Subjects: NSW Liberal Party; Newspoll; AAT decisions; Melbourne African crime gangs; Longman by-election.

EO&E...........................................................................................................................................

RAY HADLEY:

In the meantime, most Thursdays we try to catch up with the Minister for Home Affairs He is online today from North Queensland in Cairns. Minister, good morning to you.

PETER DUTTON:

Good morning Ray.

RAY HADLEY:

Peter Dutton with us. There's a story in today's Daily Telegraph that says a number of federal and state MPs tried to humiliate Tony Abbott when he was Prime Minister over his plan to give more political power to rank and file members of the Liberal Party. It would be disappointing if the people named were actually responsible for this, and it appears they were because there's an email trail The Tele has found.

PETER DUTTON:

Well Ray, I mean in the end they weren't too successful because I think the motion got up that Tony was trying to get up and obviously we want to see, from my perspective, people involved in decisions.

Plebiscites are important, but it almost falls in the sausage-making category mate – I think people don't want to see how they're made, but know that they're there.

It gets a bit messy some of this backroom stuff and it's not very pleasant, but in the end, I think Tony was successful in getting at least part of what he wanted up.

RAY HADLEY:

Well you'd have to say in New South Wales, a couple of those mentioned – and one in the federal sphere – graphic underachievers in terms of where they're going compared to where Abbott's been and where Abbott may go.

PETER DUTTON:

Well Tony Abbott's, as we've discussed on the program before, I mean he deserves respect from all of us because he's been a Prime Minister of our country. He's a former leader of the Liberal Party and remains a good friend to a lot of us. So I think, as I say, these internal machinations I suspect bore most people. People just want us to get on with things that are important to them. So in the end Tony got his way in part and he prevailed.

RAY HADLEY:

Okay. There is this complex issue of Newspolls and when you pick up the Newspoll on Monday in The Australian, 36 for your government, two-party preferred – and I know what you're going to say about this anyway – but you know the complex part is…

PETER DUTTON:

…what am I going to say Ray?

RAY HADLEY:

What are you going to say?

We don't take notice of Newspolls Ray because we're committed to good government and providing good government and providing the fact that Bill Shorten will not be the next prime minister. Would that be a fair synopsis?

PETER DUTTON:

You're on message. That's very impressive.

RAY HADLEY:

Okay. Thank you. I've been listening to you for a long time Minister.

PETER DUTTON:

Can I ask questions? Or not?

RAY HADLEY:

No, no, we're not going to reverse rolls. I'll answer them for you, but you can't ask me questions. You might ask me curly ones.

I mean Bill Shorten as Labor leader, you would think he's almost unelectable given the gap between he and the Prime Minister in preferred PM department, but the inescapable fact Minister, is that two-party preferred. If there had been an election held last Saturday, you would have lost government – even with Bill Shorten as leader – and he would have been prime minister, which is an horrific thought for a lot of people – more particularly you and I guess to a lesser extent others within your party – but that's the fact. It's an inescapable fact. Whether he's popular or not as preferred PM, two-party preferred, it's 36 on the trot.

PETER DUTTON:

Ray, the thing about the polling – and you know politicians say you don't watch the polls and all of that nonsense – but the fact is you look at the trend in the Newspoll; the trend has had us around that: 51-49, 50-50, that's been the reality, but again, if you go back to John Howard's days…I mean Kim Beazley was going to slaughter John Howard in the first quarter of 2000, 2001 – he had the Aston by-election – people express discontent with the government of the day about, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, if people aren't happy that, you know, something's happened at work or in their family or not happy with what they see on the TV that night, people do express that in a way against the sitting government.

Bill Shorten doesn't have to run a Department like mine or make decisions in relation to taxation; you can sort of sit and whinge and [inaudible] from the sideline.

So I think between elections people do express their discontent with a problem – whether it's the making of the federal government or not – but when you come down to it, a Newspoll taken today, people know that they're not casting a vote; they're expressing an opinion and when you cast a vote people are going to have a choice between Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten.

Now, as I move around Australia, I just can't believe that people want Bill Shorten as prime minister. It doesn't matter where I go people stop and say for god sake don't let Shorten become prime minister and, you know, I'm not objective on these matters obviously, but look at Anthony Albanese; Albanese's ready to take Shorten out at any time. He's probably waiting for the by-election...

RAY HADLEY:

…well you want to hope he doesn't because you won't be the Minister of Immigration I can tell you. He'll be prime minister and your counterpart will be.

