Subjects: Administrative Appeals Tribunal; Bill Shorten's lack of leadership; Director-General of ASIO comments; Hizb ut-Tahrir; Tony Abbott's opinion piece.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
RAY HADLEY:
Every Thursday we try to speak to the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. He's in our Canberra studio today. Minister Dutton, good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
We've spoken over the past few weeks – in fact for longer than the last few weeks – about the road blocks being put in place by the Admin Appeals Tribunal. You acted in accordance with, I guess what everyone thought should happen today, the Indian taxi driver convicted of indecent sexual assault is now in custody and apparently will be deported back to his native India. You've overruled the Admin Appeal's decision to keep him here.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, you're right. I mean we've discussed on many occasions the fact that we have been cancelling a significant number of visas of non-citizens, people that have committed serious crimes and offences against Australians.
We've had a particular focus on outlaw motorcycle gang members because they're the biggest distributor of drugs. We've been concentrating on paedophiles, rapists and armed robbers; people that are serious criminals and I did make a decision in relation to this particular case to overturn the decision of the AAT, or substitute a new decision after I looked at all the facts again in relation to that case – and I think it's the right outcome. I think the public support what the Government is doing here, in cleaning up this mess and hopefully many more can be deported if they commit crimes.
RAY HADLEY:
Is that the end of it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well no, people can still appeal through the court process and again, I mean we've talked about this before where we're paying literally tens of millions of dollars a year in taxpayers' money to defend some of the cases. It's a frustration. That's the legal process. I accept that. What's important is that we deport people who are committing offences and I'm doing that in the best way I can.
RAY HADLEY:
So what; it goes to a Federal Court and then it could go to the full bench and then what? Does it go back to the Admin Appeals Tribunal? Or are they only getting one crack at it?
PETER DUTTON:
No they're…it moves on from the AAT. I mean conceivably, matters can go all the way to the High Court.
RAY HADLEY:
Sure, and that's the frustration. So the Admin Appeals Tribunal member makes an imbecilic decision – my words not yours – and then you reverse the decision, you say the visa can't be returned to Jagdeep Singh, but in the meantime he's in detention, but if he gets hold of a lawyer – and in detention he's got access to phones and whole range of other things – they can start agitating and going to another court and delay the process even further; costing us, the taxpayers of Australia, millions of dollars in accumulated cases.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, that's what happens and as we've discussed before, in terms of the so-called Legacy Caseload, we've still got 30,000 of the 50,000 people left here who arrived on the boats. This is costing us $1.9 billion a year to clean up this mess of Labor and you know the amazing part – we were talking about it in Question Time yesterday – the amazing part now is that the Labor Party is tearing itself apart, not only over boats policy – they're still fighting within their own party on boats and what they should do; they don't like Temporary Protection Visas which has been one of the main reasons that we've stopped the boats, because people can't get a permanent outcome if they get to Australia – they're also now tearing themselves apart over the citizenship laws.
So they're suggesting that us talking about insisting on Australian values being a test before somebody can become a citizen – I see today there are reports that there are fights again within the Labor Party; Anthony Albanese is clashing with Bill Shorten it seems on these matters and I just think most Australians shake their head and wonder surely Mr Shorten would show the leadership to sort this out because there are changes that we need to make to these laws, particularly in relation to some of these appeals, etc and we can't get that Bill through the Senate. It's frustrating, but that's a decision Mr Shorten's made for some reason.
RAY HADLEY:
There was another aspect of all of this in the Admin Appeals Tribunal in a piece done last night on A Current Affair, which I participated in, and that's criminals – I'm talking about rapists, murderers and the worst type of criminal, many from New Zealand actually, not always from other parts of the world – they're…revoke their visa – and this is historical, this goes back way before you – they go to the Admin Appeals Tribunal, who put them back in place and then I guess there's appeals by ministers, various ministers to say no, and they're beaten and then the next step is they go out and are convicted of even more serious crimes than their original one, for which they should have been deported in the first place.
