Dutton confirms he did not consult shadow cabinet before announcing position on Palestinian visa holdersOver on the Nine network, Peter Dutton confirmed he did not take his position to shadow cabinet before announcing it on Sky News:
It’s not an issue that goes to shadow cabinet. I know that sort of insider talk’s been going on, but I’ve got a great national security team with James Paterson and with Andrew Hastie.
We’ve had countless conversations about this topic.
I think the most important element here is what has the government done? They’ve changed the policy. So they’ve said that they will bring people into Australia who are sympathisers with the listed terrorist organisation.
Could you imagine if we were proposing to bring people in who were sympathetic to another listed terrorist organisation, like al-Qaeda or Isil or Isis? It’s completely unacceptable. And the government is trying to patch this up, but they are putting our country at risk. We can take people in a measured, responsible way. That’s not what they’ve done.
Mike Burgess, the head of Asio, said on Sunday, that rhetorical support for Hamas would not necessarily preclude a Palestinian from an Australian visa. Burgess said security agencies looked at whether support was ideological, whether there had been any financial or other support, and the type of support given. He did not say that Hamas “supporters” were being given visas to Australia.In question time yesterday, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirmed that of the total number of visas Palestinians had applied for after October 7, about 70% had been rejected.ShareUpdated at 23.11 BSTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featurePeter Dutton has interrupted the house proceedings with a motion to suspend standing orders to debate his Palestinian visa argument.Here is the line he is going with this morning:
This is not against people of a particular religious belief. This is not against people of a particular political persuasion. This is about keeping our country safe. And Anthony Albanese has failed the Australian public, and he should stand condemned.
Dan Tehan is seconding the motion.ShareSave the Children say use of tourist visas for refugees not unprecedentedAs we reported yesterday, Save the Children also made the point that it was not “unprecedented” for people leaving a war to be granted a temporary visitor visa in Australia.
Under the former Coalition government, Australia offered humanitarian visas to Ukrainian nationals after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and to Afghan nationals after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021.
ShareUpdated at 00.12 BSTIs Dutton correct to say refugees arriving on tourist visas is ‘unprecedented’?Amy RemeikisPeter Dutton has said this morning that Palestinians who left the war in Gaza for Australia on a tourist visa is “unprecedented”.The home affairs website says this has been occurring for Ukrainians leaving the war in Ukraine.
The Australian government remains committed to supporting Ukrainians and their family members who are temporarily in Australia as a result of the war in Ukraine.
The Department of Home Affairs is progressing visa applications from Ukrainian nationals as a priority, particularly for those with a connection to Australia.
Since 24 February 2022 the department has granted over 11,500 visas to Ukrainian nationals in Ukraine and thousands more to Ukrainian nationals elsewhere. Nearly 11,400 Ukraine national visa holders have since arrived in Australia.
Those visas are visitor visas under the tourist stream:
If you are a Ukrainian national with a relative in Australia and you apply for a Visitor visa, you can make an application under the Tourist stream and provide details of your Australian relative. You do not need to make an application under the Sponsored Family Visitor stream.
ShareUpdated at 00.01 BSTBragg argues Gaza is ‘not a normal war zone’ because of Hamas ruleQ: So when you say we’ve got to be very careful, do you support that claim that the Gazans have to stop coming to Australia for now. He didn’t say indefinitely, he said for now. So do you support him on that point?Bragg:
The point he’s made here is in reference to 3,000 visas being issued in 24 hours in a territory which is controlled by Hamas, which is not a nation-state. It is a terrorist organisation. So, I think many people in the community are very worried about the pace of these visas being issued, in this way. And so that’s why Pete is saying, we’ve got to be very careful here.
Q: Yeah, but do you support that?Bragg:
Yeah, I do. I think it’s important to be very careful that we reflect upon this fact that it’s not a normal war zone. I mean, Hamas is running Gaza, so it’s not like a foreign country running a piece of territory.
ShareUpdated at 23.49 BSTBragg says Gaza ‘not a normal war zone’On Peter Dutton’s comments calling for a blanket ban on Palestinians from Gaza coming to Australia, Andrew Bragg said:
I think there’s been some blurring of the lines here. We run a non-discriminatory migration program, and that is the system that everyone agrees with. At the moment, that is not a normal war zone in Gaza. It is run by a terrorist organisation. And so what Peter is saying is we’ve got to be extremely careful when we consider what might happen with people who have been in that particular war zone, controlled by a terrorist organisation.
