Media Release

Transcript - 2GB Ray Hadley Program

Thursday 18th March 2010

Subjects: SIEV 36, Australian population debate

EandOE

RAY HADLEY: Criminal charges could be laid against three Afghans accused of deliberately setting fire to a boat near Ashmore Reef in April last year. Now the Northern Territory coroner has handed down his findings into the explosion which killed five boat people. Mr Greg Cavanagh says he believes the fire was deliberately stared by people aboard that wooden vessel to make sure they would be brought to Australia. He’s named three people believed to be part of the plan. He also found a number of boat people lied, in fact no one told the truth of the 36 that remained during the four week inquest. He says one of the Indonesian crew members allegedly disabled the boat’s engine before the explosion which injured another 40 people. Now the Rudd Government has already rejected calls to immediately revoke visas granted to the three men believed to have started the fire. It’s understood the Immigration Minister, the waste of space, Chris Evans, has the power to revoke their visas on the grounds they are bad characters but he maintains he can’t do anything until criminal charges are laid. What a load of codswallop. The Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is on the line right now. G’day Scott.

SCOTT MORRISON: G’day Ray.

RAY HADLEY: Can you put that to rest for me please.

SCOTT MORRISON: Yes, absolutely. The Prime Minister yesterday in Parliament said the same thing. He said that under the Act there had to be a conviction before they could act. That is simply not true. Under the Act, and I won’t go through the details of that chapter and verse, but you can make a decision as the Minister based on someone’s past and present general conduct.

RAY HADLEY: Well just for the benefit of the Prime Minister and the obtuse, that’s my word for the day after the Deputy Prime Minister was described by the Deputy Chair of the Principal’s Forum here in NSW of being obtuse, Julia Gillard, the obtuse Minister for Immigration under Clause (6) (c) (ii) of section 501 of the Act, the Minister, the Minister, to have regard of the persons past and present general conduct is not contingent upon a criminal conviction.

SCOTT MORRISON: That’s right.

RAY HADLEY: It’s there in black and white. The obtuse Minister for Immigration, lacking of course in quickness or perception or intellect and the Prime Minister, need to understand that what they said in Parliament yesterday was misleading.

SCOTT MORRISON: Yes that is absolutely right Ray. What we are finding with this government, particularly this Minister is he doesn’t like to make decisions. Last October the Prime Minister revealed in Parliament that when it came to them getting the permanent protection visas, he didn’t even make the decision, he delegated it to his department. They hide behind officials who aren’t elected, they hide behind false interpretations of their own Act and it is all designed to do one thing, they don’t want to make a decision for which they might be held accountable and that’s no way to run a government.

RAY HADLEY: That’s exactly right. Now, I heard Evans taking on TV, the Minister last night, about the fact that he relied upon information from the Northern Territory police, that’s why he granted these visas to these three men. Now, the suggestion was that he was told by Northern Territory police that this was an act of god, that it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to kill people and destroy the vessel.

SCOTT MORRISON: Well there were other options he had other than to give them a permanent visa, I mean they have been given a permanent residence visa to Australia. They could have provided what is called a Temporary Safe Haven Visa under the Act which would have been a temporary arrangement and that could have been in place until the coronial inquiry was completed. But what the Government is trying to do here is link the potential criminal case here and the immigration issues and the two are completely separate. The Prime Minister and the Minister have to answer a simple question. Do they think when a coronial inquiry has a clear finding that three people were part of a plan to cripple a boat that resulted in five people dying, dozens more injured and Australian defence force personnel being put at risk, they tried to blow up a boat, did blow up a boat, now if that doesn’t qualify as poor character then this Minister just can’t make decisions whether it is on stopping boats or stopping people who blow up boats.

RAY HADLEY: Well the other thing the Coroner said Scott that while he named these three, he couldn’t determine whether others on board the boat played a role in it but the one thing he did say that none of them told the truth when they came before him. So I would be calling for all 36 remaining to be sent packing.

SCOTT MORRISON: Well you know all of these things need…

RAY HADLEY: I mean if they don’t respect our law at the first hurdle, a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of five of their countrymen, what hope are they down the track over equally important issues?

SCOTT MORRISON: Well right now I am focusing Ray pretty much on these three. We have talked about these issues surrounding the rioters up on Christmas Island, we’ve got proceedings pending there, I mean if there’s a difference between those two cases, it’s this, there’s a prosecution going on about what happened on Christmas Island. In this case there has been a coronial inquiry...

RAY HADLEY: No prosecution, don’t waste our money, send them back to Afghanistan, get rid of them.

SCOTT MORRISON: Well that case will finish but this case is, at least in my view, there are clear findings, there is a requirement for the Minister to make a decision, he doesn’t even want to consider making a decision, let alone make a decision.

RAY HADLEY: Well he’s a jellyfish, he hasn’t got a backbone, we don’t enjoy a strong Immigration Minister and that’s why we are about to celebrate, or commemorate or signify, our 100th boat arriving since August of 2008, because he is obtuse.

SCOTT MORRISON: Well when you send these weak messages, and these are tough decisions, they are decisions you have to make on immigration which say we are not going to tolerate certain behaviour like blowing up boats. Now when you say ‘oh we are going to wait and see and we really should take advice on this and we will wait for the court’ all that says to the people smugglers is the obvious thing and the boats will keep coming, As you say we are at 92 now. Julia Gillard, who said when she was Shadow Immigration when they were in opposition, ‘another boat arrival, another policy failure’, well 92 boats don’t lie when it comes to this government’s failure.