PETER DUTTON:
Well this is where I mean they might riot and cause damage, arson, etc and then they're convicted to another sentence. The taxpayers are pretty generous, given the level of debt that we're in, and as I say, this boat scenario has cost us $13.7 billion so far and still costing us $1.9 billion a year – you know the meter is still ticking.
It is frustrating. I mean we want to get these people off Manus and off Nauru. It's costing us a lot of money to provide support to PNG and Nauru to run these centres. But again, that's the mess we've inherited; my job to clean up and we're in the process of doing it.
RAY HADLEY:
But it's frustrating when people are given a second or third chance by the Admin Appeals Tribunal, despite what you or other ministers might say previous to you, and then they go out and commit very serious crimes. I mean, you know these are career criminals by the look of it and they're allowed to stay here. I mean I've got a stack of emails from people who saw it last night – I was at the football so I didn't see the report, but I knew all about it obviously.
Let me just go to another matter. The Head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO, Duncan Lewis, suggested no connection between refugees and terrorism. Let's have a listen to what he said in Senate.
[excerpt]
PAULINE HANSON:
Do you believe that the threat is being brought in possibly from Middle Eastern refugees that are coming out to Australia?
DUNCAN LEWIS:
I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that there's a connection between refugees and terrorism.
[end of excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
The tune has changed dramatically in the last couple of days since he said that and now the AFP and other experts are saying, well, technically he was right, but exactly the children, particularly of Sunni Muslims who are being radicalised and even though they're not refugees they are the children of refugees.
Now, your own Prime Minister said in March of last year that what was being seen in Europe could be replicated here with people sent by ISIS masquerading as refugees, and how do we know – and I know the answer to the question, but you'll confirm it –of those people that came here on boats under Labor; 50,000 of them, how do we know there aren't people that are being sent here to infiltrate our security and cause us harm in the future when they threw their passports overboard? We've got no idea who they are other than who they tell us they are.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, there are people that arrived by boat under Labor's watch that have been released into the community and they were released without having their identity properly verified. That's the history of this. I mean that's the fact. They were processing 1,000 people a week off boats on Christmas Island – and 1,200 people drowned at sea – but for people destroying their documents; even today as we discussed a couple of weeks ago we've got people who have refused to provide information in relation to their claims, and again, the game is up for these people.
If you've got a claim to make, if you claim to be feeling persecution, you can't be going back to that country for a holiday or to catch up with old friends and what not. There are people who are being murdered, who are being massacred, slaughtered in the Middle East at the moment because they're Christians, for whatever reason otherwise ISIS decides that they will be a target; women are enslaved and the rest of it, there are legitimate people for us to help and we help those people. But we were taken for a ride when Labor was last in power and the most worrying thing at the moment for me is that if there is a change of government at the next election, there is no doubt in my mind that boats will restart because Labor has this internal civil war where they can't decide whether or not they support our policy.
Now, when they came to government there were four people in detention, they ended up 8,000 kids and thousands more adults in detention centres as well. It's crazy. It's cost us a fortune. We've got, as we said on the programme before, we've got pensioners and older Australians who can't afford to turn their heaters on this winter, people we want to help, people that have worked hard all of their lives paying taxes and they're contributing it to this problem. It really infuriates me that we have the prospect of trashing the gains that we've made over the course of the last few years – yes, in making tough decisions – but tough decisions that are in our country's best interest and if the boats are allowed to restart because Labor can't get consent from Mr Albanese's left-wing of the party to agree to Mr Shorten's position, whatever it is; it would be a disaster for our country.
RAY HADLEY:
So I take it from all that you don't support Mr Lewis' comments to the Senate?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, no, no, I'm happy to comment in relation to Mr Lewis.
The first thing is that I work closely with Duncan Lewis. He provides regular briefings to us. We do a lot of work with him, as you say, in relation to the Syrian intake, to other people on a regular basis that we refer to ASIO; our officers at ABF work very closely with ASIO – and I've said on the programme before that we've got the best people in the world – I believe that we do.
