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

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) that in the course of question time on 15 August 2024, the Prime Minister purported to quote statements made by the Director-General of ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess, in a recent interview on Insiders;

(b) that the Prime Minister's purported quote specifically omitted key words with the effect of changing the fundamental meaning of Mr Burgess' statements; and

(c) that as a consequence the House was given an incorrect understanding that all visa applicants from Gaza are the subject of an ASIO assessment, whereas in fact this only occurs 'where criteria are hit';

(2) therefore calls on the Prime Minister to immediately attend the Chamber and speak for up to 15 minutes to explain:

(a) which visa applicants are the subject of a security assessment by ASIO;

(b) what are the criteria for ASIO to carry out a security assessment in relation to visa applicants from the Gaza war zone;

(c) how many of the almost 3,000 visas already issued by the Government were granted without an ASIO security assessment; and

(d) whether the House can have any confidence that under this Government's processes, there is a proper and thorough security assessment of all visa applicants from the Gaza war zone to determine whether the applicant would present a security threat to the Australian community; and

(3) resolves that no other business be considered until the Prime Minister undertakes the action requested in (2).

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition from moving the following motion forthwith—That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) that in the course of question time on 15 August 2024, the Prime Minister purported to quote statements made by the Director-General of ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess, in a recent interview on Insiders;

(b) that the Prime Minister's purported quote specifically omitted key words with the effect of changing the fundamental meaning of Mr Burgess' statements; and

(c) that as a consequence the House was given an incorrect understanding that all visa applicants from Gaza are the subject of an ASIO assessment, whereas in fact this only occurs 'where criteria are hit';

(2) therefore calls on the Prime Minister to immediately attend the Chamber and speak for up to 15 minutes to explain:

(a) which visa applicants are the subject of a security assessment by ASIO;

(b) what are the criteria for ASIO to carry out a security assessment in relation to visa applicants from the Gaza war zone;

(c) how many of the almost 3,000 visas already issued by the Government were granted without an ASIO security assessment; and

(d) whether the House can have any confidence that under this Government's processes, there is a proper and thorough security assessment of all visa applicants from the Gaza war zone to determine whether the applicant would present a security threat to the Australian community; and

(3) resolves that no other business be considered until the Prime Minister undertakes the action requested in (2).

It's clear to every Australian that the Prime Minister has misled this parliament and has misled the Australian public. He didn't have the ability, the determination or the strength to come in here last week and answer these serious claims, and he's missing in action again today. This parliament has now sat for two hours today, and the Prime Minister should have come in here at the ringing of the bells to correct the record—to explain to the Australian public and to this parliament why he misled them in that fashion last week.

It's one thing to come into this parliament and to quote from a document. The Prime Minister is perfectly entitled to do that, as is any member. You might leave out a sentence for the purposes of brevity or to make a point, but you can't leave out the middle of one sentence that you're quoting and pretend that that is an accurate reflection of what has been said by the person you are quoting. It's beyond tricky; it's duplicitous.

This Prime Minister walks both sides of the street. The Australian public know that. The Australian public clearly are disappointed in this Prime Minister. We get that. He's made wrong decisions in relation to the renewables-only policy, which has driven up the price of energy and now the prospect of blackouts. We have a Prime Minister who has presided over different policies, including in housing and migration, that have made it harder for Australians to buy homes. We have young Australians who have lost the dream of homeownership because of the government's policy to bring in a million people over two years when they only build a quarter of a million homes. We have a Prime Minister who is walking both sides of the street, telling the Jewish community one thing and the Muslim community something completely different. He's telling the Indigenous community one thing in relation to the makarrata commission, which he has purposefully redesigned now to mean something else, even though there's money in the budget for a makarrata commission. So he's telling the Indigenous population one thing and the non-Indigenous population something other than what he's telling the first group. He walks into one room and says, 'This is the fact of this matter.' He walks into the adjoining room and tells the opposite to the group there. It is no wonder that people's disappointment has turned into dismay when it comes to Prime Minister Albanese.

In relation to this issue, it doesn't get any more serious than an allegation of a misleading of this parliament and the Australian public by the Prime Minister of our country. This is not a concocted outrage or some interpretation of a quote. It's a completely and utterly scandalous approach by the Prime Minister, and he can't come to this chamber. I've watched seven prime ministers, who have come from both sides of this parliament, and I have never seen a circumstance where a prime minister of the day is accused of misleading this parliament and doesn't have the strength of character to come down here and to argue his corner—because he knows he's done the wrong thing.

The obligation under the standing orders and the practice of this place means that the Prime Minister at the first available opportunity needed to correct the record. Mr Speaker, as you would recall, I raised with you during the course of question time, when it was brought to my attention, the fact that the Prime Minister had selectively misquoted the director-general of ASIO. I don't believe that the Prime Minister has a leg to stand on here, and that's why he's not coming into this chamber. What it says, every hour that ticks by now where the Prime Minister doesn't come to this chamber, is that he can't be honest with the Australian public.

We know that the Australian public believes that our country is heading in the wrong direction under the Albanese government. This government has made decisions which have not helped Australians but harmed Australians. Up until this point, it has been in relation to economic matters. People's grocery prices have gone through the roof under this government. The price that they're paying for insurance has gone through the roof. For their mortgage, interest rates have gone up 12 times, whilst interest rates are falling in New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The government has made wrong decisions, but, up until now, we haven't seen examples of decisions made by this government which have made our country less safe, except, of course, for Minister Giles's actions when he released 152 hardcore criminals who were noncitizens and had committed crimes against citizens—rape, paedophilia, armed robbery and murder. In error, the then minister released those people into the Australian community, and—you wouldn't believe it—they went on to commit more crimes. Who would have thought? The tragedy of that reality is that there is a human being, there is an Australian citizen who is a victim, behind each one of those crimes. We should never forget the face of that elderly lady in Perth who fell victim very early to one of these individuals.

Minister Giles has decided to bring people in on tourist visas from a war zone which is controlled by a listed terrorist organisation. The Prime Minister got up here and said to us that everyone had been checked through the ASIO process. They have not been. The selective quoting, by leaving out those words that Mr Burgess had given to David Speers over on Insiders, served the misrepresentation and backed up the position of the Prime Minister, which turned out to be false.

If you bring people in on a tourist visa, it's like coming from the United States, from New Zealand or from other parts of the world where a visa is issued automatically. It's issued automatically without the checks and balances of somebody who would come here through the refugee and humanitarian program. The Prime Minister said to the Australian public that what they had done as a government under Minister Giles, by bringing people here on tourist visas, was akin to, or a replication of, what we had done when we brought people into Australia from Syria.

The complete opposite is the case. We brought people here through the refugee and humanitarian program. It didn't take 24 hours to get a visa, as it does if you're a tourist. It took in some cases 12 months because we had to collect biometrics. We had to collect all of that information to check against databases. The Prime Minister will have you believe that somehow that's what happened here. It's not.

Let's look very quickly at what went towards covering up the fact of his mistake—the egregious and potentially very consequential mistake that he has made here. Let's look at what Mr Burgess said. He said they've gone through a visa process:

If they've been issued a visa, they've gone through the process. Part of that visa process is, where criteria hit, they're referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.

The Prime Minister missed those words: 'visa process is where criteria hit', and that is essentially undermining the credibility of this Prime Minister.

This Prime Minister has lost his integrity, he has lost his credibility, he has let down the Australian public, he has made us less safe, he is the weakest leader in our country's history and Australians are suffering because of it—not just economically and not just financially. This Prime Minister has now weakened the security settings in our country and he should be here defending himself.

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