Vikki Campion: Labor gives keys to the monsters we need protection from

The Albanese government has to decide if they want to protect women and children from harm or if they want to preserve their cozy relationship with Champagne socialists, writes Vikki Campion.

The Albanese government has to decide if they want to protect women and children from harm or if they want to preserve their cozy relationship with Champagne socialists.

On one hand, the government trumpets a $3.4bn spend on women and children’s protection, and on the other, lets out precisely the people they need to be protected from.

The people in question illegally come here and are detained, and we find out they are rapists, murderers, and child molesters, so they stay detained, and then a mechanism called “Direction 99” gives them the keys to getting out.

Who cut these keys? Anthony Albanese and former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern who, upon forming a union at Kirribilli, upset the capacity to keep these known offenders in detention.

If you cared about women and children, you would have a hard-head minister who kicks Direction 99 into oblivion and keeps criminals in detention or delivers them back to their home country.

Instead, we were given Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, who posted on X on September 2, 2022: “The backlog will be cleared. Waiting times will continue to come down. We will realise our potential as a reconciled nation that harnesses the great strength of our diversity. This is the beginning, not the end.”

Andrew Giles has made an absolute mess of the Immigration portfolio, writes Vikki Campion. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

If letting rapists, pedophiles and murderers out of detention and onto the street was how to relieve the backlog, then the Albanese government has been remarkably and tragically successful.

It puts a huge spotlight on their naivety and calls into question how seriously we can take this commitment to protect women and children.

To further illustrate this naivety, senior Labor operatives were on Friday backgrounding media about putting Minister for Veterans Affairs Matt Keogh into the smoking ruins of the immigration portfolio and moving the arsonist, Minister Giles, into Veterans Affairs.

Did they take a breath before they backgrounded this absurdity?

Now he’s moving into the most contentious area of veterans’ suicide amid finalising legislation pertinent to a royal commission.

The shake-up would also allow Agriculture Minister Murray Watt to enter Clare O’Neil’s space of Home Affairs.

This might suggest Minister Watt cannot stand his Akubra; with the first sliver of light at the door, it looks like he is scratching at the handle to escape the calloused hands of the country farming folk in Agriculture and get back to the fine suits and fancy briefcases of the legalese.

Minister for Women Katy Gallagher issues lengthy orations about the deaths of women at the hands of men and then looks across the cabinet table to a person whose incompetence or instruction was responsible for doing exactly what she said they would stop.

The aspiration is legitimate, but the delivery is incompetent.

There is suggestion that Murray Watt will take over the Home Affairs portfolio. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

At least when Bob Hawke promised that no child would live in poverty, you knew he genuinely wished for it.

In announcing $3.4bn in the budget to “end family, domestic and sexual violence in one generation”, Labor was fully aware of the problem they had created with Direction 99 and still didn’t kick it to the kerb.

It’s one thing to say something naive and not know better; it’s another to be aware but wilfully disregard what you know is the truth and clothe it in obfuscation.

Much of these billions of dollars go to helping women and children recover through helplines, health initiatives, legal assistance, and income support payments.

You would not have to make some of these payments if you had not released some perpetrators back onto the street.

Giles posted on X in September 2022: “Immigration is about nation-building. Central to this is the manner in which people are welcomed after they’ve made the decision to call Australia home.”

The big problem is some of these monsters – and if you are a child molester, you are a monster – decided to call Australia home without ever being invited in.

It should never have been their decision to make.

That the Albanese government is now rescinding Direction 99 shows it should never have happened in the first place.

A POOR CALL TO FLY WEST

Forget how many blondes it takes to change a lightbulb; the latest joke is how many political operatives do you need to make a Skype call?

Gold Coast-based Agriculture Minister Murray Watt revealed in Senate estimates this week that his now infamous trip to hold a virtual meeting from the Commonwealth Public Offices in the Perth CBD to shut down mutton exports to the Middle East required himself, two personal Ministerial staff members, and two public servants from the Braddon-located Department of Agriculture.

Presumably, they travelled at the pointy end of the plane.

The cost of that is about $4000 to $7000 per round ticket from Canberra to Perth.

This calls into question what was so crucial for four staff plus a federal minister to fly to the western state only to hold a one-hour-long virtual meeting on Teams.

Minister Watt, a proud former class action lawyer, defended the $25,000 phone call – saying he felt he should “front up” to Western Australia.

Had he had the guts to give the livelihood-ending news to graziers face-to-face at Katanning, and not just select hand-picked journalists in the Perth CBD, this would have been a fair call rather than a laughable excuse.