where it's safe to do so, the offshore detention centres, all of that has been part of the success.
But some of these cases are infuriating and without commenting on the six here there are many cases that I look at where on the facts available to me, you shake your head because…the other aspect of this is that these people if they're not legitimate refugees are displacing people who have a claim to be made out, people who are being slaughtered in the Middle East now that we would want to give protection to, they're the ones being displaced by people who are seeking a better economic outcome.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Isn't it also simple, if you are not an Australian citizen and you commit a serious crime, we don't want you.
PETER DUTTON:
Well that's the approach that most Australians would take and we've been ramping up the number of visa cancellations over the course of the last 18 months or so. Numbers are up by about 1,400 per cent, so there is a lot of work that we've been looking at.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Well how many would have been?
PETER DUTTON:
Thousands of people face deportation. We've been working with the police forces in every jurisdiction; the Federal Police, the Australian Crime Investigation, Intelligence Commission, all of those bodies to identify the top criminal targets in our country; paedophiles, we've been working through Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs who are the biggest distributors of drugs in our country.
So again we're a very welcoming generous nation. Sometimes people would say too generous, but my judgement is if you're committing crimes, if your committing offences against Australians, in particular women and children, then I don't believe you deserve to be here and we're cancelling those visas at a record number in accord with the law, but we're going through them more quickly, in greater detail and I've got taskforces in my Department going through each of these cases.
NEIL MITCHELL:
So can you tell me how many people actually have been deported?
PETER DUTTON:
Well we've deported 136 bikies, outlaw motorcycle gang members who are involved in manufacturing, distribution, importation of ice for example or methamphetamines. That's been the case over the course of the last 18 months or so. They have been our top targets on the advice from Victoria Police, from New South Wales, Queensland etc. We're prioritising sexual offenders; so people that have been convicted of committing sexual offences against children, but other serious crimes as well.
NEIL MITCHELL:
But you're trying to deport thousands and how many have gone? About a couple of hundred?
PETER DUTTON:
Well over the course of the last 12 months or so we would have probably 500 or 600 people – without the breakdown of each category before me – but these are serious offenders; people that have committed rapes, people who have committed armed robberies. Here in Melbourne we've deported…well we've cancelled visas of six people involved in the Apex gangs. We're having a look at an additional seven in detail at the moment and there are other cases that have been referred to my Department by the Victorian Police. So we're going through those individual cases and looking at whether or not people have breached the conditions of their visa; if so they can face deportation.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Is it true, regardless of the horrendous nature of their crime, you cannot deport them if they're going back to be put in a position of danger in the place from which they came?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, so we're a signatory to important international conventions which means understandably we can't put people back into the situation where they're going to face persecution, but we also have difficulty in returning some people to a country like Iran for example where Tehran won't issue travel documents for that person. Their view, their approach is that unless the person wants to return voluntarily, they're not going to take that person back. So that's the dilemma and the rub against that of course is that we don't have indefinite detention, so we have arrangements where people are conditioned to go out into the community, but that's an expensive process.
NEIL MITCHELL:
What if an offender is under 18, can they be deported?
PETER DUTTON:
In certain circumstances with their family they can be deported. We can have a look at – and we've done this in the Apex situation – we can have a look at where people are convicted of a crime at 16 or 17, if they're incarcerated for a period of time, we work with the authorities through those individual cases and we can deport them and we do.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Do you believe that what's happening with the challenge to decisions and the legal process is undermining the hard line on such things? Is it giving too much comfort to people that, oh well, I might get away with it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the message that I want to get out is that people can't have that view. If they commit an offence then we are going to do everything within the law. If we believe that there are loopholes within the law, then we will move to amend those because my view, the Prime Minister's view is very clear: we're welcoming, we take people in each year, they make a start of it, they get a job, they educate their kids, they contribute to society, but for those people who commit crimes they can't expect to stay here and we will work, as I say, within the law to deport those people and if people believe that they can commit crimes and there's no consequence, well, test us, but you'll be on a plane out of here.
NEIL MITCHELL:
We'll take a break. More from the Minister in a moment. Call us as well if you'd like to speak with him. 96900693 / 131332.
[commercial break]
NEIL MITCHELL:
The Federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's with me. It's twenty one past nine. We'll take a call. Robert, go ahead please Robert.
