Subjects: Australian Border Force; Australian Building and Construction Commission Bill; Senator Hanson's comments on Section 18C.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton joins us now from Canberra. Minister good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Sam.
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
How often are our maritime border crews picking up illegal boats these days?
PETER DUTTON:
Well they are pretty amazing staff and they are out there 24/7. They're doing lots of good work; I mean illegal fishers, obviously life at sea, safety of life at sea issues – so helping all of those people, they might rescue a vessel in distress for example – but most importantly they're doing work to protect our borders. We have got a vast coastline and we want to protect our assets at sea. We want to make sure that people don't fish illegally. We want to make sure that people don't come here illegally as well.
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
And how often is that? Is that sort of one boat every couple of weeks? How regularly?
PETER DUTTON:
They would intercept boats and vessels on a daily basis. There is a lot of work that is done out of the Border Command here in Canberra and they will, through the surveillance aircraft that you spoke about, look at different vessels on a daily basis. They might only have six or eight prosecutions a year, but they intercept boats pretty regularly.
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
Now the Bill that forced the election, the Building and Construction Commission Legislation, passed a second reading in the Senate overnight. Do you think it's going to get through today? Derryn Hinch says he's got to take a bit longer to look at it.
PETER DUTTON:
I hope it does because when people go to an open house this weekend for a unit they know they are paying tens of thousands of dollars more if it's a big unit site because the CFMEU's has been involved in closing down that building site for a number of weeks. They've walked off the building site. Stopped concrete pours – all of this – and so what we want to do is restore law and order back onto the building sites and I think we will see that savings then passed onto the purchaser – but at the moment these people are out of control and I think the law needs to be restored and that's what this Bill will do.
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
Minister, on another issue; Pauline Hanson has claimed there is no definition for what an Aboriginal person is. I believe this is the discussion surrounding 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Senator Hanson says, 'someone who marries an Aboriginal or is accepted by elders can be defined as Aboriginal.' Do you believe that and do you think we need a specific definition of what it is to be an Aboriginal in Australia?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look Sam, I haven't seen the full context of those comments, but I think the most important issue for us to concentrate on in terms of indigenous public policy at the moment is to protect women and kids from violence, to make sure that we can get kids into school, get them educated – I think they're the sorts of debates that people are interested in – how we get a better outcome for people from Aboriginal backgrounds and decent and these definitional issues, I mean they can be sorted out in the Senate. I think in the real life we want to make sure that we are getting all of the services that people deserve and the support that they need and that's certainly what the Government's concentrating on.
SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:
Ok. Peter Dutton thanks for your time this morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Sam.
[ends]