May 28, 2024
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PETA CREDLIN: But let's go back to Canberra now. That car crash of an appearance today by the Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles, in the parliament, where everyone else was to blame. Not the minister, not the direction he signed to give violent foreign criminals the benefit of the doubt. For more on this, Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson joins us now from Parliament House. The coalition's demanding now, James, that the minister must rescind this direction. I made the point earlier on with Andrew Clennell. The timing is curious, this was made on the 23rd of January last year so 2023. And two days after that, Jacinda Ardern, who long wanted this change, finally left office.
JAMES PATERSON: It is very curious and goes back a little bit further. In July 2022, the Prime Minister held a joint press conference with Jacinda Ardern at Kirribilli in which he committed to dealing with this issue in a, quote, 'common sense way'. As you may be aware, Peta, we were regularly asked when we were in government by Jacinda Ardern and her government to please go soft on deporting serious New Zealand criminals because they didn't want them, particularly if they had grown up in Australia or substantially grown up in Australia. But we politely declined the request of the New Zealand government to do so, because we didn't think it was in Australia's national interest to continue to allow people to stay here who are very serious offenders and non-citizens. If you come here to our country, and you are on a visa, you are a guest in our country and their conditions that apply to that. And if you go around murdering or raping people, then that violates those conditions, and you should be deported regardless of where you're from and regardless of how long you've been here. Anthony Albanese, as we know, he's a weak Prime Minister and he gave in to that lobbying from Jacinda Ardern. And we are all seeing what the consequences of that are right now.
CREDLIN: So this is why he won't demand that Giles scrap this direction. Because I bet you, he told Giles to do it.
PATERSON: Well, it's even worse than that, Peta. You're right. He can't sack Andrew Giles. Because not only did he probably privately instruct Andrew Giles to do it, in a freedom of information request that was just released publicly in the last couple of days, it has been revealed that the department themselves referred to the Prime Minister's joint press conference with Jacinda Ardern as the reason why this advice to the minister was being prepared. So the whole thing started with the Prime Minister. It might be Andrew Giles who signed the paper, but it's the Prime Minister who was holding the pen.
CREDLIN: All right. Let's go to the issue of these student protesters. You say the Coalition says if they are on a visa, this is the pro-Hamas types in the encampments at the universities. If they are on visas, if they are not Australian citizens, they should be deported. This is what's happening in the United Kingdom. Now, surely the government's got the powers now under the Migration Act to act.
PATERSON: That's right Peta, there's multiple provisions of the Migration Act which allow the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for immigration to cancel the visas of people who are inciting discord in our community, inciting disharmony, targeting minority groups in our community, engaging in political extremism, supporting terrorism, a whole range of criteria that's available right now. And there's no doubt we've seen unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism on campus. Some of the people involved in that are very clearly foreign students who are here as guests in our country, they have violated the principles of their time as visitors here and they should be sent home. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, neither minister has cancelled any visas, despite what we've seen on campus. And things are getting so bad that even Jason Clare said this week that what happened at Melbourne University in the last few days involved repugnant anti-Semitism. Now that's a pretty big statement from a guy who was denying there's was a problem at all only a few weeks ago, and yet where is the Minister for Home Affairs and where's the Minister for Immigration? Missing in action, as per usual when it comes to community safety.
CREDLIN: In the aftermath of October 7th last year, James, we talked about the fact that we had no, consular presence in Gaza. So people were applying online that were getting visas to come to Australia. And there was very little in terms of security checks of these people. The concern was once they got here that they'd go down the path of staying permanently. I suspect that's what's happening. Do you have a sense of how many people have come in under what I regard as a pretty lax system since then?
PATERSON: We know, Peta, as of February that over 2000 visas have been granted on an average basis of 24 hours consideration by the department, in some instances, just a couple of hours for visa application. An extraordinary rush by the government given that this is a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation. As it happens, I've got Home Affairs officials before me right now in Senate estimates, and this is a key question I'll be asking for an update on. How many more visas have they issued since February? How many of those people have made it out of Gaza and into Australia, and how many of those visas did they initially issue, which they've have had to subsequently cancel on security advice? We know that they have cancelled some. We just don't know how many. But what that indicates is they didn't do the proper checks in the first place, which they of course couldn't have in such a quick and rushed process.
CREDLIN: What I would watch is this knee jerk reaction from Justin Trudeau. He's announced 5000 visa places for Palestinians to basically just enter into Canada. There will be pressure from Labor to do the same here.
PATERSON: You're right, Peta. And frankly, although we are a humanitarian country and we welcome people in desperate need, we've also got an unprecedented anti-Semitism crisis, and we don't need to add to it. And I don't want to bring anyone here who has attitudes of hostility towards the Jewish community because frankly, they deserve better than that from their government.
CREDLIN: Alright James, I will let you go. You've got important work to do there at Senate estimates, we will watch very closely.
ENDS