ShareUpdated at 23.48 BSTWhy did the NSW Liberals miss the nomination deadlines on local elections?The big chat within the NSW Liberal party is how on earth the party missed the nominations deadline for next month’s local government elections for so many candidates.The state director, Richard Shields, blamed resourcing issues:
Unfortunately we were unable to nominate in all of the local government areas that were put forward by the state executive.
But it means that many potential candidates, and incumbents, won’t be on the local government ballots in September. Senator Andrew Bragg was asked about it on Sky News this morning:
Well, this is a very disappointing outcome for many people who want to vote Liberal at council elections and bitterly disappointing for the many Councillors and prospective Councillors across New South Wales. So this is a serious matter. I understand there’ll now be an investigation by the division, and I have confidence that the president will do everything he can to have a quick investigation which can yield some recommendations as to what happened here.
Does he think Shields should resign?
Let’s see what the investigation comes back with. My sense is that this doesn’t need to be a fast [sic] process. It shouldn’t be too hard to see what exactly has happened here.
ShareUpdated at 23.48 BSTDutton asserts security checks are not being properly conducted on refugees contrary to AsioQ: You obviously don’t don’t really care about the Muslim vote. They’re not going to vote for you anyway. Let’s be realistic about it. But the perception of a leader who doesn’t have humanity can have wider ramifications for you.Peter Dutton:
Well, it’s just ridiculous. So my interest here is … in making sure that our national interest is served, and that is for every Australian, regardless of somebody’s political or religious belief. I don’t believe it’s in … our country’s best interests to bring people in who haven’t been face-to-face [interviewed].
Interviews haven’t even been conducted*. We can’t verify identification**. In some cases, they’ve been brought in on a tourist visa, which again, is unprecedented. And my job is to protect all Australians. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. So I’m not discriminating on any basis.
I’m happy to see people brought in from the Middle East if they’ve been properly checked or from [the] Americas or from Asia or wherever it might be, so that that sort of line, frankly, is, you know, is beneath you or, you know, any other commentator.
We take decisions that are in our country’s best interests. That is not what Anthony Albanese has done. And that’s why I think he [should] properly [be] condemned in the latest botched public policy effort of the Albanese government
* There is no suggestion interviews haven’t been done. Tony Burke said processes were ‘different’ and face to face interviews were not possible in Gaza, not that they were not happening.**Asio’s security checks which include identification verification have not changed. They remain the same as they were under the previous government.ShareUpdated at 23.27 BSTDutton: ‘We should stop people coming in from a war zone’Is it all refugees Peter Dutton wants to stop?Dutton:
We should stop people coming in from a war zone. So that’s that’s what we should do. Because we don’t know if the proper checks haven’t been done. The 1% or whatever it might be who pose a threat.
You bring 3,000 people in, let’s say 99% are good. If 1%, 30 people are questionable or sympathisers with … a listed terrorist organisation, how on earth is that in our country’s best interests?
And when we check the people coming out of Syria, we did it with America because they had the biggest intelligence holdings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Americans don’t have the security holdings and the intelligence holdings out of the Middle East like they did. The Israelis do, you know, ironically enough.
But none of those checks have been done. And I we can bring people here. We can be generous, but it needs to be done in the right way, and it just hasn’t been done.
There is no suggestion checks have not been done.On Sunday, Mike Burgess said:
There are processes in place and I can assure your audience that when things get referred to Asio we deal with them effectively.
Of course there might be times when they didn’t get referred to us in time. Once we become aware of them, we’re able to do the assessments and deal with them effectively.
ShareUpdated at 23.15 BSTDutton says he trusts Asio but continues to criticise government policy on security checksIs Peter Dutton saying that he doesn’t trust Asio any longer?Dutton:
No, it’s quite, quite the opposite. Asio is fantastic. I appointed Mike Burgess, but Mike can only act according to the policy of the government of the day. It was not our policy in government to bring people in who were sympathisers of a listed terrorist organisation.
Burgess has repeatedly said that security checks are being out. Anyone who applies for a visa to Australia is cross referenced against the Asio watch list, which is updated every 24 hours.The checks remain the same as they were under the previous coalition government.ShareUpdated at 23.21 BSTDutton accuses PM of misleading parliament on visa holder security processOn the Nine network Peter Dutton was pushed on whether he spoke about it with his party room colleagues before making “no Palestinians should be allowed to enter Australia” Coalition policy.