RAY HADLEY: Just one other thing, just another case in point, we’ve got all this newspaper support in some areas for the Sheik who has been deemed, from ASIO, to be a person we don’t require here and should go back to Iran and because he is now making an appeal to the Minister who can override a decision of the various courts including appeals of the High Court whether they had jurisdiction to rule on this or not. Anyway he has given this man a bridging visa because he should be out of this place tomorrow apparently. He has been to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, he has been to every court in the land, so he has given him a bridging visa, ok which is understandable because he has got to make a decision.

I got a phone call from a young bloke at Mildura, Irish fellow, came here as tourist – loved the place – and said we want to stay here, he is a welder, found a place down there that reckons he is a really good welder and wanted to give him a job, his wife is a dental nurse, wanted to give her a job at the local dental health clinic, but he appreciated, David, that he had to go back to his native Ireland to re-enter, so there was no blues about that. So we spoke to Chris Evan’s office and said look these are the circumstances, two small kids here, loves the place, would a great asset, got a job for him, he is a welder, Mildura needs a welder, they need him, he needs them. So they said we will give him a bridging visa until we determine, because it could take 88 days, from the time of application, we will give him a bridging visa because it sounds like a good idea. Never heard any more from them, poor bugger is back in County Tyrone, I spoke to him earlier this week.

SCOTT MORRISON: Right.

RAY HADLEY: And has had no word from the Department of Immigration on whether he can come here, whether he is allowed to come here. You see the problem being, I would think when you look on face value, apart from the fact he already speaks English. ..

SCOTT MORRISON: Yes.

RAY HADLEY: And has been here and loves the joint, and wants to come back with his wife and kids, we seem to prioritise the wrong sort of people.

SCOTT MORRISON: One of the things that is driving a lot of the immigration policy particularly when it comes to skills, Ray at the moment, is the unions are basically saying they don’t want any competition for people who are in trades skills or semi skilled occupations, chefs or tradesmen or other things like this. That is the agenda Chris Evans has picked up and is running. But I would be happy to take up the case you have raised.

RAY HADLEY: I think we are probably closer to the end than the start now.

SCOTT MORRISON: That is good, he sounds like a top bloke.

RAY HADLEY: Good fellow, good fellow and takes it in good spirit, isn’t blueing about going back home, said if that’s the law, that’s the law. He is a man who wants to observe our laws unlike the 36, including the three named, who went to a Coroner’s inquest in Darwin and refused to offer evidence of what they saw and what happended. The other thing is yesterday, I don’t know if you caught up with it, Dick Smith spoke to my colleague Alan Jones about the rate if immigration under this Government.

SCOTT MORRISON: Yes.

RAY HADLEY: And is terrified that we are being told by this Government and by the bureaucrats we need 7 million people in Sydney, Melbourne and 5 million in Brisbane and we are going to pour them into the joint. When we get to this what will be the policy from your government, if you are elected to government, at the next election?

SCOTT MORRISON: Well what we are working on Ray is we don’t accept that we should have as a given there we should have 36 million people in Australia by 2050. I mean the Prime Minister signed Australia up to that without asking anyone. We think ….

RAY HADLEY: Wasn’t part of the policy. Didn’t talk about it, bang, crash wallop. Record number of immigration under his government without one word to the electorate about it before the election.

SCOTT MORRISON: There is 285,000 people, nett, who came here in 2008-2009, which is a record. That is unsustainable. That forecast of 35 million….

RAY HADLEY: Would they all be Labor voters do you think?

SCOTT MORRISON: [laughter] I think there might be a proportion, particularly under certain programs. But putting that aside, I will be impartial for a second…

RAY HADLEY: Try to be.

SCOTT MORRISON: Out to 2050 they are assuming 180,000. So look there is already a 100,000 gap in terms of what is being experienced and what needs to happen to even reach 35 million. So that forecast could actually be quite underestimated. Now we actually think there should be a population debate about what is sustainable. I mean issues like housing affordability, road congestion, support of infrastructure. The states and the territories and local government need to be involved in the planning process to work out what your annual migration intake should be because at the end of the day they are the ones who have to put the services in place to support the population. We are very happy to engage this. We have supported The Greens, amazingly, but we have supported The Greens this week, they have been putting up a motion…

RAY HADLEY: It’s amazing. We have got the Teachers Federation of NSW supporting the Liberal/National Party Coalition and now we have got you supporting The Greens on this issue and I might mention Dick Smith. Him and I think entirely differently on refugees, entirely different, we are poles apart even though I have a great love and respect for him for what he is, a very great Australian.

SCOTT MORRISON: Sure.

RAY HADLEY: But we are poles apart on refugees but on this issue, I am like you and The Greens, I find myself in complete agreement with him.

SCOTT MORRISON: Yeah the debate is important, we think we should have it, that’s why we’ve supported The Greens to have a national inquiry into this issue. The government should be initiating this inquiry actually. But the fact that they have failed to want to have a debate on this issue means there are very strange alliances being formed all around which shows the depth of concern there is in the community about a population out of control. There are arguments to have population growth, there are economic arguments for that which we are all familiar with but it’s a question of balance, it’s a question of sustainability and what we can have that doesn’t adversely impact our quality of life and that’s the bottom line.

RAY HADLEY: Will you be asking the Prime Minister to correct the mistake he made in Parliament, if he didn’t mislead Parliament, about people having to have a criminal conviction before he can take what’s past and present general conduct against them?

SCOTT MORRISON: I would certainly hope to get that up today Ray.

RAY HADLEY: Ok.

SCOTT MORRISON: You know how this place works but that’s certainly a question that the Prime Minister does need to answer.

RAY HADLEY: He needs to answer, he needs to get it right because he got it horribly wrong.

SCOTT MORRISON: Absolutely.

RAY HADLEY: Ok, but that is just a long list of things. Thank you very much for your time.

SCOTT MORRISON: Thanks for your time Ray.