May 6, 2024
RAY HADLEY: Senator Paterson, good morning to you.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning Ray.
HADLEY: Well, it's just a blame game. It's not our fault. We appoint delegates, and they are allowed to make the decisions that bugger things up.
PATERSON: It's actually worse than that Ray, on Friday the Prime Minister lied. He lied straight out. He said the Community Protection Board makes decisions. That's wrong. The Community Protection Board has no power to make decisions. They only make recommendations. The recommendation that they make under the Migration Act is very clear. It's a recommendation to the minister and the minister is the decision maker. Now, the minister can decide to delegate that decision making authority to the department, as he has done in some cases involving this cohort. But in Senate estimates in February, the Border Force commissioner, Michael Outram, admitted to me that the Minister for Immigration has been the decision maker in dozens of these cases. So when the Prime Minister says the Community Protection Board makes a decision, he's lied. When he says the minister doesn't make decisions, he's lied. He also said on Friday that it's an independent process to decide to oppose bail. Well, actually, the Attorney General has power to direct the prosecutors to oppose bail in these instances, and he failed to do so.
HADLEY: And we heard from the Magistrate involved in all of this that had they offered any sort of argument, the prosecutors, it was likely the bloke would have been refused bail. But they were very compliant in allowing the process to proceed without bail being a consideration.
PATERSON: The Magistrate even said that it was "generous" of the Commonwealth prosecutor to not oppose bail. Now, I don't know about you, Ray, but I'm not sure generosity is what's required towards these 153 people who have committed serious
crimes, broken the law, had their visas cancelled, have been released into our community and have now gone on to violate their visa conditions and commit other serious crimes.
HADLEY: I've done a story this morning, James Paterson, about another bloke in Melbourne who's breached bail on four separate occasions and he's been involved in shoplifting and other, you know, not so serious crimes. I guess in the greater scheme of things, unless you're an immigration detainee and he's been allowed bail again on Friday by yet another Melbourne Magistrate.
PATERSON: Well, this former detainee is alleged to have used a knife in those burglaries and was apprehended by police, allegedly in a pub with that knife after breaching his visa conditions on multiple occasions. He's been granted bail. I can't understand why these people are in the community. I can't understand why in many cases they've been released without ankle bracelets. And I can't understand why the government hasn't used the preventive detention laws that the parliament gave them to get the dangerous ones of this cohort off the streets.
HADLEY: Well, I think the answer to that is very simple. And I mentioned this two hours ago. It's not in their DNA under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and now Anthony Albanese. It's not in their DNA and never will be in their DNA. They don't like putting people in jail who come here illegally or in detention, I should say more correctly. And then in jail if they break the law once they are here. They just don't like it. And Andrew Giles, of course the MV Tampa was his panacea before he became Minister for Immigration. It was the lawyer barking and screaming the joint down about releasing people on MV Tampa.
PATERSON: I think you're right, Ray. I think this is a dangerous combination of both incompetence and weakness. It's bad enough to be incompetent and to stuff it up, but it's even worse to be incompetent and weak and not be willing to make the tough decisions in the national interest. But that's what we've come to expect from this Prime Minister and his ministers.
HADLEY: Okay, let's go back to the reason I was going to talk to you. Latika Bourke has published a story that's come to my attention this morning. Australia's spy agencies were told twice that a group of Australian MPs belonging to an international committee on China had been targeted by Chinese hackers, but the authorities chose to keep the MPs in the dark about the cyber attacks. The Nightly, which is what Latika Bourke is writing in, understands that the Five Eyes intelligence agency first warned Australia's agencies in mid 2021 that the attacks had taking place in January of the same year. In June of 2022, the FBI formally notified Australian authorities about the attempt by a Chinese hacking group called APT31 to target six Australian MPs. However, the agency did not tell the government or the MPs affected. Do we know from what party the MPs who were targeted were from?
PATERSON: Yes, it was bipartisan. It was Labor MPs, it was Liberal MPs. They were all members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which is a global grouping of democracies who were concerned about the Chinese Communist Party and its interference in our democracy. It's abuse of human rights, its malign conduct in the South China Sea and elsewhere. I mean, this is very serious Ray. We have been targeted by a country that we apparently have a bilateral, functional relationship with. This is a very underhanded thing to do, and we should have been told. It was a mistake not to tell us. Now, in this instance, it appears that it wasn't successful, it didn't compromise our devices or our accounts. But we need to know so that we can take action to protect ourselves. And on behalf of the Parliament and the country. I mean, this behaviour should be called out. There should be sanctions. There should be consequences for it.
HADLEY: So I guess the MPs from both sides of the chamber are demanding an explanation from ASIO. has there been any forthcoming, ASIO saying why they kept it from the people involved?
PATERSON: We have received a briefing from both ASIO and ASD, they have assured us that these hacks were not successful and that we were not told because it was dealt with at the operational level at the time. But they've also agreed that in the future, if we are specifically targeted like this, that we will be briefed. And I think that's important because we have a right to know the public has a right to know, and Australia must take action. We passed laws that allow us to sanction this behaviour. In the past, we've publicly attributed this behaviour to the Chinese government. We have to call it out because otherwise it's going to keep happening.
HADLEY: So it won't happen again next time. People, if they are targeted, will be told by our spy agencies?
PATERSON: That that's the assurance we've now been given.
HADLEY: Okay. Appreciate your time. We'll keep moving on.
ENDS