CALLER:
Hi Neil, Hi Minister.
PETER DUTTON:
Morning Robert.
CALLER:
I just want to talk to you about the 457 visas and how it's changed my company. We're a medium size construction company here in Melbourne. We employ about 20 to 30-odd local employees here and also [indistinct] construction and contractors throughout Melbourne. We have a few student visas and people on working holiday visas working at the moment. Now that the change has happened with our company, some of these workers are finding it hard now to stay in the country. They go to school here to learn the English. They do what they can to get into the country by the legal ways, but [indistinct] now that the Government's changed the 457 visa, we can't sponsor them or we can't help them too. At the same time too we do pay and support local workers too.
NEIL MITCHELL:
So have you got a question Robert or is it just a statement?
CALLER:
The question is; why is it that we are helping these refugees when we've got genuine, genuine people that want to live in this country, work hard, pay their taxes – I pay the taxes of the company – that they can't stay here.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Okay, Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
Well mate just a couple of points. So we took a decision to abolish the 457 programme and we've replaced it with a Short Term and a Medium Term stream. So the Short Term, which might be most applicable to your business, still allows people to come in on a two year visa. There is a higher requirement in terms of English language that we've made some changes in the programme too. We're doing criminal history checks. So we still want to provide that support.
But our default position is that we want young Australians or Australians to fill the jobs first. So if Australians can be trained to fill those jobs then that's what we want. Out of the 457 changes we've got a $1.5 billion fund that's been set up out of the Budget which will help about 300,000 apprentices and one of the examples that was shown to me under the 457 programme was a deal done with some of the fast food companies that allowed foreign workers to come in and work in McDonald's, for example, when we've got 15 or 16 per cent youth unemployment in some rural areas.
So we've just got to get the balance right. I don't think the balance was right before, so hopefully we can still provide support to your business. The Student visas and the Working Holiday visa holders aren't affected, so they can continue to work, but we have tightened up on the 457s.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Thank you Robert. Minister, Manus Island, the PNG's reported as telling the people in Manus Island, in the facility, that they will be out and it will be closed soon. How soon?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Neil we've said by the latest the 31st of October of this year. We want to close Manus. It was an arrangement that was brokered between Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister O'Neill at the time. We haven't had a successful boat as I say arrive in just over 1,000 days. It doesn't mean the threat has gone away – in fact we know from the intelligence reports people are still trying to put boats together now. We've turned back 30 boats successfully – had those 30 boats got through, I believe hundreds would have followed.
So this problem hasn't gone away. We're going to continue to have Nauru, but under the deal that we've done with the United States, we will be able to get people off Manus and off Nauru out to the United States and we still have an arrangement with Cambodia for people to settle there as well.
But what we've been very clear about and what's been part of the success that we've had in Operation Sovereign Borders, in securing our borders, getting every child out of detention, closing 17 detention centres here; is that we've been consistent in the message that people will not settle here.
Just to go to the point otherwise the media references around changes up on Manus or closure; obviously the centre won't close drop dead on the 31st of October. They'll start to decommission parts of the facility up there in the run up to the 31st of October. So there may be some reference to that, but we've been very clear that at the latest it will close on the 31st of October.
NEIL MITCHELL:
And when will we start accepting, what, people from South America? The deal with America?
PETER DUTTON:
Well I mean separately as the Prime Minister spoke about at the United Nations in New York in September, we are going to provide additional support. There's a difficulty that South Americans have for people fleeing gang violence – so people that might have turned informant, people that may have provided information to the police – we have said that we will take some people within our existing refugee numbers. So we'll continue to work on those cases.
But we're not bringing anyone to our country that we believe to be a threat and it takes time as we've demonstrated with the intake of the 12,000 Syrians, to go through each individual case so that we can be assured that those people are genuine in coming here for the right reasons.
NEIL MITCHELL:
And the people within the Manus Island facility who don't want to go home, where do they go?
PETER DUTTON:
Well under the deal struck by Mr Rudd, the arrangement is; if they've been found to be refugees they're expected to settle in PNG – as many Australians do – they work up there or live up there. The arrangement is that if they have been found to be refugees then they will settle in PNG.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Another issue. Mike Enoch a US white supremacist, wants a visa to come to Australia. Will he get one?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again Neil, I don't want to comment on that individual case because I might be the decision maker, but I have said that we want to uphold the principles of free speech, but we don't want people on the extremes of the left and right coming here preaching hate and I'll make a decision in relation to the individual case.
