Peter Dutton au pair decision helped former Queensland Police colleague

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton acted on a request from a former Queensland Police Service colleague to overturn a border control decision on a foreign au pair, releasing the woman from detention and allowing her to enter the country.

The intervention is another case where Mr Dutton used his discretion as a minister to help an au pair who arrived on a tourist visa, amid growing questions over a separate case linked to the family of AFL boss Gil McLachlan.

In an escalating row over Mr Dutton's decisions, Labor seized on the leak of department emails to demand answers over why the minister intervened in the McLachlan case when his own officials concluded the au pair should be deported.

Fairfax Media can reveal a separate woman was released from detention in Brisbane in June 2015 after a request from the family of Russell and Nicole Keag, who intended to employ her as an au pair.

Mr Keag was known to Mr Dutton from their time together in the Queensland Police Service, where the minister worked during the 1990s before going into business and entering Federal Parliament in 2001.

The connection between the two men sheds new light on the minister’s intervention in a tourist visa matter, overturning a decision by border control officials to detain and deport the woman.

Fairfax Media understands Mr Keag had not spoken to Mr Dutton for two decades but contacted the minister’s office to request his assistance when the au pair was detained.

The au pair arrived in Australia planning to work for Nicole and Russell Keag. Credit: Fairfax Media

There is no suggestion Mr Dutton stepped beyond his powers as a minister, given he has the discretion to seek advice and intervene in visa decisions, and there is no suggestion of any adverse impact on Australia from allowing the woman to enter the country.

One source said it was reasonable to intervene to prevent a young woman being held in a cell in a “heavy-handed” response to concerns she would stay with the family to look after children.

Fairfax Media sought comment from Mr Keag but was told there would be no comment on privacy grounds. There is no suggestion he or his family did anything improper in raising their matter with the minister's office.

As in the case of the au pair who arrived in Adelaide in November 2015 to work for the McLachlan family, the woman who arrived in Brisbane in June 2015 was interviewed on her arrival and detained because her intention to work breached her tourist visa.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Dutton used his power under the Migration Act to intervene in both cases and issue the tourist visa, freeing both young women on the grounds it was a “humanitarian act” to allow them to enter the country.

Fairfax Media asked Mr Dutton’s office for the grounds upon which he intervened, whether this followed a request from the Keag family, whether Mr Keag was a friend or former colleague and whether any personal friendship was a factor in the minister’s decision.

Illustration: Matt Golding

A spokeswoman for Mr Dutton said the minister considered cases solely on their merits.

“Any suggestions cases are determined on any other basis, including whether he knew the individual who referred the matter, is completely false,” the spokeswoman said.

“Ministers for immigration receive, annually, hundreds of representations on individual migration matters from journalists, members of the public and other members of Parliament.

“There are long standing intervention powers provided to ministers to consider and deal with these representations. These powers were the same under the former Labor government.”

Parliament last week voted to refer Mr Dutton’s interventions to a Senate inquiry under terms of reference that put no limit on the number of cases to be examined, setting up public hearings where department officials will be asked why the planned deportations were halted.

The political storm over Mr Dutton’s decisions intensified on Thursday after the release of department emails showing official advice did “not support the minister intervening” in the McLachlan family’s urgent plea for help in November 2015.

Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann called on Mr Dutton to reveal why he overturned his own department’s decision in order to help Mr McLachlan.

“The circumstances here are not routine,” Mr Neumann said of the McLachlan case.

“The situation here is that he has defied his own Border Force’s advice to undertake issues where I think most Australians would expect this woman to be put back on a plane and punted out of the country. Mr Dutton has a lot of explaining to do.”

The emails were obtained by Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, a member of the legal and constitutional committee examining the au pair visa decisions, and set up a new avenue of inquiry in public hearings in coming weeks.

The emails show that one official warned there might be a “financial liability” if the minister reversed the deportation process of the au pair, Alexandra Deuwel, because her flight back to France had already been booked.

The emails also show Ms Deuwel had been working and living in Australia since 2012 and had been counselled about her visa conditions in March 2015.

Ms Deuwel was refused a visa in Adelaide on the evening of Saturday, October 31, and spent the night in detention. She would have been deported the following night if the minister had not responded to a plea for urgent help.

The family she was to visit, Callum and Skye MacLachlan, sent an email to another member of their extended family, Mr McLachlan of the AFL, at 10.55am on the Sunday. The AFL chief then forwarded it to his head of government relations, Jude Donnelly, who got in touch with Mr Dutton’s chief of staff.

“There has clearly been a misunderstanding that [Ms Deuwel] was intending to work for us when she is here to spend time with our family, as we consider her to be family,” the MacLachlans wrote.

“We live in the Barossa Valley on [a] farm and have four kids who will be devastated not to see her.”

The department spent the following hours preparing its advice and Mr Dutton signed the documents to authorise the visa at about 9.30pm, just before the deportation.

“It’s not what you know, or whether you fulfil the application requirements, but who you know,” Senator Kitching said on Sky News on Thursday.

“It needs to be impartial. That discretion needs to be exercised in an impartial and fair way.”

Senator Kitching said the emails had come from a whistleblower.