Subjects: Melbourne terror attack.
EO&E...........................................................................................................................................
DAVID KOCH:
There's renewed debate this morning over citizenship for refugees in the wake of Melbourne's Bourke Street terror attack. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says he'd support the cancellation of visas and deportation of extremists.
We're joined by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Good morning to you.
Now the terrorist responsible for Friday's attack Shire Ali had his passport cancelled in 2015 when he tried to join Islamic State. Was he a dual citizen? Could we have kicked him out?
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Kochie. Look obviously the Government has ramped up the number of visa cancellations, so people that have committed criminal offences and we're very happy to expand that, but we would need to get the support of the Senate to do it and there are a couple of bills – important bills – around citizenship where we've been knocked back. But look, if people have been made an Australian citizen, either by birth or by conferral, then that bestows upon them a constitutional protection as opposed to somebody who is here on a visa. So you can go through the individual cases, but in most cases they're born in Australia.
DAVID KOCH:
Okay, but if he's got a Somalian passport we could have cancelled here the Australian one and just chucked him out back to Somalia couldn't we?
PETER DUTTON:
Well you can if somebody can avail themselves of a Somali citizenship for example. So if somebody is born here…
DAVID KOCH:
…[inaudible] or was he just Australian?
PETER DUTTON:
No he was just Australian because he had Australian citizenship, but he was born in Somalia. So look, there are different ways in which we can tighten the laws up and we're looking at that right now, but again we need to get it through the Senate and so far we haven't been able to get the support of Labor or the Greens which we need in the Senate to make it work.
DAVID KOCH:
Okay. ASIO has more than 400 people of interest on its watch list. Do we need to commit more staff and resources to keep track of them or should there be a special national agency just to monitor them around the clock?
PETER DUTTON:
Well I've seen some of those suggestions today. I'd be keen to have a look at anything and we will continue to refresh the way that we do things, but Kochie, people should be reassured that in ASIO, in the Australian Federal Police, the state policing authorities, we've got the best people in the world.
Now if somebody picks up a kitchen knife, grabs a couple of gas bottles from the local servo and heads down to a mall, it's very hard unless you've got coverage of that person 24/7 or there's been a mobile phone intercept – something of that order. It's very hard to intervene, which is why we need the community particularly leaders within the Islamic community to do even more to encourage people to alert authorities to changed behaviour that might give us a tip off to stop this sort of behaviour we saw last week.
DAVID KOCH:
So are you agreeing with Scott Morrison that you don't think Islamic community leaders are doing enough?
PETER DUTTON:
Well by definition, last week's event demonstrates that had we been able to get a tip-off we could well have intervened before he arrived at the mall. Now everybody will be 2020 in hindsight, but we've stopped 14 events so far. Some of them have been because of great police work or intelligence gathering. Others have been because somebody from the community has made a phone call about a brother or about a work colleague, about somebody from their mosque or whatever it might be and that has resulted in us being able to intervene and stop a tragic event from taking place. So let's be real, we need people to do more and certainly that's what we would expect from the Islamic community.
DAVID KOCH:
Okay, all right. Peter Dutton, thanks for joining us. See you soon.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Kochie.
[ends]
