Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton considers visa crackdown to deport violent criminals
HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is seriously considering what he says are “sensible” new laws to automatically cancel the visas of criminals convicted of serious criminal offences.
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HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is seriously considering what he says are “sensible” new laws to automatically cancel the visas of criminals convicted of serious offences.
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The crackdown, proposed by a parliamentary committee headed by Victorian MP Jason Wood, would give the government power to deport violent foreign criminals as young as 16.
Mr Dutton told the Herald Sun they were “sensible measures” to “get tougher on criminals”.
The proposal has been criticised by Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann, who said last month there was “minimal or no evidence” of a crime problem involving Sudanese youths, arguing they had been “unfairly maligned” by the parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr Dutton said Mr Neumann “doesn’t have a clue” and was “incompetent and a beacon of Bill Shorten’s weakness on border protection and law and order issues”.
The Home Affairs Minister also lashed out at Victorian magistrates for handing out “pathetically weak” sentences, which he said were failing to deter young criminals. Mr Dutton, a former police officer, attacked the Andrews Government’s “political correctness” on African gang violence, which he said had “tied at least one hand behind the back of the police”.
He said foreign criminals who did not respect Australia’s laws were “not welcome here”.
Mr Dutton said the gang crime issue was a “failing of Daniel Andrews” which the state government must fix.
Mr Dutton also criticised federal Labor’s response, after Mr Neumann and colleagues Maria Vamvakinou and Steve Georganas criticised the proposals of Mr Wood’s committee. The Labor MPs played down the ethnic gang violence in Melbourne and accused Mr Wood, also a former police officer, of “hijacking” the inquiry to focus on issues in his state and ignoring the “good work” of the Victorian government.
“Labor members were concerned with the focus in the report on youth crime which incorrectly implied that there is a serious crime wave by migrant youth across the nation,” they wrote.