Immigration bungling haunts Labor as Peter Dutton finds his mark

Initially content to dismiss Peter Dutton as unelectable – a comic Mr Potato Head – Labor has come to realise it underestimated him and let the Liberal leader actually become a threat in just one term. This week’s antics are a perfect example.

Peter Dutton has been able to dominate the political agenda on arrivals from troubled Gaza, putting Tony Burke, top, and Anthony Albanese on the back foot.

Anthony Albanese is in trouble again. Big trouble. And guess what, it’s the same old debilitating and toxic topics for Labor of immigration, visas, social division, national security and weaponisation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It’s the same old haunting presence of former immigration minister Andrew Giles that was meant to be banished during the winter parliamentary break with a cabinet shuffle and a political reset but is being paraded and parodied at every opportunity by a gleeful opposition.

It’s also the same old problem of having mistakes and scares completely distracting the Prime Minister and the government when all they want to do is talk about cost-of-living relief, higher wages, more jobs and the grand $22bn investment Future Made in Australia plan.

While constantly referring to the precarious security atmosphere of Australia, the danger of division and the need to tone down political rhetoric, Albanese has been drawn back this parliamentary sitting week to damaging concerns about bringing into Australia, without extensive checks and visas, people from a radicalised war-torn region.

What will be most galling for Labor is that, again, Peter Dutton has been able to dominate the parliamentary and political agenda from opposition largely because of a combination of old mistakes and new unforced errors.

The Opposition Leader managed to milk a result at the start of the week from a marred legacy of almost two years of Labor immigration mismanagement over visas and detention and by the end of week to flip expectations of what would dominate debate to new visa controls and Albanese’s competence, leadership and deceptive behaviour.

But far more important than another week of parliamentary victory and domination for Dutton is the longer-term exposition of how the Coalition leader actually governs and directs his colleagues and political strategy.

Initially content to dismiss Dutton as unelectable – a comic Mr Potato Head or a children’s monster such as Voldemort – Labor came to realise it had underestimated him and let the Liberal leader actually become a threat in just one term.

The measure of better prime minister in Newspoll has steadily narrowed as the Liberal primary vote has come to verge on the magic 40 per cent while Labor’s has dropped below its winning 32 per cent at the 2022 election.

With discontent with Albanese growing and Labor falling well behind on key issues such as economic management and handling the cost of living, this is no time for the government to give Dutton a chance or lose its way.

Yet the responses this week from Dutton and Albanese suggest the Liberal leader is growing into his job, acting more intuitively and flexibly and is not reliant on institutional decision-making, while the Prime Minister cites processes as solutions, still behaves reflexively as an opposition leader who isn’t held to public account as much and assumes a prerogative of office.

In short, Dutton has demonstrating a superior strategic sense, a fearless confidence in his political judgment and a sense of leadership security in a team that may lack talent but has grown to trust Dutton’s instincts.

In recent times there have been remarkable shifts in Coalition strategy and direction with the release of the seven sites for nuclear power stations and the abandoning of the interim 2030 carbon emission reduction targets being put forward by Dutton and adopted with a minimum of fuss.

The unfolding events of the security issues surrounding the movement of people from war-torn Gaza this week has demonstrated perfectly how Dutton has adapted as a leader and learned how to run a united team.

Albanese often talks about his collegiate approach, proper cabinet processes and stability of his ministry while deriding Dutton for not going through proper proce­dure, as if it were a political end in itself.

On the morning of the return of the Australian Olympic team, Albanese had bathed in reflected glory and later attacked Dutton for seeking to “sow division” at a time of national unity by suddenly declaring he thought there should be a blanket ban on arrivals from troubled Gaza “for the moment” until full security checks – similar to those undertaken for people coming to Australia from Syria and Afghanistan.

In a Sky News interview on Wednesday, Dutton said in answer to a question on ASIO screening for Gazans: “If people are coming in from that war zone and we’re uncertain about identity or their allegiances … I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment. It’s not prudent to do so and I think it puts our national security at risk.”