I’m not talking about internal discussions. It’s a discussion not for shadow cabinet, to be honest.
It’s a discussion with the national security team, and I’ve done that and it’s in our country’s best interests.
There’s no question. Not only that, I’ve been saying this since October, so I don’t think it comes as any surprise to anyone, the government yesterday, I mean, the Prime Minister actually misled Parliament yesterday when he said that the same process applies in relation to bringing these people out of Gaza as applied when we took people from Syria.
That is just not true. 12 months after we took that decision, I was still being criticised for not bringing people here quickly enough. We didn’t process people in Syria. We took them to northern Iraq.
We did face-to-face interviews, we took biometrics tests, and we checked that with our American partners. The government has done none of that, and I’m sure the vast majority of these people are just innocent people fleeing a war zone.
But our country’s best interest is served when we know who is coming here and when we have a proper process to exclude those who are sympathisers of a listed terrorist organisation.
(Palestinians could not be processed for visas outside of Gaza as the exit was controlled by Israel. Israel shut the Rafah border in May, meaning no one is able to exit, other than for approved medical evacuation)ShareUpdated at 23.12 BSTDutton confirms he did not consult shadow cabinet before announcing position on Palestinian visa holdersOver on the Nine network, Peter Dutton confirmed he did not take his position to shadow cabinet before announcing it on Sky News:
It’s not an issue that goes to shadow cabinet. I know that sort of insider talk’s been going on, but I’ve got a great national security team with James Paterson and with Andrew Hastie.
We’ve had countless conversations about this topic.
I think the most important element here is what has the government done? They’ve changed the policy. So they’ve said that they will bring people into Australia who are sympathisers with the listed terrorist organisation.
Could you imagine if we were proposing to bring people in who were sympathetic to another listed terrorist organisation, like al-Qaeda or Isil or Isis? It’s completely unacceptable. And the government is trying to patch this up, but they are putting our country at risk. We can take people in a measured, responsible way. That’s not what they’ve done.
Mike Burgess, the head of Asio, said on Sunday, that rhetorical support for Hamas would not necessarily preclude a Palestinian from an Australian visa. Burgess said security agencies looked at whether support was ideological, whether there had been any financial or other support, and the type of support given. He did not say that Hamas “supporters” were being given visas to Australia.In question time yesterday, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirmed that of the total number of visas Palestinians had applied for after October 7, about 70% had been rejected.ShareUpdated at 23.11 BSTHume continues lines on Palestinian visa security checksJane Hume is asked a third time on ABC TV Breakfast if she agreed with Peter Dutton’s original comments that no Palestinians from Gaza should be coming to Australia and said:
If we cannot do the security checks to ensure that those who are fleeing Gaza are not supporters of Hamas, then we have to take a temporary pause until we can be assured of that. We must do that to keep Australians safe.
There is no suggestion security checks are not being carried out. The Asio director general, Mike Burgess, said as recently as Sunday his agency is part of the security checks being carried out. Tony Burke says the security arrangements are the same as they were under the former Coalition government, where Dutton spent much of his ministerial time as home affairs minister.The Palestinian side of the Rafah border was seized by Israel in May and closed. No one is able to exit Gaza, except in rare cases of medical evacuation.ShareUpdated at 23.01 BSTHume says concerns are over appropriate security checks on refugee visasQ: Do you agree that no Palestinian should be granted a visa?Jane Hume:
Our concern is the appropriate security checks simply are unable to be done right now and the evidence that we have heard in Senate Estimates was that some of the security checks took less than an hour.
That is a real concern.
Government have confirmed that they issued visas to people fleeing Gaza, that then had to be revoked afterwards. Clearly, security checks are not being done appropriately. We want to make sure that the safeguards that are in place so we can help people that are fleeing a war zone, as we have done for decades.
We did it with Syria and after the evacuation of Kabul in Afghanistan but this is important, our first priority must be keeping Australians safe.
Q: You don’t think the national security agencies are doing their jobs properly?Hume:
They are doing the job that they can with the tools that they have. They can only respond to government policy. We want to make sure government policy is there to ensure that the people we are taking in from Gaza, and our humanitarian effort should be there.
