Peter Dutton battles ahead of further au pair revelations

LAST week Peter Dutton came within three votes of ­becoming prime minister. It looks like that’s the closest he’ll ever get.

LAST week Peter Dutton came within three votes of ­becoming prime minister.

It now looks like that’s the closest he’ll ever get. Dutton is facing enemies on all sides.

Some of those who publicly backed him last week are furious. One Cabinet minister reckons either Dutton or Mathias Cormann lied to him about the numbers and led them all over a cliff.

Those who never wanted to dump Malcolm Turnbull are even angrier. They hold Dutton chiefly accountable for destroying the government’s election chances.

Home affairs minister Peter Dutton created a new raft on enemies in his failed coup last week, as close as he became to being Prime Minister.

Labor still has Dutton’s constitutional eligibility to sit in Parliament in its sights and will again try to refer him to the High Court when Parliament resumes.

And then there’s Dutton’s own ­department. The bureaucrats are the ones he should really worry about — or perhaps former bureaucrats in this case.

It’s unclear who’s leaking, but someone with access to internal ­departmental emails from 2015 is out to cause Dutton enormous damage, by simply exposing his actions as minister.

We now know that the then-­immigration minister overruled his department multiple times in 2015 to allow women into the country on tourist visas despite the Border Force experts concluding they were coming here to work as au pairs.

A meme targeting the minister this week.

One was French woman Alexandra Deuwel, who had already been counselled about breaching visa conditions on previous visits to Australia, when she had worked as an au pair for the well-connected Mac­Lachlan family in South Australia’s Barossa ­Valley.

When she tried to come back into Australia in November 2015 on a tourist visa, Border Force officers rightly pulled her aside.

Deuwel admitted she had ­arranged “free accommodation for three months in return for helping with this family’s children, cooking and riding their horses”.

Text messages on her mobile phone confirmed this.

That sounds a lot like an employment-like arrangement.

Mark Knight cartoon on Peter Dutton au pair scandal

Just months earlier, Border Force stopped an Italian woman entering the country on a tourist visa. They suspected she was planning to work as an au pair for Brisbane couple Russell and Nicole Keag.

Once again, Peter Dutton overruled his department to let her in.

In both cases, there were personal connections. Dutton and Russell Keag were colleagues in the Queensland Police Force more than 20 years ago. The MacLachlan family were generous donors to the Liberal Party.

The minister insists these connections had no influence over his decisions, and there’s no evidence to suggest they did, but some wonder why they can’t get similar treatment.

Peter Dutton intervened for French au pair Alexandra Deuwel. Picture: Facebook

Former army captain Jason Scanes says Dutton won’t even meet with him to discuss granting a visa to an Afghan interpreter who served alongside Australian forces, wearing an Australian uniform, fighting the Taliban.

Scanes says this interpreter is now being hunted by the Taliban and he can’t believe the minister is instead giving priority to letting nannies into the country.

Labor will pursue these two cases, as well as a third au pair they believe was let in by Dutton on a tourist visa, at a Senate inquiry on Wednesday.

Member for Chisholm Julia Banks guides former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull through a Melbourne shopping centre earlier this year. Loyal to Mr Turnbull, Ms Banks announced this week she would step out of politics. Picture” David Geraghty / The Australian

Home Affairs Department head Mike Pezzullo is among those who have been called to give evidence. The ­MacLachlan and Keag families may also be asked to appear.

While granting visas to a few au pairs is hardly of Watergate proportions, Dutton’s judgment has been called into question.

He claims to have acted on “humanitarian” grounds in letting these women into the country as tourists.

While these women are no doubt very nice people, that would seem to be a strange definition of a “humanitarian” act, especially from a minister who’s built a hardman reputation staring down requests to let sick refugees come to Australia for treatment.

All of this is just another headache for the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison, as he tries to put an end to the infighting in his ranks.

Sadly for Morrison, there’s no sign of that happening yet.

Victorian MP Julia Banks exposed how toxic things remain when she ­announced her plans to leave at the next election, partly because of “bullying and intimidation” she’s ­experienced from her own colleagues.
The Prime Minister must ensure such claims are now properly dealt with.

Others are still steaming at the ­behaviour of their colleagues.

Just one example is the “palpable rage” one Victorian backbencher expressed at young Liberal senator James Paterson, “who arrived five minutes ago and then runs around getting signatures to bring down the PM”, leaving MPs in lower house seats to face the wrath of voters.

Scott Morrison himself is off to a solid start: putting in place a well-­balanced Cabinet, visiting drought-stricken farmers, a brief trip to Indonesia and a quick game of footy to raise awareness for organ donation.

But the hard work of settling policy divisions and personal animosities still has a long way to go.

At least Morrison has some breathing room on one front: he no longer has to worry about a leadership rival in Peter Dutton.

David Speers is political editor at Sky News.

Originally published as Peter Dutton battles ahead of further au pair revelations