Refugee Council Australia CEO hits out at Dutton for doubling down on calls to ban Gazan refugees 11:48

Now, you would have seen this all over the news today. Peter Dutton has called for a complete ban, complete ban, on refugees coming to Australia from Gaza. Now, the Albanese government has accepted almost 3,000 visa applications from Palestinians who are living in Gaza and on the West Bank.

And Peter Dutton says that the security risk of bringing in refugees is too high. And here he is talking on the Today Show. Government has brought people in from a war zone. In some cases, they haven't even done face-to-face interviews. And that is without precedent. 1,300 people have come here on tourist visas, again, without precedent. And this all happened under Andrew Giles, who, of course, has now been sacked.

as the immigration minister because he was the guy who released 152 hardened criminals from immigration detention when it turned out he didn't need to do so. And I think it's a massive, you know, but latest mess of the Albanese government. Now, I'm on the fence a bit here. I understand what Peter Dutton's saying completely and entirely, but a complete ban on refugees coming from a war zone, an extremely nasty war zone at that,

Now look, we can't be taking refugees, or we can't be taking anyone, mind you, if we are putting our national security at risk, or the safety of Australian citizens at risk. We can't. But we've got a big heart as a country too. And for decades and decades and decades, people have been coming to this country, a country built on migration, from war zones.

But like I said, look, I understand both sides of the argument. Paul Power is the CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia. And needless to say, he disagrees with Peter Dutton. And he's on the line. Paul, g'day. Hello, Chris. So the refugees, a security threat to Australia. How sure are we that they're not?

Well, it's really surprising to hear Peter Dutton saying what he's saying because he, in the Federal Coalition, would know better than anyone else that what he's saying isn't true. He was the minister responsible for Australia's refugee program for more than six years, from the end of 2014 to, I think it was March in 2021. And in that time, he gave the approval for 99,300 refugee visas to be granted to

And the security process that's being used now for Palestinian visa applications and also people coming from Israel as well, there's more people coming from Israel than Palestinians, the security process is exactly the same as the one that he oversaw when he was immigration minister and when he was home affairs minister. Is it?

The same agency doing the same checks in the same way. And when he was Home Affairs Minister, he was responsible not only for the issuing of refugee visas, but actually also for the security agencies doing those checks. I understand, but he argues during the caliphate and the ISIS situation in Syria that

Those refugees were processed in Iraq and face-to-face interviews were done before they were granted visas. That's not happening in this instance.

Well, he said in that grab, you know, that visas, that refugees haven't come under visitor visas before. I mean, when, in fact, the precedent was under the Morrison government when they started to offer temporary entry to people who were feeling the situation in the Ukraine, where, you know, in fact, there were about 5,000 or so

visas offered to Ukrainians under those arrangements. I mean, what the government is following is the same arrangements that existed under the previous government. Sure, but... Yeah, and of course, you know, they're under a lot of pressure to be, as you can imagine, because they're copping political pressure from the coalition. Mm-hm.

you know, to carry out checks. And there are, you know, there are more visas actually being rejected than being accepted. Sure. But the people who are coming... Paul, let's just stick to this argument for a second. I'm playing devil's advocate, as I said. I don't know which way to fall on this one. But when you're handing out visas to Ukrainians on tourist visas, Ukraine was not governed by a registered terrorist organisation. Gaza is.

Sure. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, there may be people with all sorts of right-wing affiliations from... Yeah, maybe shoulda, coulda, but we know that Hamas is a registered terror organisation and it governs Gaza.

Yeah, and the people who are coming are the people who are the victims of the violence that's actually happening in Gaza. And I think it's, you know, when Peter Dutton was minister, you know, the four key countries of origin, the majority of the refugees that he gave approval to

were from four countries, from Iraq, Syria, Myanmar and Afghanistan. And in most of those situations, exactly the same conditions apply of people who are in a country where there's shocking terrorism, shocking violence. But the important thing in all of this is to be able to differentiate between people who are the perpetrators of the violence and people who are victims of the violence.

Is that possible to do, though, without face-to-face interviews? Well, certainly the security agencies believe so, and they've been doing this. It's certainly not true that every person whose refugee visa is approved has a face-to-face interview before they come.

