Peter Dutton needs to give us answers on decision to allow au pair to stay in Australia
PETER Dutton’s decision to allow an au pair to stay in Australia raises questions that can’t be avoided by a new government, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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HMM. If only those Vietnamese boat people who landed in Queensland last week had been au pairs for friends of this federal Liberal government.
Would those 17 Vietnamese now be sitting in the Christmas Island detention centre, awaiting deportation?
Or would they be like Alexandra Deuwel, the French au pair freed by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton?
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To some it may seem curious that Dutton was so lenient with her, an au pair for relatives of a big Liberal donor, when he was so strict with Vietnamese who also wanted to work here, albeit permanently, but had neglected to make similar donations.
Deuwel apparently worked in South Australia in 2015 as an au pair for Callum MacLachlan, second cousin of AFL boss Gillon McLachlan.
The ABC reports that when she left Australia she was warned by Border Force officials that a tourist on her visa could not work here.
But just months later this “yoga professor” was back on an e-tourist visa, not a working tourist one, and was this time stopped at Adelaide airport on suspicion of planning to work again for MacLachlan’s family.
She would have been deported, too, but Dutton freed her, as he is entitled to do, after a plea to his office from Gillon McLachlan, who as AFL boss has hosted scores of politicians.
Dutton granted Deuwel a three-month tourist visa “as a discretionary and humanitarian act to an individual with ongoing needs”, provided she did not work.
Dutton says he had no idea that Callum MacLachlan’s father had donated $150,000 to the Liberals since 1999 and says he’d simply decided the case on its merits, as he did when ruling on “hundreds” of appeals he got each year from the public, politicians and even journalists.
He’s probably right, although Labor has persuaded the Senate to set up an inquiry into the alleged “inappropriate exercise of ministerial powers with respect to the visa status of au pairs”.
I suspect we’ll never know the truth, but am left wondering. Why does Dutton let in a tourist suspected by his own officials of coming in to work yet again as an au pair? He’s also let in two other au pairs. Can’t Australians do that work?
The Vietnamese at least came prepared, I presume, to do tougher jobs that Australians avoid, like picking fruit. Dutton has explaining to do.
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