But I have made decisions in the past to cancel people, to cancel their visas and to stop them coming here to preach and I'll have a look at this case as well.
NEIL MITCHELL:
You're building yourself a nice new office; $250 million worth; decent office.
PETER DUTTON:
There's a consolidation at the moment over a period of years for whatever reason over a long period of time the Department's spread across a significant number of sites in Canberra. They're condensing down to one site and their judgement along with Finance is that over the longer run this will be a cheaper way to house the staff and they've obviously got in this modern age significant facilities, IT to build.
When you look at the operations centre that we run, they've got CCTV on every port around the country where we've got thousands of movements of shipping containers and people each year, vessels coming in. There is a lot for them to do within Australian Border Force. So they've gone through all of that with the Finance Department and hopefully – it's in a Committee stage at the moment – but it will be out of that shortly.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Last night on Sky TV, Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott's former chief of staff, said there was an active conversation going on about the experiment of Malcolm Turnbull. Here's some of what she said.
[excerpt]
PETA CREDLIN:
I think there's an open conversation whether the experiment of Malcolm Turnbull has come to an end. I think that is an open question amongst the Liberal Party.
[excerpt ends]
NEIL MITCHELL:
Is she right, is there an open discussion going on or any discussion going on about the future of Malcolm Turnbull?
PETER DUTTON:
Well I didn't hear the interview, but the answer is no. I think people are rock solid in their support of the Prime Minister. The last thing we want in our country is Bill Shorten and the CFMEU to be running the Treasury. It would be a disaster for families, for small businesses and for all of us in Cabinet, for all of his in the backbench, we want to make sure that the Government succeeds.
We've delivered a Budget which is going to put more money into education, $10 billion additional into health, lots of support in my Department for the work that we're doing to keep our country safe. So I think the mood to be honest is we want the Prime Minister to succeed, we want the Government to succeed because we don't want Bill Shorten to be prime minister.
NEIL MITCHELL:
You accept it's not a very Liberal budget though; high taxing, high spending. It's a Labor budget.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Neil, I was the Assistant Treasurer to Peter Costello back in the Howard days. We were running $20 billion or $30 billion surpluses back in those days …
NEIL MITCHELL:
…well even he's criticised the Budget.
PETER DUTTON:
… and the quandary was how we spend that money and we put a lot into super, a lot into tax cuts etc, but we face a different scenario today. We inherited enormous debt. John Howard had paid all of Labor's debt back. When we got in after Rudd and Gillard, you've got a couple of hundred billion dollars worth of debt and as they famously said at the time, 'they Abbott-proofed the Budget.' That is they locked in spending. We can't get changes through the Senate and we need to deal with the reality. Nobody wants to put new taxes on, but the fact is that we need to pay down debt, we need to get back to surplus and we need to restore integrity to the Budget.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Well as a former Assistant Treasurer you'll understand the banking industry. Do you accept that the banks will just pass on this new tax? In the end we're going to pay for it somehow?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the banks won't be happy and Ken Henry's out there today, he's the Chair of NAB and there won't be much that a Liberal Government can do that Ken Henry will be happy with, but ultimately he doesn't want to see any levy or tax on the banks and that's obvious. I mean the banks will talk their own book as any business would, but the fact is that we've inherited enormous debt, we've got services to pay for, people want proper funding to go into schools, they want proper funding to go into health and education, they want to keep our borders secure and more money into Federal Police etc. So I think that's the reality of their position which you can understand.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Yeah but is the average person going to pay this bank tax?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the banks I think individually like any business will take a decision about how they treat it – whether they cop it to the bottom line, whether they pass it on, whether they absorb that cost…
NEIL MITCHELL:
…but how can they afford it? If it goes to the bottom line it's going to affect the share price, that affects our super.
PETER DUTTON:
Well in terms of the individual decisions I think that's for Mr Henry or for others to explain.
NEIL MITCHELL:
True, true, but is it not inevitable that the public in the end will pay one way or the other?
