Subjects: Same-sex marriage; closure of Manus RPC; Queensland state election; judicial decisions.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
RAY HADLEY:
Minister good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
The same-sex marriage debate is now over. There are things still to be sorted in both the Senate and the Lower House. Sixty two per cent of respondents voting yes. We can now focus on things and move forward. Your seat of Dickson had a yes vote, I think, of 65.2. Will you follow the lead of say Mr Abbott and vote accordingly with your electorate?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes Ray. I mean I've said right from the start that personally I would vote no, which is what I did in the ballot, but if a majority of Australians voted yes in the democratic process of the postal survey, then I would vote yes in the parliamentary vote and I'll honour that commitment. I've been very clear about that from the first time I advocated a postal plebiscite. I thought it was a nonsense for you to be able to put forward a democratic process and then not adhere to the outcome. So, I think a lot of Australians will be in that same position.
RAY HADLEY:
It's strange that the conservative side of politics should take that view because in Sydney, as I explained yesterday, 12 federal seats voted no, many of those in Western and South Western Sydney and nine of the 12 are occupied by Labor politicians, who despite getting the message from their constituents that they want no, they're going to vote yes.
PETER DUTTON:
Well that's because, you know, you look at some of these seats, obviously there's a big ethnic community within the seats and they were very adamant about following their religious belief and they've obviously adhered to the instruction from the religious leaders, but it also indicates that the modern Labor Party is more aligned now with the Left and with the Greens.
They're worried about inner city seats, they're worried about the Greens, which means that they make policies on border protection and other issues of national security that mean that they're soft on law and order and they have abandoned people in the suburbs to try and win seats in the inner cities and that's the party that Bill Shorten presides over. That's just the reality for modern Labor.
RAY HADLEY:
You may well have heard this story. I've got a number of emails from former guards on Manus Island. They're sick to the back teeth of how they're being portrayed in the media and how the people that are now not wanting to leave that detention centre and go elsewhere are also being portrayed. As they point out, these detainees are not choir boys that the activists would have us believe. Now, I want you to listen to this Minister. I had a call from Alana on Monday and before that I had an email from her husband, a former Manus Island security guard.
Let's have a listen to what the wife of the security guard told me:
[excerpt]
ALANA:
I am the wife of the former employee at Manus Island. The most disturbing aspect – apart from the repeated assaults on my husband and his work colleagues – was the fact that some of these men that were staying in the processing centre had put together a Facebook page dedicated to finding out the identities of the staff and their families. And the threat's that my husband and his work colleagues would be subjected to included: when we come to Australia, we will find your wife and children and we will rape them. Things like that. And I've actually seen this Facebook page and it's incredibly disturbing.
I mean at the end of the day I couldn't care what religion, what race, what – these people could be little green men from Mars for all I care – the fact remains that a lot of them behaved and are behaving like criminals and it's all documented. I mean if anyone would sit down with the New Zealand Prime Minister and maybe show her some incident reports and CCTV footage and then maybe she could make an informed decision as to whether she wants to endanger the New Zealand public.
RAY HADLEY:
Just in relation to one part of the letter: there are dozens of CCTV cameras recording each incident being downloaded and saved. So these are in the hands of obviously Australian officials one would imagine?
ALANA:
One would imagine, yes. I mean obviously my husband doesn't work there anymore, but at the time that was the case yeah.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. I'll bring it up with the Minister when I talk to him on Thursday.
[end of excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
And I'll do that right now. Is there footage of what Alana described to me Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, I don't know is the short answer to your question. I mean obviously yes there is CCTV footage that wouldn't include the uploading of information to the internet or that sort of thing. It doesn't record voice I imagine, but obviously they've got an extensive CCTV network. There are a number of incidents that have been referred to the PNG Police and a number of matters that are under investigation at the moment. So the CCTV footage would pick up a physical assault or people coming and going from a particular point that's covered by the camera, but whether or not that particular incident – I'd have to get some advice on Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
Alright. Well one of the things that was also mentioned by another – and we've checked the bona fides of all these people and confirmed they were guards and all the rest of it – that part of the problem with the local community is many of these men – and most of them are still housed there at the moment – refer to the locals as black monkeys and, you know, that's a test for anyone's patience, or dignity, or courage, to be referred to in such ways. And local police were asking families on the island to discourage their children to being enticed back to the centre with the promise of either money or chocolates or other forms of inducements to get them inside the camp and again, that's been documented as well. Are you aware of all of that?
