Subjects: Bennelong; Senator Sam Dastyari; Australia's law enforcement and intelligence agencies; judiciary.

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

RAY HADLEY:

Minister good morning.

PETER DUTTON:

Morning Ray Hadley.

RAY HADLEY:

Well, it's the end of a long year – in more ways than one – and I'm trying to reflect back on when we first started having a yarn on Thursdays and the many, many, many issues we've addressed.

Look – and I say this with due respect – I know that we bag politicians about not working hard enough and not being in Parliament, but by the time you're a Minister and by the time you're looking after your Electorate Office, by the time you're travelling – I don't know how many places you've been to internationally this year and away from a young family and a wife – you must just think, oh, you little bottler, a little bit of a break coming up.

PETER DUTTON:

Mate, it's within sight. It's been a long year and it's good to just reconnect and spend some with the kids in particular. I mean they lead busy lives as well. They're playing sport and running around with friends and all the rest of it. I mean Kirilly's an amazing wife and she does a great job in raising our kids so it'll be nice to get home for a couple of weeks over Christmas.

RAY HADLEY:

Alright. Well that's good.

Now, we've got before all of that; Bennelong. The by-election this Saturday. Now, it's a funny old week. It started off by reporting that there'd been resurgence by Labor – 50-50 Two-Party Preferred – and Cory Bernardi's Party may have played a role. Then all of a sudden today they're saying; no, Labor and Liberal polling's got it at 53-47, which means a comfortable win for the incumbent – despite the campaign from Kristina Keneally.

Have you got a gut feeling of how you think it's going to go based on what's happened over the past couple of weeks?

PETER DUTTON:

Ray, I was there last Sunday. These by-elections, and given all that's happened, they move around each day. So I think it's fair to say though that it is very tight.

I think we can win. I think John Alexander's done a great job there. He's just a very decent, honourable and honest man and I think that puts him in stark contrast to both Kristina Keneally and Bill Shorten for that matter. So I hope that he can get there. I think there's a real connection that he's got with the community. He's obviously worked his electorate very effectively and supported a lot of good causes there. So I have high hope he can get over the line and if he doesn't, well Bill Shorten's one step closer to The Lodge.

RAY HADLEY:

Well, a very big step closer to The Lodge of course. I mean it's hard to gauge the impact of Dastyari because there's a big, big Chinese chunk in that electorate. If you go to Eastwood or places there – and I grew up in that area, it was a sort of working, middle class suburb – now the shops are dominated by Australian-Chinese and God bless them, they've changed the shape of that location.

They've also changed the shape of the electorate and I'm thinking, well, attached to Dastyari there's a whole range of problems, but the theme along the background is in relation to what the Prime Minister said – is, oh, we're not as good a friend with China as we were, we've put in these constraints because don't want things like this happening again and that may not resonate with those Chinese-Australians as well as, perhaps, other people would think.

The other conflicting argument is they've gone from China to live here because they don't like what's happening in China and they're more Australianised than people would give them credit for.

PETER DUTTON:

My sense is that people are smarter than what Kristina Keneally's giving them credit for at the moment. I think people realise that Sam Dastyari did the wrong thing. Bill Shorten couldn't even sack him. I mean Dastyari had to go out and do this half-hearted resignation – bearing in mind that he's still pulling money from the taxpayers over Christmas – and why he hasn't just exited the Parliament now is beyond me…

RAY HADLEY:

…that went through the wicket keeper because we're all waiting on the edge of our seats for the announcement and he said yes. But he did say I won't be returning in 2018 and now the reports are confirmed – I said it yesterday – that it's going to cost us around another $20,000 for him to sit there until Kristina Keneally replaced him, if she is beaten.

I mean, there hasn't been a real firm denial about that from Bill Shorten. He's saying look, we're worried about winning Bennelong, we're not worried about the next step. But it does sit not well with people, even from the Labor side of politics I would think, that he's there and drawing a payslip when he's not doing anything.

