April 30, 2024
RAY HADLEY: The Shadow Minister of Home Affairs is Senator James Paterson, who is on the line. Senator, good morning.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Ray.
HADLEY: Well, I said at the top of the show about two hours ago that we wouldn't expect anyone to be resigning Andrew Giles or your counterpart, Clare O'Neil. But the Prime Minister just runs cover for them. They are in witness protection. And it's them that are responsible for what happened in Perth.
PATERSON: Ray, it seems like it doesn't matter how bad it gets, no matter how many Australians are hurt, there are no consequences for failure in the Albanese government. You can let the 153 criminals out into the community. They can re-offend against Australians on dozens of occasions. They can break the law. They can even commit alleged offences, as serious as this, and there's no consequences. And you don't even have to front up and explain yourself and explain what you've done. I mean, it is an utter, utter shambles.
HADLEY: Are you aware that again this morning in Melbourne, as opposed to Perth, another Sudanese person released has breached his bail or breached his parole, I should say, or breached the conditions put on him by the federal government and the state authorities. And you wouldn't believe it. Serious breaches. He's discarded a monitor. He's gone out when he shouldn't have gone out. He appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. And guess what they did with him? Bailed him again.
PATERSON: Exactly right, Ray. It almost seems like this is happening every week now. In fact, we know there's been 18 people charged with state offences from this cohort of 153, there were ten who were previously charged with violating their visa conditions. But because Andrew Giles stuffed up the issuing of the visas in the first place, all of them were let off without charge. Now some of them are offending again. And you'd think something different would happen this time. You would think there would be some real consequences. You would think they might even use the preventative detention scheme, which the Parliament rushed through before Christmas to get these dangerous offenders off the streets. But how many times have they used it in the six months since then? Not once.
HADLEY: So they're blaming you for not agreeing to this rush through legislation before Parliament broke up, saying oh they should have agreed to that. But the reason you didn't agree to it was because I think there were more holes then you would find in a block of Swiss cheese?
PATERSON: That's right, Ray. We just had a Senate hearing into this legislation and of the more than 100 submissions guess how many are in support of the legislation? Not a single submission other than the submission from the Department of Home Affairs itself. So that shows you everything you need to know about this botched rushed job. It's littered with errors and holes and we have no confidence the government gets these things right without proper scrutiny.
HADLEY: So, what do we do when you come back? Do we go back to the drawing board and try and find some way to negotiate with the government to keep these people incarcerated, or are they going to still be getting out on bail and then bashing the tripe out of 73 year olds, allegedly.
PATERSON: Well, we would like them to just use the powers that they already have as a starting point. We gave them these powers for a reason to protect the community. But this alleged offender in Perth, apparently breeched visa conditions multiple times and apparently was charged with other offences and has been released on bail three times. A question for the government is did he even have an ankle bracelet monitor on? Or was he one of the 70 odd, of the 153 that were allowed to take off their ankle bracelet and be roaming free in the community without any monitoring at all?
HADLEY: Well, I think the answer is he was given bail after breaching bail again, the same as a Sudanese bloke in Melbourne, and it appears the magistrate court more often than not, are going to give people bail, whether it's domestic violence related offences or, you know, breaching their bail by not wearing the sort of stuff that they should be wearing, including monitoring bracelets and the like. And it just goes round and round and round.
PATERSON: That's right. And there's reports in the West Australian yesterday that the Commonwealth didn't even argue against bail when the visa conditions were originally breached in this case. And the government is trying to deny that today. But the reports are as plain as day. It says the Commonwealth did not apply for bail. And they said if there were further offences they might start to oppose bail.
HADLEY: Just ridiculous, thanks for your time.
PATERSON: Thanks Ray.
ENDS
