Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I refer to concerns raised in the media today relating to the minister's use of his ministerial discretion to grant a tourist visa to an au pair. Was his decision based on departmental advice? If not, what prompted the minister to intervene? And will the minister undertake to provide the opposition with a departmental briefing at the earliest opportunity so the facts can be made clear?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. At last a question from the member for Blair! Well done! Fighting away on tactics each day—finally, you've risen to the top of the pile. It is six past three. You have missed out on television but, nonetheless, it's throw the dog a bone, I guess. There are media reports around today which talk about a decision that I made in relation to a visa. There are defamatory parts of that which I'm going to address with the journalist. Our family does not employ an au pair. My wife takes very good care in my absence of our three children. We have never employed an au pair. I have instructed before that that story is completely false and yet it still continues to be published.

In relation to the matter otherwise, I will release more detail which I'm putting together at the moment. As I say, it is defamatory. I won't tolerate it being printed again. I make decisions—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I won't! I won't have my family—

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left!

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I won't have false details, as the Leader of the Opposition would appreciate as well, about my wife and my children printed. I won't stand for it. That's the reality.

I make hundreds of decisions each year in relation to ministerial discretion under the Migration Act, as has been the case with many ministers passed. There are cases brought to me by members on the frontbench and members of this parliament on a regular basis. I look at the individual circumstances around each matter. If I determine that there is an interest in me intervening in those cases, I do. In many cases I look at the particular facts. For example, the honourable shadow Treasurer—nodding away—writes to me regularly in relation to matters. If I deem the circumstances to be appropriate, I intervene. In this particular matter—again I'm happy to release further detail—I was advised at the time there were two matters, only one to which you are referring at the moment.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Ballarat will cease interjecting.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were two young tourists who had come in on a tourist visa and declared in an interview with the Border Force officers at the airport—I was advised—they were here on a tourist visa but intended to perform babysitting duties while here. The decision that was taken, I was advised, was that the tourist visas would be cancelled, that those two young tourists would be detained and that they would be deported. I looked into the circumstances of those two cases and I thought that inappropriate. I thought if they gave an undertaking they wouldn't work while they were here, I would grant the tourist visas and they would stay, which they did. They didn't overstay; they returned back home. Now if there are facts there you dispute or you think there is another scurrilous point you want to put, put it outside of this chamber.