Now, Duncan Lewis served in the SAS, he was a Commander of the SAS. He has served this country loyally for his entire adult life. He made a comment in Senate Estimates the other day. He provided some clarification in an interview that he did yesterday and I believe that he is a good, decent man that has the absolute best interests of our country at heart. So I don't criticise him. He's made some comments…
RAY HADLEY:
…but you don't agree with the comments, do you?
PETER DUTTON:
Well as I've discussed on the show before Ray…
RAY HADLEY:
…no but Peter, Peter, you couldn't possibly, given what I know of you, you couldn't possibly agree with the comments that answered the question from Senator Hanson. I don't care, you know, defend him all you like – and he's a distinguished SAS member and all the rest of it and we admire his bravery and loyalty to the country –but that doesn't in any way resile from the fact that you couldn't possibly agree with his comments before the Senate recently? You could not.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, I've been clear in relation to my comments. So that is that out of the people that we assessed to come in, in the 1,200 Syrian intake, we did exclude, it was close to 30 people because we had national security concerns about them.
Now, I've been clear about that in relation to our intake otherwise. I mean we do rigorous tests and people, if they're here as second or third generations – we've spoken about some people who came from Lebanon in the '70s – I mean all of that is fact and it's not to be critical of Duncan Lewis or anybody else.
We have the most rigorous tests. We rely on ASIO, they do the checks, they keep us safe, they foil 12 out of 12 attacks. We should be grateful for the work that they've done and continue to do and I think that's pretty clear.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Look, I've been arguing for the 16 years I've been doing this programme with various governments about Hizb ut-Tahrir. I read today that Mr Lewis is going to address Cabinet about why Hizb ut-Tahrir has not been declared, in this country, a terrorist organisation. I'll be most interested to find out what explanation we…I couldn't get one from Mr Howard, from Mr Rudd, from Ms Gillard, from Mr Abbott or from the current Prime Minister, why this organisation is not declared a terrorist organisation – as it is in many other parts of the world? They're allowed to freely operate in this country and they are a terrorist organisation, where we won't actually say that. Why not?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, look, my understanding of the process is that the Attorney makes a judgement about what lists are prescribed and what …
RAY HADLEY:
…well we can only hope he goes to London to take up a job there, we get a new Attorney who's got the balls and the bottle to actually say they're a terrorist organisation, which is what they are.
PETER DUTTON:
Well I guess he's got all the information. George Brandis makes the call. He relies on the advice and I think, again, they're in discussions with ASIO on it. So I think, wait and see what happens out of those discussions.
RAY HADLEY:
Have you read Mr Abbott's piece this morning in News Limited?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, I have.
RAY HADLEY:
Do you agree with much of what he said?
PETER DUTTON:
Well I had dinner with Tony last night, so there was lots that we discussed…
RAY HADLEY:
…well you would have known exactly what was going in before it was published this morning then.
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I mean I've spoken before about my relationship with Tony. He's still a good friend. I had a good relationship with him when I served as a Minister and I was loyal to him then, I don't have any different relationship to him now. I'm still mates with him and I'll continue to be. I can serve Malcolm Turnbull loyally and I don't have any criticism of Tony, no.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Just in relation to all of this. I mean he's talking about treating people with [inaudible] gloves and all the rest of it, and fanatics, I mean there are 80 people dead in Kabul and from the information we have from the Afghan capital, many of those people who've been murdered by some lunatic with a car bomb – we're talking about Muslim women and children, so I mean, it's not as if…I mean these people need to be obliterated form the earth, these terrorists, because they don't care who they kill – I mean whether it's Muslims, Christians, Jewish people, or Calathumpians, they just want to kill people.
PETER DUTTON:
Well this is what we're committed to; making sure that we wipe out ISIL. I mean Malcolm Turnbull has been very clear in saying that the work our RAAF is involved in in the Middle East at the moment and our work that we do with the US authorities, is to identify targets and to eliminate those people.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay.
PETER DUTTON:
And that's what's happening. We've discussed that before and we're very clear about that. We do not want these people on the face of the earth because their purpose is to destroy decent law-abiding men, women and children.
RAY HADLEY:
I appreciate your time. We'll talk next week.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray. Take care mate.
RAY HADLEY:
Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton.
[ends]