PETER DUTTON:

And if you look at Kristina Keneally; I mean she can do a deal, a backroom deal, that's how she operated as Premier – she was installed by some of the shady figures that have now gone to jail – it's almost…it reminds me a little bit of the Bob Carr scenario where there was a deal done for him to become the foreign affairs minister if he went into Parliament – and I think it sort of smacks of that a bit.

I don't know what's been offered to Kristina Keneally and it's clear though that Dastyari's hanging on for some reason. I saw the figure's $40,000 or $50,000 it'll cost the taxpayer for Dastyari to stay there.

Again, I just think it comes down to Bill Shorten's judgement, his leadership, which is always in question, particularly around some of his union mates. I think there are more questions still for Bill Shorten than there are answers at the moment. I think this issue's still got a long way to run.

RAY HADLEY:

But you sort of get the feeling that Bill didn't think it through. He spoke for three days to Sam: look, you've got to go, you've got to go, but then the last conversation was about when you go. It was sort of like, phew, that's a relief, he's going. But instead of saying: mate, you're going in there today, you're going to resign and you're going to resign your commission immediately, off you go. And all of a sudden it gets to the stage: I'm not coming back in 2018. It seems like the attention to detail may have been lacking. Though they're happy to see the end of him, they didn't know when the end would be.

PETER DUTTON:

Yeah but Ray, as I say, I think there's something that's sort of lurking beneath the surface on that issue. It smacks to me of some deal that's been done between Dastyari and Keneally and Shorten.

I mean obviously we don't know the details yet and maybe it'll come out after the by-election because I think people were expecting – given the gravity of the situation with Sam Dastyari – that people were expecting Bill Shorten to stand up and to sack the bloke and that didn't happen. As people know, Dastyari's a best friend of Shorten's. He's the numbers man in New South Wales. So there is just something else to this deal that we don't yet know about, but I guess time will tell.

RAY HADLEY:

You were a frontline copper. I marvel – I did a story yesterday about Border Protection, with the help of UK authorities and Federal Police and local authorities getting kilogram, kilogram, kilogram after kilogram out of a cruise ship that had come from the UK. Sniffer dogs in there and then every time – we're talking, in that case, I think 30 kilograms – but then we're talking about tonnes of Ice, methamphetamines, talking about cocaine and the latest one, where they got the – Panama, they got them there. We got blokes here in Melbourne.

I marvel at the way this must all come together – not just that we've got Victorian Police, New South Wales Police, AFP, Border Protection, Customs cooperating – but all of a sudden they must be able to pick up the phone and say to their colleagues in Panama: listen, we're doing a deal, you've got to cooperate and the level of cooperation worldwide is quite amazing.

PETER DUTTON:

It's an incredible network with those law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

I've just flown in this morning from Perth. We just had a day up in Western Australia and I met there yesterday with the head of the AFP, the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission and Border Force, just looking at some of the operations that they've had underway – on this very issue actually – because we're worried about that vast West Australian and North West Australian coast. Lots of shipping containers, movements of bulk carriers in and out, people bringing drugs in through the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs into Perth and then distributing it across the rest of the country.

So you're right mate, we're a trading nation and always have been, always will be. So those 40 or 50 million people who move across the border each year, the hundreds of millions of pieces of mail and cargo.

But the Australian Federal Police, as well as Border Force and the other agencies, they've got people in embassies, they've got people embedded in some of these outposts and working with these different governments.

And it's a real credit to the network that they've established globally because they stop a lot before it gets away from the ports, but they pick it up at our docks as well. So full credit to them.

RAY HADLEY:

I know you were on the red eye special from Perth, so you may have not seen The Daily Telegraph yet. And we've got the Senior Crown Prosecutor – outstanding bloke, Mark Tedeschi SC – giving a both-barrel to his colleagues about inappropriate concessions to sentencing and doing deals with criminals. And he's had a gutful of it and so has Lloyd Babb apparently because he supports him.

