Subjects: Australian Defence Force Targeting of Daesh; ABF detect 95 kilograms of cocaine; Villawood Immigration Detention Centre; bikie laws in Queensland; Mufiz Rahaman; Sam Dastyari.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
RAY HADLEY:
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton joins me on a Thursday. He's on the line from Canberra right now. Good morning Minister.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
I saw the Prime Minister has been delivering an address to Parliament on counter terrorism in the last half hour. There's now a reply coming from Bill Shorten. It seems, and I haven't been able to listen to all of it because I am on air, we have some agreement from both parties on where we are headed?
PETER DUTTON:
I think that's right Ray, and it's a good thing, but the Prime Minister has delivered a major speech on counter terrorism this morning, targeting Daesh and talking about some changes to the law which will hopefully make our community a safer place and also about providing greater protections for our soldiers, in particular those attached the RAAF who are involved in some of the bombings that we contribute to in Syria and Iraq to wipe out these terrorists and we want to provide some further protection in the domestic law to those diggers.
So it's a good announcement by the PM this morning and it is just another reassuring message I suppose that the Government is doing all we can to try and keep people safe and this is a pretty uncertain time.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. I wanted to draw your attention to this because we had a conversation about the banning of greyhounds in New South Wales earlier by a conservative government. We had a cocaine bust involving three Canadian nationals on a cruise ship. I'm informed that sniffer dogs may have played a role and we've got fantastic effort by Border Force staff to keep this up, but if the Premier in New South Wales and Troy Grant were to have their way, we wouldn't have sniffer dogs finding drugs, either on aircraft or in baggage or on this case a cruise ship because they want to ban all types of dogs – working dogs, companion dogs, sniffer dogs and lo and behold even sight dogs for vision impaired people, it's just ridiculous.
But anyway back to the point, they've done a sensational job Border Force staff.
PETER DUTTON:
I am really proud of the Border Force staff. They've done a really good job here with the Australian Federal Police; detected 95 kilograms of cocaine that would have otherwise ended up, you know, being injected into the arms of young people and for any of us who are parents it is just the most horrific contemplation.
So they've done really good work in detecting these drugs. They've arrested people and there will be more detections. We use the dogs, as you say, there's a lot of intelligence that comes in, a lot of information that is provided to the authorities that they act on and the Border Force staff, given the millions of movements that we have across our borders both in terms of people and cargo each year, they do a tremendous job, so full marks to them on this occasion.
RAY HADLEY:
A question without notice and I don't know if you're even across this. I've been told by a couple of listeners that we have a problem out at Villawood; that there are too many people in Villawood – visa overstayers I'm talking about – and there's been a direction to New South Wales Police not to bring them…because there's no place for them. Have you got any knowledge of that?
PETER DUTTON:
I haven't got that information. Obviously we've been able to close 17 of the detention centres and the population now within the detention centres has changed dramatically – so we've got very few people who have come off boats – but a big number of people, and an increasing number of people where we are cancelling visas of serious criminals and people that would harm Australians – and we've spoken about that before on the programme – so we're doing a lot of work with police, including New South Wales and if there's not capacity within one facility then they will move people around because we've got a network obviously across Australia and then the most serious ones, including the bikies and people that have been involved in all sorts of serious crimes, like murder or sexual assaults, many of them will end up on Christmas Island until we can deport them.
RAY HADLEY:
Have you caught up with a story in your local newspaper The Courier Mail today about the funeral for this bikie that you and I spoke about because you sent, I think two bikies from New Zealand back from whence they came, there's a story today carried in The Courier Mail that police under the direction of an Assistant Commissioner ignored bikies riding in their colours after the funeral service saying that even bikies need some sort of respect when someone loses a loved one?
PETER DUTTON:
I have seen the story Ray and I've got to say, you know, I feel for the Queensland Police here because the police at the end of the day need to act under the laws or the direction given to them by the, in this case the Queensland Premier and the Queensland Police Minister, and the police, as much as you and I and all of your listeners want to come down hard on these bikies because they're involved in distributing drugs, in all sorts of extortion rackets and the rest of it, and if they've broken the law, they should be prosecuted and if the police have been told to soft pedal or to pullback or to listen to the government's direction – and Annastacia Palaszczuk has been very clear about this – the unions have directed them to take it easy and to wind back on some of these laws that Campbell Newman introduced, which dealt with the problem of bikies and drove them out of Queensland and essentially Annastacia Palaszczuk now has put a green light for bikies to come back.
Now, the police will take the direction from the government of the day and I think Queenslanders need to question why on earth would the Labor Party allow themselves to be dictated to by the CFMEU, change the laws – it's similar to what is happening in Victoria with Daniel Andrews and the volunteer firefighters down there – I mean these governments are giving themselves up to these union bosses who obviously control the preselections, donate the money to the Labor Party and Bill Shorten if he was ever prime minister would be exactly in that same mould.
RAY HADLEY:
It's a problem and it appears that it's a forerunner in a change obviously in the VLAD laws and I think all Queenslanders should be concerned about that first and foremost.
PETER DUTTON:
Well as the Prime Minister pointed out in his speech today in the Parliament, I mean our first task as a government is to keep our people safe, to keep our community safe and the police, above all others, want to do that on a daily basis – it's why they have signed up for a very difficult and dangerous job – and to have one hand tied behind their back and to be laughed at by these organised criminals, is a joke and I think Annastacia Palaszczuk should be honest about it.
