August 15, 2024
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Tony Burke and the Prime Minister have very serious questions to answer today, questions that they were not able to answer in question time yesterday. Despite boasting that they were properly checking visas from applicants from Gaza, there weren't able to say how many of the applicants refused visas to Australia were refused because of security grounds, refused because they're supporters of Hamas. And until they are able to provide such basic assurances to the Opposition and the Australian people about the process for bringing people from Gaza into Australia, we think there must be a temporary pause on applications from that region. The truth is that you can't leave Gaza anyway now, the Rafah border is closed, so the government has the time to get this right. They need to make sure that no Hamas supporters are coming to Australia. They need to make sure there are face to face interviews for all applicants, they need to make sure that biometric testing is happening for all applicants, and until they can make that assurance, we don't think we should put at risk our national security by bringing in people from Gaza.
JOURNALIST: Are you doubting ASIO's ability to protect our national security?
PATERSON: I have absolute faith in Mike Burgess and his entire team at ASIO, they do outstanding work to protect our country, but they work within the policy settings that the government of the day gives them. And in this instance, they're not being asked to look for Hamas supporters and not being asked to do face to face interviews, they're not being asked to do biometric tests and to check them against our databases and those databases of our allies and partners. And unless they've being asked to do that then there is a risk that mistakes will be made in this cohort and that would put our community at risk.
JOURNALIST: The ASIO boss has said that you can be sympathetic to Hamas that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a threat to our national security, you disagree with him?
PATERSON: Think about the problems that we've had in our country over the last nine months since the 7th of October, the problems of social cohesion, the problems of anti-Semitism, frankly, the increased terrorism threat level just a couple weeks ago. How do any of those problems become easier to manage if we bring in supporters of a terrorist organisation? In my view, supporting a terrorist organisation is a very clear breach of the Migration Act, and in particular, the character provisions of the Migration Act and you should not come to Australia if you do so. Now that's not a criticism of Mike Burgess, he was simply describing the status quo under this government. We'll have a different approach; we think that the acceptable number of Hamas supporters to bring into this country is zero.
JOURNALIST: Did the Opposition Leader discuss this policy change with you before announcing it on Sky News?
PATERSON: Look, Peter and I have had a lot of conversations about how to manage this and what he said is entirely consistent with what I said. Frankly, I expected after I first started raising questions about this on Monday, that the government was going to come out straight away, reassure the Australian people and say of course we're not going to bring any Hamas supporters in the country. But when they weren't able to do that and when they weren't able to provide assurances about security and identity checks, the only logical next step was to call for a temporary pause from migrants from Gaza and I strongly support what Peter Dutton has said.
JOURNALIST: At what point do you believe it will be safe to bring in refugees?
PATERSON: Well, as soon as the robust checks take place, like the ones that we put in place in Syria and Afghanistan. The Prime Minister said yesterday in question time that they are running exactly the same process that we ran in those instances, but that's not true, I think he's misled the Parliament. Because in the case of Syria and Afghanistan, every single applicant for a visa was either interviewed on the ground by Australian officials, when it was safe to do in their country, or they were evacuated to a third country where those interviews and biometric tests took place, and they were only granted a visa after that happened. In contrast, in Gaza, these visas have been granted with no Australian government presence on the ground, no face to face interviews, no biometric testing and in some cases, as quickly as 24 hours or even one hour. And of course, you can't leave Gaza and cross the Rafah border without a valid visa to come to a country like Australia. So it's a completely different approach. It's rushed, it's dangerous, and it puts our national security at risk.
Thank you.
ENDS
