Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister's moment of truth has just been before us. He failed that moment of truth; there's no question about that. He was asked a question about whether or not it was the policy of his government to be sympathetic to people who had an allegiance or had a sympathy to the Hamas terrorist organisation. Hamas has been listed as a terrorist organisation by our country. Today the Prime Minister, yet again, did what he's done in previous questions and answers in this place—that is, he tried to hide behind public servants.

If it is the policy of the Australian government that somebody with a sympathy for the Hamas terrorist organisation or another terrorist organisation is eligible to be granted a visa in this country, that is a radical departure from the policies of any previous Labor or Liberal government, yet today the Prime Minister tried to hide behind ASIO yet again. He tried to suggest that this would be a decision of ASIO—what, that somebody had a sympathy for a listed terrorist organisation who had just committed acts of atrocity in Israel only a matter of months ago?

Think about that proposition and what the Australian Prime Minister is saying here—what message he is delivering to the Australian public and to the world. He is saying that for his government, a democratically elected government that has continued listing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, a sympathy for the barbaric acts of Hamas doesn't preclude somebody from being granted a visa to come into this country. That is quite astounding. Are people who have sympathy for a far-right organisation involved in a Neo-Nazi movement or are affiliated with or have sympathies for al-Qaeda, ISIL or ISIS now eligible for a visa to come into our country—a tourist visa, no less? It's without precedent that a government in our country would allow people from a war zone governed by Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation, into our country—even under the refugee and humanitarian program, in the current circumstances, let alone on a tourist visa without the proper checks.

When people apply for the refugee and humanitarian program, they come here with proper checks. That's the reality. When we brought people in from Syria, we looked at people individually. We didn't take people from Syria proper. People were located in Jordan. They were located in northern Iraq and elsewhere. We conducted biometrics checks. We checked them against databases to make sure people were who they said they were. We wanted to make sure that they hadn't been sympathisers with the terrorists at the time. We wanted to make sure that they weren't involved in the persecution of minorities or involved in acts of atrocity otherwise. It took a long period of time. In fact, the Labor Party criticised me at the time because, by the 12-month mark, we hadn't issued all of those 12,000 visas. If you look at what we did there in the uplift in Kabul, we provided safety and security as the paramount consideration for the government and, therefore, for the Australian people.

What the Australian government and the Prime Minister have done now has departed from that previous conduct. The Prime Minister came in here and said, 'There's no difference between what you did and the way in which the Labor Party has brought in 1,300 people from Gazan territory on a tourist visa without the requisite checks.' That is completely and utterly untrue. The Prime Minister hasn't corrected the record. The Prime Minister came in here and quoted—I saw him read from the page he was holding—the director-general of ASIO. This is not some low-level public servant. This is the Director-General of Security for Australia. Mr Burgess is an accomplished public servant. He has sacrificed. He receives death threats, and he serves his country with great distinction. The Prime Minister of our country came in here and deliberately read from a piece of paper, and the quote that he delivered to this chamber—and, through this chamber, to the Australian public—was a misquote of what Mr Burgess had actually said.

It wasn't any misquote. It wasn't that he skipped a sentence or that he just missed out on a couple of words. What it did show was that the Prime Minister was willing to misrepresent the director-general of ASIO to suit the Prime Minister's own failings, because what the Prime Minister had done by coming into this parliament and saying earlier that the same process had applied to bringing 1,300 people in as it did to the Syrians—what he was suggesting and what he was express about was that each of the 1,300 people who had been issued a tourist visa was subject to an ASIO assessment. But, as we now know, that is not true either. So when the Prime Minister misquoted the director-general of ASIO the words he missed out quoting, the words that he decided not to read out quite deliberately, were words that would otherwise have shown the Prime Minister for the fraud that he is. That's what happened here. That's what happened.

Has the Prime Minister come to this dispatch box, as is the tradition and is this precedent in this chamber, to correct the record? No, he has not. He tabled a transcript which demonstrated the difference. He tabled a transcript which demonstrated that he had misquoted Mr Burgess.

See this speech in context