August 12, 2024
PETER STEFANOVIC: Australia's spy boss, Mike Burgess, says Palestinians who have expressed rhetorical support for Hamas wouldn't necessarily be blocked from entering Australia. Live to the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, James Paterson. James, good to see you this morning. So are you comfortable with folks coming here who support Hamas?
JAMES PATERSON: No I'm not. The acceptable number of Hamas supporters to be brought into this country is zero. And I have absolutely no criticism of Mike Burgess as Director-General. He's a first class public servant. And on Insiders yesterday, he very accurately described the current situation under the Albanese government, which is there is no guarantee that Hamas supporters will not be brought to Australia as part of the very significant intake that they are overseeing, including from Gaza. And that's a deeply disturbing thing. Now it's not a matter for a Director-General of an intelligence agency to set policy. It's up to the government to set policy. And if the government disagrees with our commitment to having zero Hamas supporters brought into our country, they should specify how many Hamas supporters it is acceptable to bring into our country. Or if they agree with us, then they should set out the steps they are now going to put in place to make sure that no Hamas supporters are brought to Australia.
STEFANOVIC: So is it possible for someone to support Hamas, having always been under its rule and not subscribe to its ideology, which is something similar to the views of some members of the Greens, even though they haven't been under the Hamas rule.
PATERSON: Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation. It has political objectives which it believes should be achieved through violence, and anybody who supports using violent means to achieve political objectives is not welcome in Australia and should not come to Australia. This is very different from supporting the Palestinian cause of self-determination through peaceful means. That, of course, is completely acceptable in a liberal democracy, there are many Australians who subscribe to that view. But if you support using attacks like the 7th of October, which killed the largest number of Jews since the end of the Holocaust, 1,200 people on one day and kidnapped hundreds more, then I don't think you should come to this country. I mean, we should ask ourselves will our country be stronger if we bring Hamas supporters in? Will we be more united? Will we be more cohesive? Will our problems of anti-Semitism be better or will they be worse?
STEFANOVIC: So what of these 1,300 Palestinians who've been offered temporary visitor visas? The government is about to announce a new visa for them to stay indefinitely, and taxpayers will have to fund that. What of them, in your view?
PATERSON: Well it is a much greater number than that. It's over 2,500 visas that have been granted. It's about 1,300, as I understand it, who made it to Australia, wo have been able to travel to Australia. There was a couple of concerning things that came out of that interview yesterday. Mike Burgess rightly said that when these cases are referred to his organisation, they are assessed for security. But he also said there were some instances where they were not referred to his organisation. And perhaps that is why there was some visas that were cancelled subsequently after that were first issued. That's deeply disturbing. Every single person coming out of a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation should be referred to ASIO for security vetting, and if that is not happening, it must change today. And Tony Burke, as Home Affairs Minister, must commit to making that change today.
STEFANOVIC: Yeah. I'm just going to say, what other the measures should be in place? You might have been about to answer this question, and should biometric testing be a part of that?
PATERSON: Biometric testing is an important part of it. But most importantly, the decision maker in the Department of Home Affairs should use the character provisions of the Migration Act to cancel, to not approve, to deny the application for a visa from anyone who is assessed to be a Hamas supporter. Now your colleague Sharri Markson, did a desktop social media research on some of the applicants for visas as part of that cohort. And she was able to identify people who publicly supported Hamas. If she can find them, I assure you, the intelligence function of the Home Affairs Department and ASIO are more than capable of finding them, if they're asked to do so. But it appears that this government has not asked them to do so. Let's remember, millions of people would love to come to this country. Millions of people would like to live here. Of all the people in the world that we can choose to come and enrich our country and make it a better and stronger place, why on earth would we put supporters of a listed terrorist organisation at the head of that queue?
STEFANOVIC: Do you put this all down to, James? We'll have to close here. Go to the stories to get to. But what do you put all this down to? are corners being cut?
PATERSON: It's a very difficult question to answer. I think there was an unseemly rush to get people out of Gaza into Australia. The first responsibility of the Australian government is to protect Australian citizens first. When we brought other cohorts like this out of the Middle East, for example, in Syria and Afghanistan, they were taken to third countries for very careful vetting and screening before they came to Australia, so that we could be assured they didn't pose a risk to the Australian community. I don't see any evidence that that same care has been applied in this case, and it's up to the Albanese government to explain why there was such a rush and why those checks didn't happen as they should have.
STEFANOVIC: Alright James, we'll leave it there. Thanks for your time. We'll talk to you soon.
ENDS