In many situations, in quite a few situations, that is impossible. But the... Yeah, but, you know, there's a whole lot of data that is collected by the security agencies. There's, you know, sharing of information between... You know, the Five Eyes countries share a lot of information. We're not really sure exactly how much information is shared with security agencies in other countries, because this is...

stuff is all confidential. But, I mean, what we're seeing is that there's, you know, there are applications being approved, there are applications being rejected. And this is based on security information that, you know, security assessments that have been conducted by, you know, the department, or in fact by the security agencies, not by the department. Paul, can I just play you just a little piece of audio? James Patterson, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, he spoke to Ben Fordham this morning on this.

A pause for now is what Peter Dutton said yesterday, and I agree with, until we can be assured that sufficient security checks are taking place. Undoubtedly, there are genuinely innocent, worthy people who want to leave Gaza who pose no risk to the Australian community.

But the reason why we do robust vetting is to make sure we can distinguish them from the people who do pose a risk to our country and make sure those people who do pose a risk to our country don't come. Now, until the government can reassure us that that's happening and they haven't so far, then we think it has to be paused. Thoughts? Well, as I say, the government is following the same systems and same protocols as the coalition government did when they were in power before, you know, and I

I mean, it's very, very easy to lump a whole group of people in with the actions of a few. I mean, if you look at terrorism in Australia and New Zealand, by far the most devastating terrorist event that happened was in Christchurch in 2019. A person who was born in the same country as me, the same ethnic background as me. That doesn't matter. It doesn't really. It doesn't particularly matter.

We have a responsibility to... No, no, no. But I think that's a straw man argument. We've got a responsibility to Australian citizens and we've got plenty of bad ones here, but they're Australian citizens. We don't have a responsibility for... We have to be careful about who we bring into Australia. Now, I'm not... You know, we've had people coming in from war zones for generations. Now...

vetting them properly is the question at hand here. And look, do we need to be satisfied that these people are being vetted properly? Or do you think, oh, well, we'll just take Albo's word for it?

The process that's being followed is the same process that was being followed when Peter Dutton was minister, when Alex Hawke was minister. So, you know, this is a cheap shot. And, in fact, what we see all the time between the major political parties, the Liberal Party were always...

accuse the Labor Party of not being able to control the economy, the borders, defence and so it's just, we just see this played out again and again and in fact on a day when the Liberal Party is in strife over its ability to be able to organise its own nominations. It's got nothing to do with that. Why aren't the Jordanians and the Egyptians so open to taking refugees? Well,

Well, there are plenty of people who've... I mean, Jordan's population is very significantly Palestinian. It's actually... But the refugees from Gaza right now, the Jordanians and the Egyptians, they're hesitant to take these refugees. Why?

Look, I'm not sure of the situation in Jordan and Egypt, obviously looking at what the international response involving Australia and other countries is. The people who are coming are people who have close links to people in Australia. They are close relatives of Australian citizens and Australian residents who are actually getting visa approval. Jordan and Egypt are next door to Gaza.

There'd be close links there too, but for some reason the Jordanians and all the Egyptians are as open as Australia is. I don't quite understand why. Well, there are certainly people crossing the borders from Gaza into both Jordan and Egypt. I mean, the people who are coming to Australia, as was the case with people who came from Ukraine, people who have a close connection to...

Australia through family and friends. I mean, and that's a natural thing. You know, if you or I have a relative, you know, who's in a crisis situation in another country that they would actually want to come and stay with, you know, family and friends, you know, who are able to, you know, to help them get back on their feet. And this is what's occurring is people who have some prior link to Australia have the capacity to be able to apply and seek entry to Australia. They go through all of the same

security assessment that Peter Dutton implemented and operated when he was Minister. You know, I mean, this is just, it's unfortunate, it's really unfortunate, it's, you know, pre-election, you know, positioning by the Coalition. But, you know, it's exactly the sort of thing that when Peter Dutton was Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, that he was, you know, adding down any time, you know, people from

from the far right or whatever, we're trying to suggest that he wasn't doing the right thing in terms of screening refugees coming to the country. I mean, next year, Australia will actually issue the one millionth refugee visa since 1947. And there's a long history of

No question about that. From both sides of government. Paul, I take your point and I think you've vocalised it and ventilated it as well as we could in this space. I've just run out of time. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Chris. That's Paul Power, the CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia.