Subjects: 1000 days of no illegal boats; US resettlement; Manus Island; putting Australian workers first – abolition of 457 Visas; Strengthening the integrity of Australian citizenship; Tony Abbott.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
PETER BEATTIE:
Peter, good to see you.
PETER MCGAURAN:
Hi Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Good to see you, Peter’s, how are you?
PETER BEATTIE:
Good mate, very good. Peter over the weekend we saw that it's now 1000 days since the last unauthorised boat arrival, so congratulations. You and your colleagues at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have saved lives no doubt.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah well thank you Peter. It's right to pay tribute to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force and there are 16 agencies in total involved in Operation Sovereign Borders. Staff from my own Department in the Australian Border Force are exceptional officers, they're professional and when you speak to them and hear the stories about when they were pulling bodies out of the water, half eaten torsos, young kids who had drowned on that perilous journey – they don't ever want to return to those days and none of us should. We've been able to keep our borders secure, we've closed 17 detention centres and we've got every child out of detention.
And as you know, when the Howard Government left office in 2007, there were only four people in detention including no children and 50,000 people came on 800 boats and 1,200 drowned at sea.
The important thing to realise though is the threat just hasn't gone away. We've turned back 30 boats containing some 765 people over the course of that last 1000 days and had those 30 boats got through, I promise you this, that there would have been 300, 3,000 that followed. And this problem will not go away because people will always want to come to a country like Australia and this Government has the resolve to make sure that we stare these people smugglers down and we're just not going to - we're not going to step back from that resolve.
PETER MCGAURAN:
True Peter and I think all fair-minded and pragmatic Australians take that approach. Your problem is obviously Manus Island. What a relief it was to see Vice President Mike Pence honour the agreement, however reluctantly. But even if the Americans take a substantial number, even all of the political refugees from Manus Island, you're still left with the issue of relocating a large number of economic refugees. How are you going to do it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the first point's the most important one Peter and that is that this Government didn't put people on Manus or Nauru. I mean we have inherited a mess and you're right it's our job to clean it up and were doing that.
So when Mr Rudd signed the agreement with the PNG Government there was no arrangement as to what would happen to people at the end of the first year or the second year or the third year. It was open ended and so we still operate under that arrangement, but we have brokered an agreement to the credit of the Prime Minister, then President Obama and now to the credit of President Trump and Vice President Pence as you point out.
They have said that they will honour that deal. That provides us with some hope of moving some people off Manus and off Nauru. But ultimately there are a number of people that have been found not to be refugees, they're not owed protection and the onus is on them to return back to their country of origin because a key part of our success in stopping drownings at sea, getting all of those kids out of detention and keeping our borders secure is that we have not allowed people to come by boat to Australia.
We've been very clear that if you've sought to come to Australia by boat you will never settle here and that applies to people on both Manus and Nauru and it's a key part of the reason as to how we have, at least for this period of time, broken the people smugglers' model.
So we'll work with third countries, we'll work with the PNG Government. Under the agreement that Mr Rudd signed with Prime Minister O'Neill, it was the arrangement that people that had been found to be refugees would settle in PNG and that is still our expectation.
PETER MCGAURAN:
But Peter, political refugees is the agreement with Papua New Guinea, not economic refugees I presume?
PETER DUTTON:
Well people that have been found to be refugees under the 51 Convention and the 67 Protocol, so those people that are fleeing persecution. But Peter, as you say and as the UN points out, there are some 65 million people around the world that understandably want to come to a different country to make a go economically, or take their kids into a better university, or a better health system. All of us as parents would want that, but as we're seeing in Europe and as we've seen here in this country, sovereign countries have the right to exert control over their borders. That's what we've done.
We are bringing people in through the Refugee and Humanitarian Programme. You would've seen over the last couple of weeks a celebration within the Yazidi community. Those people were facing persecution because of their religious belief and essentially were facing genocide from ISIS. We were able to bring those people in the right way, to provide them with support to start a new life in our country and that's the way that this Government chooses to operate its migration programme, not by allowing people smugglers to be in control, who dictate to the government of the day how and when and in what circumstances people arrive into our country. And we're just not going to tolerate that to be the case and we've been very clear about it.
PETER BEATTIE:
Peter I noticed a report, which you may or may not be aware of, from a guy called Ron Knight who is the Member for Manus Island who basically says that the asylum seekers not taken by the Americans he wants declared as illegal aliens and then deported. And obviously whenever there's a report like that there's some suggestion they may come to Australia. If that did happen, what ramifications would that have to the policy the Government's pursuing in the agreement?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Peter it's a good point. If you allow people to come to Australia then the people smugglers are out there again saying, ‘look you only have to wait on Manus or Nauru a couple of years, you're going to Australia, pay your money.’ And all of the intelligence that I receive from across the region in terms of the people smugglers activity is that they're out there pitching every day, to say, ‘look you go to Nauru for a couple of years, eventually you'll end up in Australia. You go to Manus, you're going to end up in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane eventually.’
The boats would be back in business and we can't afford that because, as I said before, we're not going to have women and children drowning at sea. We're not going to have loss of control of our borders and our detention centres refilling because we can't verify identities of people who are coming in when they're told by people smugglers to destroy their passports. All of that is just unacceptable at every level.
And so we would see a re-emergence of the boat trade, the flotillas starting up again and that's why we've been very clear, regardless of what this person or anyone else says, they can hear this message very clearly from the Government, from the Prime Minister and myself; they are not going to settle in Australia under any circumstances.
And we'll help them, we do now and hundreds of people before them have taken settlement packages to go back to their country of origin and these people need to do the same.
PETER BEATTIE:
Peter the argument about, or the debate which you've seen which has been running over the last couple of days in relation to the Good Friday shooting on Manus Island. How is that resolved? I mean we all understand politics and the debate that takes place. I know there's an inquiry which is happening, an investigation, how does that resolve in terms of what actually happened in terms of your position on it? I mean clearly you don't want this hanging around as some area of doubt in terms of what you've been told and what happened, so how do you get that resolved?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Peter, when you've got the ABC and others who are relying on the reports and the accounts of people that have been convicted of fraud and have been excluded from Parliament – they're taking their word over the word of the Australian Government – then I frankly think the ABC has lost the plot and I think they should be out apologising. The trouble is Peter, in relation to a lot of the journalists, they've morphed into advocates and they've lost control of any dispassionate view of this circumstance.
What I said is factual. I stand by it 100 per cent and I'm not going to be cowered into a different position when I know what I've said to be the truth. And I'll stand by those comments and I expect the ABC and Fairfax and others to be making an apology in the next 24 hours or so given the revelations that have been released tonight in relation to their discredited witness.
I believe very strongly that there was a ramping up of the mood – of the tension on the ground. We have seen allegations and charges in relation to a number of sexual assaults.
And the fact remains that a number of males who were within the population on Manus Island were involved in leading a young boy into the detention centre and that matter is being investigated.
And If somebody from the ABC or from Fairfax or the Guardian or some of these fringe dwellers out in the internet have a different view, a more substantive view, a more informed view, then let them put it on the table.
But I've provided the facts as they've been advised to me by my Department and those people with knowledge of what's happened on the ground. And I'm not changing my position, my version, one bit because the advice that I've got I've reconfirmed again today.
And these people can take the word of somebody that's been discredited, but that is an issue frankly for the credibility of the ABC, Fairfax and others and I think they need to reflect on their position, because they've really turned into advocates as opposed to professional journalists.
PETER BEATTIE:
So you stand by what you've said on this form the beginning?
PETER DUTTON:
100 per cent. 100 per cent.
PETER BEATTIE:
Now Peter, we also wanted to move on to 457 visas and one area which you know I have a particular interest in is universities. And I notice you've sort of left the door open in terms of the definition of work experience for PhD students coming here and indeed the definition of work. So how will you deal with that? Because they are obviously important to our universities and I've seen reports where you're thinking about this. So what is your thinking and where do you think we can go in relation to universities and the concerns they've raised about this?
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah well Peter, before I make that point, I mean full credit to you, the work that you've done with Queensland Brain Institute, the Queensland Uni and the rest of it. It was a big agenda of your government. I didn't agree with everything that you did as Premier, but I think you've covered yourself in glory in terms of the work you've done with universities. And Peter Hoj and others, I've been out, we've provided funding when I was Health Minister and otherwise to projects that they're doing around the brain and dementia, Alzheimer's and the rest of it, which is a real scourge on Australians and will increasingly be so. So I think there's some great work being done at other institutes around the country. They're just some of the most amazing people and make you so proud to see the research that they're doing.
So we've built in deliberately to the changes in the 457 programme. When we abolished the 457 programme we allowed twice yearly examination of the skills list. There will be skills that will come on, others that will go off, because we rely on the advice of the Department of Employment. But we've had constructive discussions with the Group of Eight and the universities otherwise about some concerns that they've got and I'm sure that we can work through those.
But what we don't want is a situation where people really aren't selling the virtue of that job; they're selling a migration outcome. So under the old 457 programme, once you'd done your four years, really there was written into the programme the ability to become a permanent resident and then a citizen. Now we need to have a look at that and whether or not that's the motivation for people to be taking up that position or whether, not universities, but some training organisations are using the citizenship outcome as a marketing tool. I'm just not sure that's the proper use of the system.