PETER DUTTON:

Well Shayne Neumann will be and the boats will restart. So people should think about, not just the consequence of changing Prime Minister, but what it means in key policy areas.

Shorten is known to a lot of people. People don't trust him. I think at a general election we can defeat Bill Shorten, but there's a long way to go between now and then. We've just got to keep kicking goals, getting taxes down, running things efficiently and hopefully we can talk about some of those wins.

RAY HADLEY:

You and I both have a bit of time for Craig Kelly, but he was completely out of order with his comments last night on Sky News. He's tried to apologise and he has apologised for those comments, but then he linked what he said last night in relation to Putin and Donald Trump talking and he's saying well, Donald Trump's also talking to the North Korean leader who's a despot and kills people, murders people and all the rest of it.

But it's just a poor piece of timing on the anniversary of the death of all these people – 28 Australians and 298 poor souls brought down by as we know a Russian missile.

There's no escaping it, it was taken into Ukraine one day and the other missiles minus the one they shot at the aircraft were taken out the next day.

PETER DUTTON:

Yeah that's it mate. I mean he's done the right thing, he's been big enough to apologise for a mistake he's made. Craig's a great bloke, but he said the wrong thing here and he's apologised for that and it shouldn't overshadow the fact that Putin should be brought to justice for the fact that it was irrefutably a Russian attack on – maybe it was not intentional obviously – but nonetheless it was a Russian missile and Russia needs to be held to account for it.

I think he's done the wrong thing here. He's recognised it pretty quickly and apologised and I think that's the right thing to do.

RAY HADLEY:

Look, every time we talk about AAT – and I'm not being funny again – but you conclude our conversation, look Ray, I might be making a decision on this matter so I really can't talk about it. Then I pick up The Courier Mail through the week. A New Zealand citizen convicted of being a sex predator, former drug trafficker, injected a teenage girl north of Brisbane with ice, has beaten his deportation order because he's of quote: “good character.” Then the last line was: Minister Peter Dutton said there's nothing I can do about it. Is that the end of it, is it?

PETER DUTTON:

No, but this guy's a citizen…

RAY HADLEY:

…Oh, I see.

PETER DUTTON:

He's not on a visa.

RAY HADLEY:

Ah right.

PETER DUTTON:

In certain circumstances; in limited circumstances, I can strip citizenship from somebody who's been naturalised and the AAT can overturn my decision in that regard.

Now, I think it's a stupid situation. I think it's a deficiency in the law. I tried to get it through the Senate. Labor won't support the change. Because in very limited circumstances like this… this guy is a creep and he should be kicked out of the country and that's, you know, very clear on the facts and you've read some of those out, but this is a big frustration.

In the visa area, if he was from New Zealand for example, he's here on a visa; I can cancel the visa. The AAT can't overturn my decision, but they can overturn the decision of a delegate...

RAY HADLEY:

..Okay…

PETER DUTTON:

...and then I can reinstate the original decision of the delegate. But this related to citizenship and I really want to get this law through.

RAY HADLEY:

So as I understand it, so I'm not confused, I did read he was a New Zealand citizen so I assume given what you've just told me he's a dual citizenship holder – holds both Australian and New Zealand citizenship.

PETER DUTTON:

I'm not sure whether he…he would have been a dual citizen because we can't renounce where they're stateless or they've renounced their original citizenship. So he would have held that original citizenship still.

RAY HADLEY:

Okay, but he stayed. I mean what about the AAT? I mean fair dinkum, he's of good character. What if the teenage girl had been his daughter or granddaughter?

PETER DUTTON:

Well the AAT, believe me, there's change coming in this space Ray because I think again you can't go anywhere in the country without people stopping you saying sort out the AAT and Christian Porter I think is doing a great job as the Attorney-General. We're doing some work with him at the moment to look at ways we can sort this out because you can't stand that these people are here committing multiple offences, serious offences against multiple Australian victims and somehow they're allowed to stay.

As I say, people should have their day in court, but at the moment the way in which the AAT is operating in many of these cases is completely unacceptable for the community.

RAY HADLEY:

I know you're not surprised; there was a report on the ABC this week about how horrible we are as a nation sending these poor, hard luck New Zealanders back from whence they came when they rape, pillage and murder our citizens and the ABC put forward a proposal that perhaps we're being too tough on these type of people, we're sending too many back and they were joined in chorus by your counterpart, I believe, in the New Zealand Government from the Labour Party over there.

