SENATOR KRISTINA KENEALLY
DEPUTY LABOR LEADER IN THE SENATE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS
SHADOW MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
SENATOR FOR NEW SOUTH WALES
KAREN ANDREWS BROUGHT IN TO CLEAN UP PETER DUTTON'S MESS
When Karen Andrews sits down at the Home Affairs Minister's desk on her first day in her new role, she will discover the string of disasters that Peter Dutton has left behind.
Despite the best efforts of dedicated public servants, the Department of Home Affairs is riddled with waste, mismanagement and rorting after eight years of ‘Liberal leadership’, first by Scott Morrison and then Peter Dutton.
- Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison have refused to allow the Department of Home Affairs to help stranded Australians come home by opening federal quarantine facilities as recommended by the Prime Minister’s hand-picked expert, Jane Halton.
- Peter Dutton only made a referral on extremism, including right-wing extremism, to the Intelligence and Security Committee after Labor announced it would bring the referral to the House of Representatives, even as ASIO warned that the terrorist threat from right-wing extremism is growing significantly in Australia.
- Peter Dutton was caught red-handed rejecting the advice of his own community safety experts and directing taxpayers' money that should have been making communities safer into hand-picked projects in marginal and Government-held electorates.
- Peter Dutton did nothing as more than 100,000 people have entered Australia on airplanes as part of a work scam to get a temporary work visa, with too many subject to exploitation in workplaces across the country at the hands of people smugglers and criminal organisations.
- Peter Dutton refuses to let the Bioela family go home to a regional Queensland community that loved and wanted them, instead keeping two Australian-born children locked up in immigration detention for years and even after a court found that one of them has been denied procedural fairness.
- Peter Dutton has failed to invest in northern Australian surveillance technology even as he described it as “critical to maintaining secure borders”.
- Peter Dutton sat on his hands as Australia fell from 3rd to 11th in the UN’s rankings of commitment to cyber security, with too little Federal leadership on ransomware.
- Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison failed to stop the one boat that mattered, the Ruby Princess, despite the PM claiming that “bespoke arrangements would be put in place directly under the command of the Australian Border Force” to ensure Australians were protected from the threat of COVID-19 onboard cruise ships returning to Australia.
- Peter Dutton has created a crisis in Australia’s visa and citizenship systems, with more than 100,000 Australians waiting for years for their partner to be granted a visa, and 160,000 permanent residents waiting 28 months to be granted citizenship.
- Scott Morrison is leading a tired old government that has lost its way after eight long years in office.
The Home Affairs portfolio – which includes responsibility for the Australian Border Force, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Office of the Special Investigator and AUSTRAC – is too important to the welfare and prosperity of Australia and Australians to continue to neglect.
Nothing less than Australia's safety and security is at stake - and Australians deserve a Government that is on their side.
MONDAY, 29 MARCH 2021