Mike Burgess, the head of Asio, has said that security checks are being carried out. At the time, when the Rafah border was still open, Palestinians had to be crosschecked as leaving by Israeli authorities who controlled exits for Palestinians and Egyptian authorities. Visas were granted, but were revoked when security agencies could not immediately validate how some Palestinians left Gaza.ShareUpdated at 22.55 BSTHume says no ‘supporters of terrorist organisations’ should come to AustraliaThe ABC TV Breakfast interview with Jane Hume moves onto Peter Dutton’s comments yesterday that he doesn’t believe any Palestinian from Gaza should be allowed a visa to Australia.Peter Dutton and Jane Hume in 2023. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The GuardianThe Coalition tried to move those comments into concern about security risks and whether appropriate checks had been done. There was chatter yesterday from LNP MPs that Dutton had not run his position by the party room before he announced it in a Sky News interview. No other senior Coalition shadow minister repeated it yesterday – there were pointed lines about “security checks” and “concern” but no one else would say the words “we don’t think they should be coming here”.It’s not the first time that Dutton has said something in an interview which was then retrofitted to become Coalition policy.Hume was pushed about whether she agreed with Dutton, that no Palestinian should be allowed into Australia and said:
I think all Australians would agree that the appropriate number of supporters of terrorist organisations to come to Australia should be zero – should be zero.
That was not what Dutton said, so Hume was pressed again.ShareUpdated at 22.59 BSTHume refuses to confirm if Coalition government would remove energy subsidiesJane Hume won’t say whether or not a Coalition government would remove the energy bill subsidies.
The Reserve Bank governor made it clear while the subsidies would be welcome by households, they aren’t helping to get inflation down. A lot of economists have said this is simply smoke and mirrors and a political trick because while headline inflation comes down, temporarily, it ticks straight back up again.
It is delaying the problem, as long as the problem of tackling inflation is delayed, interest rates will stay higher for longer.
ShareUpdated at 22.52 BSTJuly jobs figures due in todayThe ABS will release the July job figures later this morning.A Roy Morgan poll earlier in the week found real unemployment had ticked up, but Roy Morgan use a different calculation to the ABS.The job figures feed into how the RBA sees inflation and the economy ticking over, so that’s one of the reasons so many eyes are on them. The other is because it is obvious that the economy is slowing – and that is not good news for employment.The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, was out early this morning suddenly very concerned about real wage growth (this brings a wry smile, as real wages did not grow under the Coalition for almost a decade)
We saw wage data come out on Tuesday which confirmed what we already know, that real wages have been going backwards, even though wages go up because inflation is still too high, that means your real wages have been going backwards.
If you are feeling poorer, that is because you are.
You can buy less with the same amount of money than you could a year ago. Much less than you could two years ago since Labor came to office. We have been saying to Labor that they need to tackle inflation rather than simply put a Band-aid solution through subsidies.
If you can’t tackle inflation at the source, the cost of living will keep getting worse for Australians.
ShareUpdated at 22.48 BSTGood morningHello and welcome to the last sitting day of the week. Time really flies when you’re having no fun, huh?The NZ PM Chris Luxon is in town, and he’ll be putting New Zealand’s case over the reverse ferret on deportations very simply to Anthony Albanese when the pair meet on Friday.Australia had agreed early in the Albanese term to take into consideration links to Australia in visa decisions, as part of an attempt to limit the number of New Zealander-born people who had spent most of their lives in Australia being deported if they spent more than a year in prison.But then the whole ministerial directive 99 thing happened, and a new directive was put in place, placing community safety above a non-citizens ties.Luxon is in Sydney today, where he’ll meet with NSW premier Chris Minns and discuss business opportunities and infrastructure, before heading to Canberra tomorrow for his leaders’ chat with Albanese. Luxon will also be giving an address to the Lowy Institute on how New Zealand sees its place in the world, which is also expected to touch on the issue of deportations.The senate committee looking into murdered or missing First Nations women and children will be handing down its final report today. The committee has travelled the nation and heard absolutely heart breaking and horrific stories.The committee report is going to make for very hard reading, because it will reveal just how many times Indigenous women and children have been failed, and ignored.The defamation trial Linda Reynolds has brought against her former staffer Brittany Higgins also continues.You have Karen Middleton, Paul Karp and Sarah Basford Canales covering everything Canberra for you, with Mike Bowers bringing you into parliament through his cameras. You also have me, Amy Remeikis, with you for most of the day on the blog.Ready?My fourth coffee is on the stove about to boil, so let’s get into it.Share
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2024/aug/15/palestinian-visas-peter-dutton-debate-missing-and-murdered-first-nations-women-report-and-children-parliament-sitting-nsw-victoria-ntwnfb