PETER DUTTON:
Ray I'm aware of that reporting and look it's a frustrating situation because there's a lot of misinformation and propaganda around. As you saw at the rally last week, that function I spoke at with Tony Abbott, these people are ill-informed, they're providing information to the public which is just factually not correct and I've said for a long time there is a different story, different information and different facts that'll come out in time.
The priority for us at the moment is to get people out of this Regional Processing Centre and we're down to about 370 or so. We want to get them into the new accommodation so that the old Regional Processing Centre can be abolished, but trouble is – as we've discussed on the programme before – you've got Greens and advocates here who are messaging up to PNG – even this very day – telling them not to abide by the directions given, not to cooperate with authorities and what they're doing is spoiling for a fight so that they can try and put pressure on the Government to bring those people to Australia. Again, I can't be any clearer in saying that under no circumstance will the people on Manus Island be coming to Australia and we repeat that again today.
So the message really to these advocates back here is to lay off because you're not doing anybody any favours and really all you're doing is prolonging a very difficult situation. You're really compounding it and making it worse than it needs to be, but it seems to make some of the advocates back here feel better about themselves, but in the end, they are not helping anybody.
RAY HADLEY:
Now, a story from earlier this week: Australia's top spies will use secretive, coercive powers to target sex predators, one of your first moves under the Home Affairs super ministry.
Since 1949, 33 sex predators have had their citizenship revoked, 17 of those occurred since you became Minister actually in December 2014 – so we weren't too good at it before you. It's incredible there were zero citizenship cancellations in the seven years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government, isn't it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it's amazing, but I guess, you know, on the one hand it shouldn't come as any surprise. I mean they are soft on law and order.
In Queensland at the moment Ray, you might be interested to know there's a seat in Ferny Grove just north of Brisbane in my electorate – nick Elston, a former army officer is running for that seat, great bloke – but there's a bikie running in that seat…
RAY HADLEY:
…oh I dealt with him last week. He's the bloke that, you know, is in love with the Labor Party because of the VLAD laws.
PETER DUTTON:
But get this; Annastacia Palaszczuk has decided that she will preference the bikie ahead of the LNP candidate and to me it just summed up everything that is wrong with Labor on law and order and border protection.
I mean they're more interested in the civil libertarian lawyer's view than they are in the public's view and, you know, they say the right things…Labor always say: oh you know we'll do the same as Liberals do on border protection and we'll do the same on law and order, but when you have a look at the facts, it's something completely different. They've got the CFMEU links with the bikies, CMFEU paying millions of dollars to the union movement and lo and behold, you've got the bikie who's put up the order and I mean I'd love to hear what Bill Shorten's view is on that because Annastacia Palaszczuk's said it very clearly.
When you look at the judicial appointments that they make to Magistrates' Court, when you look at them appointed to the District or Supreme Courts, you get these soft sentences and, you know, you get Ministers in a Labor Government that don't cancel a single citizenship of a paedophile during six years of government. It is a disgrace.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, don't forget – now you've got me on a roll about magistrates again which you normally do and my blood pressure will go up – you've got a Queensland Magistrate Joan White and you've got this bloke – I think his name's Bashiri from memory – the bloke I dealt with yesterday and you're dealing with – that you can't send back because the Iranians said we don't want him. So he's in detention. She had him before her in Queensland prior to him threatening to kill police and blow up people in Victoria and New South Wales and she decided she wouldn't impose a custodial sentence because it may impact on his chances of staying here.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray if you… oh look, I won't comment on that case because I might be a decision maker in relation to it, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence coming back from magistrates and judges having these discussions around only sentencing somebody for 11 months and not 12, because if they get 12 months then they'll have the ability to cancel their visas.
When you look at the extensive criminal history of some of these people, it's unbelievable that they're getting 11 months. I mean some of them should be getting years of jail and they commit offence after offence after offence and some of these magistrates are conducting some sort of therapy session with them. I mean they're magistrates and they should be sending a clear message that criminal behaviour is not acceptable to the Australian community. At the moment, there's no deterrence in some of these punishments.
RAY HADLEY:
I know you can't talk about it because you might be making the decision, but I've just been reminded by going to the web – this is the front page of The Courier Mail yesterday – Magistrate Joan White talked openly in court about ensuring Iranian refugee Behzad – I was right – Bashiri did not lose his visa before giving him a suspended sentence for frightening crimes in Queensland. Now police have warned that they have grave fears for the safety of the public if he's not locked up, this lunatic. Incredible.
Alright, we'll leave it there and we'll talk again next week. Thanks for your time as always.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray, see you mate.
[ends]