And so we're happy to have a look at individual cases and circumstances and grievances that people bring up, but the fundamentals remain.
PETER BEATTIE:
So with a university professor, they could go off the list depending on how you feel about it, how you feel that's being used by the universities?
PETER DUTTON:
We take the advice from the Department of Employment. The Department of Employment does an assessment of where there is a skills shortage within the Australian workplace and that's the advice that I need to rely on. But if there's additional information that the universities or others can provide to the Department of Employment, as I say, we've built in a twice yearly reassessment of the list and that's how it should operate.
Under Labor, where they had a doubling of the 457 numbers, there was an enormous list of something like 651 occupations on there where people could come under the 457 visa programme. So look we've rationalised that, we've cut out over 200, but that will change and its due for review in July and then at the end of the year as well.
So we'll work through with the universities and we've got a good relationship with them.
PETER MCGAURAN:
It's good to hear Minister that you're allowing this leeway. And you know for instance in the breeding and racing industries which I'm involved in, there's a shortage of Australian willing workers or skills base and the like. But this has opened up this whole question of to what extent Australians can or will fill a lot of rural based jobs, or even in the restaurant and catering industries. It's a very big topic. Governments for decades have wrestled with it and that is the deliberate non-participation in the workforce by some social security beneficiaries.
PETER DUTTON:
Well this is a two-sided coin I suppose. I mean on the one hand, we need to make sure that we've got jobs available for Australians that's at the forefront of our policy announcement to abolish the 457 visa last week. We want to make sure that we can put Australians into Australian jobs and that should be the default position. If we've got Australians who don't want to work, then the other side of the coin is that there needs to be a tightening up in relation to the way in which the sanctions work and Christian Porter and Alan Tudge in their portfolio of Social Services and Human Services I think have done an incredible job in dealing with that.
The welfare card – which makes it harder for people to spend money on alcohol or drugs or whatever it might be and requiring them to spend the money on supporting their family and providing for their children – all of that is designed to provide a further incentive for people to go into work. And if people aren't working then they can expect to have their benefits suspended or they can go to the back of the queue.
This is a difficulty, I mean we've got a country full of people who have worked hard, who have paid their taxes, who are working part time in retirement, or have recently retired. Those people deserve to have their taxpayers dollars treated with respect. And if young people believe that they don't have to work or they don't have to take that job or an employer's facing the frustration with one of these employees that won't turn up, then we need to clamp down on that and as a Government we are. There's a lot of work that we've done and that we'll continue to do to make sure that those people, if they're of working age and they have a capacity to work, then they work otherwise they won't be getting the benefit.
PETER BEATTIE:
Peter, the citizenship test changes that you've brought in. There's been some debate about them. What was the thinking behind that?
PETER DUTTON:
The thinking was to make sure that given all of the people that want to come to our country, that we have the best people become Australian citizens. And the great story of migration in this country is that people have come from war-torn Europe or war-torn Asia at different times and people have created a great opportunity for them and their families in our country. They've worked hard, they've provided for their children in terms of a good education etc. and we want that to be the story into the future as well. And we need to recognise at the same time that the world's a very different place today than it was even 10, let alone 20 years ago.
I don't think it's too much to ask in saying to people that when you come to our country, we want you to respect the heritage and the culture and background of your country of birth, but when you arrive in Australia and you want to become an Australian citizen then you have to abide by Australian laws. You have to abide by Australian values and be integrated into Australian society and I think that's - I think most Australians would support that as an application of common sense.
PETER MCGAURAN:
Agreed Peter and there's been widespread major majority support for the values and the standards now injected into the citizenship test. For me though the weakness is that if somebody fails the test or doesn't take the test because of a certainty because of one conviction or one idiocy over another, doesn't take the test, well there's no sanction against them. Would you ever consider the test being applied for permanent residency for instance?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Peter, there are different aspects that you can look at. I think if you're a permanent resident in this country then equally there should be an onus upon you to do the right thing and I've cancelled visas of criminals and people committing offences - outlaw motorcycle gang members and a particular focus on paedophiles and others. And those numbers are up by 1200 per cent over the course of the last 12 or 18 months.
So there's a lot of work that we're doing to make sure that there's greater integrity in the system because again Australians have worked hard and we want to support people in creating a new life in Australia, taking the opportunity here, but we don't want to be taken advantage of. We don't want to be taken for a ride. The vast majority of people do the right thing, but those people that don't, don't need to expect that they can go on to permanent residency or Australian citizenship.
