April 29, 2024
TOM CONNELL: Joining me live now the Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson, for more on this. Thank you for your time. You're very aware of the legal limitations here, alleged and these are charges at this stage. But what's your reaction to what you've seen and heard so far?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, Tom, what happened to Ninette and Philip Simons should never have happened. It should never happens because the alleged assailant, one of the alleged assailants, was someone who was released by the Albanese Labor government into our community, who after they were released into the community, breached their visa conditions multiple times and was in court only in February on that matter. And yet remained free in the community despite that, to go on to allegedly commit this very serious and vicious assault of an elderly couple in their home, minding their own business on a Tuesday night. The Albanese government has to step up today and explain. Where is the Minister for Home Affairs? Where is the Minister for Immigration? What is their explanation for why their community protection scheme has failed, and failed so miserably when they had the power to stop this?
CONNELL: We always would expect an explanation, I'm sure that will come. But just on what we know so far. So the laws passed with Labor and the Coalition doing so with bipartisan support. A court can order the detention of the most serious offenders when they pose the risk of committing serious violent or sexual offences. Now, from what we knew before, obviously this happened, these breaches, if these are breaches of simply not turning up at the right time, for example, which we know some of these previous breaches that other people have been. I'm not talking about this case deliberately. Would that constitute a serious offender or a risk to the community? Isn't that the unknown here, what the breaches were?
PATERSON: Well, you're forgetting a very important step here, Tom. This person who has allegedly breached their visa conditions and gone on to commit this serious crime, also has committed some sort of historical offence. We don't know what it is. But the reason why they're in detention in the first place is that they're here on a visa, they committed a crime which violated the character provisions of the Migration Act, and their visa was cancelled, and they couldn't be released or deported because their crime was so serious that no other country would take them. Now, we don't know whether this person was one of the seven murderers. We don't know whether he was one of the 37 rapists. We don't know whether he was one of the 72 other people who committed violent offences. But we do know he was in the cohort of this 153, almost all of whom have been charged with or convicted with incredibly serious crimes, who were very lucky to be released into the community, who were released under certain conditions and has then gone and breached those conditions. So, Tom, there is no excuse. I mean, the whole point of putting this in place was to protect the community.
CONNELL: But as you say, we don't know. We don't know what that prior offence was. So don't we need to know that before knowing if this law as it was passed, which can only be applied if there's a serious risk the community could have been applied? Don't you need to know that first before saying this law should have been used?
PATERSON: Tom, these are all good questions which the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration who do know should be standing up today and explaining and if they fail to explain, should resign, or should be sacked by the Prime Minister. But what we do know is there are very serious criminals in that cohort. There are emergency powers that the parliament passed to protect the community, and the Albanese Labor government has not used these powers once. It was only a few weeks ago that I asked them in a Senate committee hearing, how many times have they applied for a preventive detention order? The answer was zero. You cannot tell me among seven murderers, 37 rapists and 72 other violent offenders, that not one of those people poses a risk to the community. We also know that 18 of them violated their visa conditions, and ten of them have breached other state or territory laws and been charged with those offences. So we're now getting into the dozens of re-offences in the community following their original offences.
CONNELL: So you're calling for the explanation and that's fair enough on that detail. Your colleague Dan Tehan said they should resign already. Isn't he jumping the gun a bit? Because, as you said just then, let's find out first of all, before you call for a minister to go?
PATERSON: Well, Dan and I put out a joint media statement about half an hour ago that said they need to stand up. They need to explain. If they can't explain, they should resign or they should be sacked by the Prime Minister. I mean, this really should be the last straw for these ministers they have been utterly incompetent every step of the way in this crisis. They weren't ready for the High Court's decision. They completely fumbled it. They had to be led down the pathway by the opposition to drafting tough laws, which they said couldn't be drafted, couldn't be passed. And now the one part of their job that we can't do for them is to get them to make applications under these laws, and they haven't even done that despite the fact we've been calling on them to do so for now, six months. I mean seriously, these laws were rushed through before Christmas. They've had six months. What is their excuse for not using it?
CONNELL: James Paterson, appreciate your time today, thank you.
PATERSON: Thank you.
ENDS