PETER DUTTON:
Well as I say Neil, I mean they've got options before them. So it's a decision for the banks. They can…
NEIL MITCHELL:
…what are the options for the public [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
They can find efficiencies within their own model. So within their own business…
NEIL MITCHELL:
Sack people?
PETER DUTTON:
They might find efficiencies and …
NEIL MITCHELL:
Does that mean sack people?
PETER DUTTON:
Well they might find themselves looking at new technologies. They might find themselves rationalising. Banks have done that for a long period of time so…
NEIL MITCHELL:
Three or four hundred million a year.
PETER DUTTON:
Well this is an issue for Mr Henry to explain. I don't run the NAB.
NEIL MITCHELL:
No, no, but it's an issue…the Government has to, I believe, recognise that it can be passed on…it will be passed on to the average person one way or the other.
PETER DUTTON:
Just to finish; I mean they can absorb the cost. They can pass it on …
NEIL MITCHELL:
How do they absorb the cost? Off the bottom line?
PETER DUTTON:
Well they can do that through efficiencies. They can pass it on through whatever way they like to customers. That's the decision the banks can make or they reduce their return. I mean that is basic economics and that's available to them. That's a decision for the individual banks and no doubt I think individual banks will have a different response which is why there's no silver bullet answer to your question. But that's the reality for them to make and the decision for them to make in their individual circumstances.
NEIL MITCHELL:
But if they reduce their return or it comes off the bottom line, you accept that affects the share price and the dividends which affects superannuation.
PETER DUTTON:
Well there's no easy decision to make here, Neil, and there's no sugar…
NEIL MITCHELL:
No, in the end the public gets hurt.
PETER DUTTON:
There's no sugar coating. I mean banks do this when they don't pass on interest rate cuts and this is the difficulty that the banks have got at the moment. There's a lot of support that the taxpayer provides to banks through the GFC and through periods otherwise. We've got strong credential arrangements in place. We've got a strong banking sector. They're very profitable and it will be a decision for them as to how they deal with this impost.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Thank you for coming in. How's Tony Abbot? Do you see much of him these days?
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure. I think Tony obviously when we're in Canberra. Catch up with him sometimes outside.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Is he a bit happier yet?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I'm not sure that you could say that Tony's happy, but look, I've formed the view – and Tony's a dear friend of mine; I supported Tony very strongly as Prime Minister – I support the leader. I don't serve in the Cabinet if I can't serve the Leader loyally and for Tony I think he's got a lot to contribute, a lot to add to in public life. He's an incredible mind. That's an issue for Tony.
NEIL MITCHELL:
He's been pretty well behaved since the Budget though.
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I think Tony has been well behaved and I've said before, I mean people get excited about all this. Journalists, even shock jocks love to talk about it in detail all of this …
NEIL MITCHELL:
Oy [laughs].
PETER DUTTON:
I don't put you in either of those categories…
NEIL MITCHELL:
I'm a journo…
PETER DUTTON:
…you can self-identify where you want to be, but look I just think we treat former Leaders, former Prime Ministers with respect. I think it's appropriate that people contribute to debates and that's how I approach it.
NEIL MITCHELL:
How old are you?
PETER DUTTON:
Forty six. I'm getting old.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Plenty of time to be leader yet.
PETER DUTTON:
Well I've got a teenage daughter who's caused me to lose all my hair I think, so I might look much older than I actually am. Neil, I've said before I think there are plenty of people in the Parliament. Out of 150 one's Prime Minister and I think 149 want to be prime minister. So perhaps some time into the distant future, but the job for me now is to be a good Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, back Malcolm Turnbull and that's what I'm doing 100 per cent.
NEIL MITCHELL:
True, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to lead one day.
PETER DUTTON:
No, and again, I think people are being…look I think Australians are sick of double talk in politics and so I could sit here and say look, you know, that's not an ambition that I'd have one day. I just don't think it's genuine. I think you're better off to be straight up and down with people and that's as best I can answer. I very strongly support Malcolm Turnbull, genuinely do it because he's the Leader. I've accepted the position in Cabinet and I do so loyally and if I don't believe I can service loyally then the onus is on me to resign. I've no intention of doing that because I want the Government to succeed and I believe that we can.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Thank you for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Neil.
NEIL MITCHELL:
The Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.
[ends]