The interesting thing when you look back has been the silence from the Labor Party over the course of the last few days. Last week Mr Shorten had a number of his frontbenchers out saying different things and it's really unclear to me still now – even days later after our announcement – what Bill Shorten stands for in this space. And I think it's really incumbent upon the Labor Party to come out in a bipartisan way, support what I think is common sense in what the Government's put forward here and reign in some of the extremists within his own Party that don't believe in some of the values that we've talked about last week.
I think for example, if somebody's committing domestic violence, if they're a perpetrating of domestic violence, if they're abusive of women within the family unit, I don't think they should become Australian citizens. And equally I think it's important that people need to be able to speak the English language at least to the level of competent which we've included as part of this reform. But again, it seems the Labor Party's divided even on that point.
PETER MCGAURAN:
Yes. Actually Peter I believe all that, just to repeat myself, should be also applied for permanent residency. Moving to the Budget, which is obviously politically make or break for the Government in the short term, as it is economically for the country. Do you agree with the majority of economists who link one of the major factors for housing affordability - which will be a key plank of your Government's Budget - with the level of immigration?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Peter, I'll comment on the immigration part. In terms of the Budget, I'll leave that up to the Treasurer and the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister to comment on any specific measures or economic policy.
We have a net migration figure in this country of about 190,000 a year. It's come down quite dramatically since Labor was in power. Under Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard it was well over 300,000 a year in net terms. What we do know is that the majority of people do go to Sydney and Melbourne followed thirdly by Brisbane and it does have an impact in relation to providing those services - the housing, education - given the numbers that are involved and that, people will argue, could be a good or bad thing. I think we need to have a sensible debate about where people are going.
Certainly it's the case that from my perspective and others who take part in this debate, if we can encourage people out to regional areas where there are shortages, there are job vacancies available. I think it's a great thing to try and provide support to people to move out to regional areas, but ultimately if people are coming here to become citizens then they will make decisions about where to live, no different than others that have been here for generations. They rotate around family or support or jobs and you can't require or mandate that people live within a particular postcode. So we need to have a sensible debate about. But of course it has an impact on the delivery of all of those services when people are rotating to one or two or three capital cities.
PETER BEATTIE:
Peter we've only got a couple of minutes left, but I'm not going to miss this opportunity and ask you something about Tony Abbott. I saw your comments on the weekend about respect being mutual, that he's entitled to respect and former Prime Ministers are entitled to respect, but we has to obviously respect the current Prime Minister, or something to that effect. I don't want to verbal you. What does the Party actually do in relation to Tony Abbott? Because we had the key researcher from Newspoll on last week and what he basically said was that every time Tony puts his head up and makes comments about these things it's divisive and the Liberal Party's vote's effected and it drops. Clearly the current position can't continue, so how does the Liberal Party actually resolve this with a former Prime Minister and a current Prime Minister? What do you think the direction should be?
PETER DUTTON:
Well the first rule Peter is to leave the commentary to the commentators and …
PETER BEATTIE:
…that's you Peter…
PETER DUTTON:
…and not comment further. So look, my approach has been that as a – I have this view and I'm sure it's shared by many, but I'm a member of the Cabinet. If I accept an invitation from the leader of the day, the Prime Minister of the day, to be a member of the Cabinet then my loyalty is to the leader. And if I don't have confidence or faith in the leader then I resign from the Cabinet and I don't serve in that ministry. I think that is an important approach to Westminster Government.
People have their own views. I was loyal to Tony Abbott as a member of his Cabinet. I accepted Malcolm Turnbull's invitation to be a part of his Government because I believed I could be loyal to him as leader and I did the same for John Howard when I served in John Howard's ministry. That's my approach and others can speak for their own approaches.
As I said on the weekend, we have a great deal of respect rightly for former Prime Ministers, for former leaders, as the Labor Party does for their former leaders and Prime Ministers. But it's a two way street. The respect goes both ways, the respect goes not only toward the former leader, but from the former leader, back to the current former leader and Party as well. And that's my approach, but again, commentators will comment on these things and you're best placed to comment on those sort of internal matters than we are.
I think what's most important - and when you talk about what people believe in - I mean people stop me on the street all the time saying we want to make sure our borders are secure. We want to know who's coming into our country. We support you in kicking out people that have committed crimes against Australians. We support you on the citizenship measures and the 457 abolition. People want to see their politicians talking about the matters that are important to them and in my space I think they're the priorities and I'm just going to continue to do that work and I know my other colleagues share the same view.
PETER BEATTIE:
Well Peter thanks. You're in a tough portfolio in Immigration. Doesn't matter who has it, it's one of the most difficult portfolios in any government. So to that extent we wish you well and thanks for being with us.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Peter and thanks Peter very much.
PETER MCGAURAN:
Thanks Pete.