PETER DUTTON:

Well there's a lot that we do for New Zealand Ray. I mean we're a big land mass between them and boats coming from Indonesia and South East Asia. New Zealand don't contribute really anything to the defence effort that we've got, where we're trying to surveil boats that might be on their way to New Zealand. So I hope that Andrew Little reflects a little more on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand where we do a lot of the heavy lifting.

We intercept boats. We stop them from making their way to New Zealand and there's a lot to this relationship and I was really disappointed in Mr Little's comments during the week and I hope that he doesn't repeat them.

RAY HADLEY:

Just on another matter, the Admin Appeals Tribunal, the AAT, which we're talking about. The chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration – the Victorian Liberal MP, your colleague Jason Wood – said he's concerned there's not enough attention paid to the victims during reviews by the AAT. He says the applicant can invite anyone he wants to represent him – community leaders, people from church groups and the like – yet the victim is not given the same opportunity to say to the AAT: well hang on, I was the one raped, I was the one robbed, it was my son who was murdered, I want to have a say.

PETER DUTTON:

Well I think it's a sensible suggestion and Woody's been on this issue for a while. He was one of the first people to call out this African gang violence – which in Victoria you're not allowed to use those words – but…

RAY HADLEY:

…oh hang on, the Prime Minister did it on Neil Mitchell's program this week. All of a sudden you're a genius.

PETER DUTTON:

No, no, I'm a racist and there's been a 70 per cent spike in the number of complaints to the Human Rights Commissioner in Victoria because I called people involved in home invasions African gang members, even though they're of African descent and they're involved in gang activity in Victoria. It's like some parallel universe going on down there at the moment Ray, where you're not allowed to refer to these people as in gangs. I mean it's just fairyland stuff.

RAY HADLEY:

Just finally, one of your colleagues from Queensland, Trevor Ruthenberg, has got himself into a little bit of trouble, confusing an ASM with an ADM, a Service Medal and Defence Medal.

It appears The Courier Mail's got a little [inaudible] against Trev today. They're had another crack at him about not knowing the difference. It's not a good look, there's no doubt about that, but I think in listening to him this week on Tuesday, explaining on Sky News what it was all about, I can almost forgive him for it, but it appears these sorts of things surface when there's an election looming, as there is in Queensland, in the foreseeable future in Longman.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, Labor's obviously been sitting on this for a little while and they decide to drop it a week or 10 days out from the election.

Look, if I thought Trevor Ruthenberg was doing the wrong thing here I'd call him about because I have a great rapport with the veterans' community – particularly in my electorate – and I've spoken to a couple of the vets in my area from local RSL and whatnot and they've said, look, the bloke's made an innocent mistake, a silly mistake; he rectified it and apologised for it straight away. He hasn't been wearing two medals or held himself out…

RAY HADLEY:

..yeah.

PETER DUTTON:

…to be entitled to something that he's not. He's made a mistake when he's filled out the section on his CV and really, I think people see it for what it is.

He's just a down to earth knockabout bloke who I think really would be a great member of parliament and you know, in Longman, the by-election's happening because the Labor candidate there, Susan Lamb, lied about her citizenship, got a couple of hundred thousand dollars from the taxpayer by way of wages in the interim – so if you're after who's the more credible candidate, I'd put my money on Trevor Ruthenberg any day.

RAY HADLEY:

Just so people understand in case they missed it earlier this week. The Service Medal is given, as I understand it, for four years of continual service in the Armed Services. The Defence Medal's if, not if you're fighting, but if you're in a peacekeeping role in another part of the world and then it's obviously a medal that's given only to people who are involved in those peacekeeping roles. The other one's given unilaterally to everyone who serves over four years in the Armed Services.

PETER DUTTON:

Yeah so when he's put it down, written it down in terms of awards you've received or whatever – and this happened years ago – he's got one word wrong and he's put it down – and as I say, it's not as if he's brought a dodgy medal or he's trying to hold out that he's got two awards; he's just written it down, no doubt spare of the moment, never thought about it again, never held himself out to be someone who's…

RAY HADLEY:

…well I believe he's worn the appropriate medal when he needs to, when he goes to Anzac Day commemorations and the like.

PETER DUTTON:

That's it; and in the end, the bloke served our country. He's still given four years service – or more than that – and good on him.

He's made an innocent mistake. He's apologised for it and I hope that people still vote for him because I think he's going to be a great local member.

RAY HADLEY:

Okay. Thanks for your time. Talk next week.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks Ray, see you mate.