May 29, 2024
Senior officials from the Department of Home Affairs have been questioned by James Paterson in a tense Senate hearing after details emerged about the deportation of a convicted rapist being blocked.
A British-born man convicted of sexually attacking 26 women has had his deportation revoked by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) due to a specific ministerial direction.
Direction 99, signed by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles last year, makes "ties to Australia" a primary consideration during AAT visa determinations.
It was revealed on Tuesday night neither Mr Giles’ office nor the Minister himself was made aware of the AAT’s decision prior to its publication in The Australian.
It is understood Mr Giles has now moved to add the case to a list of those recommended to have their visas cancelled.
Mr Paterson on Wednesday questioned senior officials if there had been a possible breakdown in communication between government departments and offices.
Senator Murray Watt, the government’s representative in Wednesday’s hearing, spoke of a “triage” system which helps departments manage caseloads.
“The officials can certainly correct me if I get this wrong, but what I am hearing is that a decision was put in place to bring to the minister and minister’s office attention the higher priority cases rather than deluging them with the many, many thousand cases that are in this portfolio,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean that the very serious cases that have come out were never to be raised with the Minister’s office.
“They are exactly the kind of cases that I think the Minister and his office would have been very keen to hear about and unfortunately they were not raised with his office.”
Mr Paterson said he acknowledged the merits of the triage system but pointed to severity of the case in question.
“And that is what I am seeking to understand Minister, I take your point, if there are so many cases that you have to triage, then you triage to bring the most important ones forward,” he said.
“And I would have thought someone raping and sexually assaulting 26 women would have fit in that category, so … why didn’t it come forward?”
Mr Watt replied and conceded there was clearly a "a breakdown … in the system".
“Well that’s what we are trying to understand Minister, is how and why? And I am none the wiser from this exchange,” Mr Paterson responded.
There was a long pause in the chamber before Mr Watt issued a reply.
“I think Ms Foster very graciously yesterday acknowledged that that was a failure on the part of the department,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s everyone else’s fault except the ministers. It’s the department’s fault, it’s the AAT’s fault,” Mr Paterson fired back as the room erupted in shouts, prompting the chair to call participants to order.
Later on in the hearing, Mr Paterson continued to voice his confusion, asking senior officials how the case could “gather dust” in the department for 12 months and “not be brought to the minister’s attention”.
“I just don’t understand,” he said, prompting a response from the head of the Department of Home Affairs Stephanie Foster.
“Senator, I understand that, and we are working to find that answer for you, but we can’t answer it right now,” she said.
“With the volume of the material we are working with and the complexity it will just take us a little bit of time to sort through what has been happening and as I said more importantly what the solution is moving forward.”