She never took it to the Queensland election to say that she was going to water down the laws to this extent and I think this will be a major issue for people who are worried about, you know just going out to a restaurant on the Gold Coast on a Saturday night or the Sunshine Coast or in Brisbane; people want safety, they want to be able to enjoy the community and the problem of course, which was generated, particularly out of the Gold Coast where these bikies just flouted the law, the Newman Government did introduce tough laws, they've worked and they've driven crime rates down and we've contributed to that as well because we have cancelled now over 100 bikie visas and we'll continue to do more because it makes our community a safer place and Palaszczuk is putting the interests of the union bosses ahead of the interests of Queenslanders and it's not on.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Just back to the other story about Villawood. I've got another one that has come in while we're talking and I'll forward it to you so that you can investigate and obviously remove reference to who sent it to me; it says Border Force will be telling New South Wales Police no more room at Villawood, so they're granting Bridging Visas to people who are three year visa overstayers who had previously been granted Bridging Visas on top of a Bridging Visa.
Now these are not criminals, they're people who have overstayed their visas, but apparently the police are being told by your officials, don't bring them to Villawood we've got no more room for them.
PETER DUTTON:
I'll get some advice on it.
RAY HADLEY:
I know that, yeah, I know you wouldn't be across it.
PETER DUTTON:
It's general business if there are people that they can house in community detention for example, until they can be deported, if they're not going to be a flight risk or not going to be a risk to the community, it's cheaper to keep people in that setting and obviously we want people in detention that pose the greater risk. So they make all of those individual judgements and it doesn't sound anything out of the usual to me, but I'll have a look at it.
RAY HADLEY:
Just a couple of other things; a story today in The Telegraph, carried prominently on page three; a man has been sent to jail for three years, a 20 year old called Mufiz Rahaman for the rape of a 10 year old boy. He told authorities it was culturally acceptable to sexually assault children in his homeland. He comes from some sort of persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar. Now, he's eligible for parole March of 2018, has this matter come to your attention yet?
PETER DUTTON:
I've received some information, so I'm advised that this individual, the offender in this case, arrived on a boat in September of 2012 – so this would have been at the height of when you know thousands of people were coming each month – and so the view that you know anybody who comes by boat seeking protection or making a claim to be a refugee is pure and would never harm anyone – I'd just ask people to think about this again because this is why we don't allow people out in to the community in certain cases, it's why we need to run the background checks and in this case it's very concerning.
I mean the rape of a 10 year old child; it's hard to think of a more egregious criminal act and I get in trouble for this, as you do Ray, for commenting on judges and penalties, but the rape of a 10 year old boy – and we're talking about somebody being out in early 2018 – frankly is beyond me and I don't think the community accepts that sort of behaviour.
RAY HADLEY:
Well there may be an appeal, but you'll have the final say when he does get out in March of 2018 or your relevant Minister in 2018, so to speak.
PETER DUTTON:
Well that is a case where we would cancel visas in these sort of cases and people would be held in detention until they can be sent back to their country of origin.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. One final thing, Sam Dastyari from the Senate; look there was a very funny description…I don't know if you saw this morning on Sky News from your colleague Craig Laundy who said he now can be described as the 'biggest political tight-arse in the history of Australian politics' and that he got someone to pay a $1,300 bill, a phone bill allegedly. I mean then he declared it. Now he says he'll donate the money to charity.
I mean look, Sam Dastyari, they're not going to make him resign, he's too powerful within the party, but he just paints politicians generally in a particularly poor light.
PETER DUTTON:
Well it does and the vast majority of MPs on both sides of the Parliament want to do the right thing and people like Sam Dastyari taint the rest of us and he's had $1,600 as I read in the papers, paid a bill that was issued by the Department of Finance – so an overclaim presumably that he's made or he's gone above his spending limit – and he's got a Chinese friend or someone who is affiliated or associated with or linked back to the Chinese Government to pay this bill. I mean that's not normal practice. That is ridiculous.
RAY HADLEY:
I'd say to Sam and I'm hoping to talk to him about it, I'd say to him, you know, if I get a bill for $1,600, I don't go to a colleague or an associate and say, 'oh mate fix this up for me'. If it is a legitimate business expense I go to the accounts department and say, this was incurred and they either say yay or nay and then if they say nay, I pay it, if they say yay, they pay it, but I don't go to a third party and say can you do this for me, I mean it beggars belief.
PETER DUTTON:
But Ray this is only…you know, I mean my judgement is that there is more to this story. Bill Shorten should properly investigate it because he's the one that has appointed Sam Dastyari to this high position.
Now, if there have been further payments, other payments that haven't been declared or payments that have just been made to him personally, then they will need to be declared and Mr Dastyari and Mr Shorten need to be very clear about this. Are there other payments? Are there other circumstances that need to be investigated and Bill Shorten is the Leader of the Labor Party, he wants to be prime minister of the country, he's the one that needs to answer the questions and if Mr Dastyari has done the wrong thing then Bill Shorten should sack him.
RAY HADLEY:
Alright. Thanks for your time. Talk next week.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray.
[ends]