Then I pick up the Courier Mail: top judge cautions politicians. Queensland's top judge has urged parliamentarians to curb their criticism – this might be you I think they're talking about, although Annastacia Palaszczuk cops a mention as well – of controversial sentences or risk damaging the public's confidence in the judiciary.

I would say, with all due respect to Chief Justice Catherine Holmes, there is no confidence. And I know it's not your problem Catherine Holmes, but when a District Court Judge in New South Wales gives a paedophile a good behaviour bond for two years and then will allow the victims to name themselves, but won't allow us to name the perpetrator, I think that public confidence is already eroded. In fact, there's a giant chasm down the middle of it. People have no confidence in you or your colleagues, with a few notable exceptions nationally and that's the case.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, Mark Tedeschi is obviously a great bloke and the public would support him and they support people like him because he's speaking for the public and the public want crimes to be dealt with in the courts in an appropriate way. They want a proper punishment that provides a deterrence.

I read that story in The Courier Mail. I mean that was the Judge's Christmas message or something, but hear the message back from us: we want the judges to reflect community standards and community standards don't include paedophiles getting good behaviour bonds and being put back out into the community to offend again.

She says that not all of the details are available; well, stand up and explain them. Explain why the good behaviour bond was given and that way there might be some confidence, or the public might say, okay, well we didn't realise that, fair go, you got it right, or they might say, actually, I think that's complete nonsense.

RAY HADLEY:

Yeah.

PETER DUTTON:

And despite that, having heard all of the facts, he still should have got five years or ten years jail.

RAY HADLEY:

Well, I've pre-recorded an interview with one of the victims of this paedophile in Dubbo I can't name, because District Court Judge John North has decided we can name the victim because they wish to be named, but we can't name him because he's suffered some sort of embarrassment in his local town. Well, at the end of the interview which I'll play in the second hour, she quite clearly says, the victim, I said what would you like to say to Judge North when he gets the transcript of today? She said I don't know if I can contain myself, to be in the same room as someone who's done this to me because she feels just as violated by his decision as she did by the paedophile when he did what he did to her when she was a small child.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, the other aspect to it Ray – and to your credit, you don't name the victims in circumstances where there's a family offender or that might embarrass or humiliate or cause further grief to the victim and I think that's sensible – but in many cases, the release of the offender's name does allow other victims to come forward.

RAY HADLEY:

A hundred per cent.

PETER DUTTON:

Because over a long period of time, these people generally offend against multiple victims and, in particular, young girls won't stand up if they're not sure that they'll have the cover. They often will stand up if they know that someone else has been brave enough to stand up as well.

If the laws need to be changed, they need to be changed, because we need to put that deterrent in place.

RAY HADLEY:

Okay. We've got to declare a couple of things here. The Minister has arrived bearing gifts for my staff, not for me. It's a box of a well-known doughnut brand, who don't advertise with us so I can't publicise them, but they are quite delicious and they're designed in Christmas trees and all sorts of other things.

Now, I've got to ascertain, did you buy them, did a member of your staff buy them or were they given to you? Because I don't want any declarations coming to haunt us if you and I are seen in a restaurant together on the Gold Coast during our break into the New Year.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, you're a hard person to buy for Ray Hadley, I might say and I think of poor old Taylah and John out there. John should have no hair at all. I'm the one without the hair, but he's got a stressful job, so they can indulge afterwards. I bought them this morning at Sydney Airport on my way in and we were debating what on earth we could get you…

RAY HADLEY:

…well, I declare an interest in return. When you and I go to Omeros Brothers for a feed, I'll pay the bill.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, that's a good deal mate cause it's more expensive than my $25 on doughnuts.

RAY HADLEY:

I think I might be on the wrong side of the ledger. Thanks for your time right throughout the year. Have a wonderful time with your wife and children over Christmas, New Year. We'll talk to you in 2018.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks very much mate. Merry Christmas to all your listeners.