Dutton’s television interview statement appeared to come out of the blue, unrehearsed, and to have taken his colleagues by surprise. As Dutton was accused of racism, dog whistling and discrimination, Albanese revelled in what was a dangerous “captain’s pick” that hadn’t been discussed in shadow cabinet and was criticised by Islamic leaders, Greens and independent MPs.

Yet Dutton’s key colleagues did not react to Albanese’s critical characterisation and they fell into line behind Dutton’s statement that had not been workshopped. Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson, who had been prosecuting a case for security checks for all, seamlessly supported his leader. He calmly appeared in the media and rejected any idea that such a political decision by Dutton would have to go through the shadow cabinet.

“A pause for now is what Peter Dutton said, and I agree with, until we can be assured that sufficient security checks are taking place,” Paterson said.

“The reason why we do robust vetting is to make sure we can distinguish them from the people who do pose a risk to our country, and make sure those people who do pose a risk to our country don’t come. Now until the government can reassure us that’s happening, and they haven’t so far, then we think it has to be paused.”

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham and immigration spokesman Dan Tehan chimed in effortlessly and pursued the idea of a pause until there were vigorous security checks, preferably in a third country. There had been no decision to adopt this position but a like-mindedness based on discussions and feedback from the public created no problem for Dutton at all.

Indeed, having the government talk about an issue that is a Dutton and Coalition strength being promoted by some of the strongest opposition frontbenchers helped put pressure on Albanese and new Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke. As a result, Labor’s revelling was short-lived as Albanese and Burke were pressed in parliament to clarify the security checks on almost 3000 people in Gaza who had been given tourist visas for Australia.

The Coalition demanded to know if ASIO had been involved with every visa application and would the government guarantee there were no Hamas terrorist sympathisers given visas. Given the government had already admitted visa applicants were being handled online, sometimes granted a visa within an hour, and would not say if ASIO was involved in every application, what seemed to be a Dutton blunder turned into a new Labor challenge within 24 hours.

But while Burke, who had a brief stint as immigration minister under Kevin Rudd in 2013, handled the parliamentary grilling in a far superior manner to Giles, a view was growing in public that it was not an unreasonable request to ensure scrutinisation of each applicant for a visa to Australia from a radicalised war zone controlled by the proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas. It was here that Labor again fell into a trap of trying to deflect questions, avoid the truth and use ASIO’s integrity and independence as cover for what was clearly a false claim that the same “processes” used in checking visa applicants from the war zones of Syria and Afghanistan were being used now.

Albanese shamelessly used public comments of ASIO director-general Mike Burgess as political cover, suggesting Dutton didn’t trust ASIO. But prime ministers should not take a cavalier attitude to what security chiefs say and do and Albanese carelessly made a huge mistake in quoting – or, more accurately, misquoting – what Burgess had said last Sunday on the ABC Insiders program about ASIO’s role in vetting the visas and checking each applicant. Looking uneasy, Albanese defended claims he had made about ASIO being involved in all visa applications by quoting Burgess as follows: “If they’ve been issued a visa they’ve gone through the process. They’re referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.”

But the exact Burgess quote from Sunday was: “If they’ve been issued a visa they’ve gone through the process. Part of the process is, where criteria are hit, they’re referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.” The key omission from the middle of the sentence is “where criteria are hit”.

What Burgess was making clear was that only when an alert from a terror watch list, for instance, was involved was ASIO asked to check – that is a clear public indication from ASIO that it was not involved in every application.

It’s accepted practice to lop off the end of a quote or fudge the start to get a better result in parliament but to remove the central point – which substantially changed the meaning – is unacceptable and gave Dutton the grounds to declare Albanese had misled the parliament, twisted Burgess’s words and left himself at odds with the director-general.

“This Prime Minister has no shame. He has misled the house and should apologise,” Dutton said.

A rattled Albanese blustered a response but used parliamentary tactics to avoid facing Dutton on a motion accusing him of misleading parliament and condemning him for misrepresenting the ASIO chief. “We, of course, take the same advice from the same security agencies, even the same security personnel, as the former government did,” Albanese told parliament. “We have confidence in our security and law enforcement agencies to do their job.”

It is never a good look for a prime minister to be seen to be refusing to front an opposition leader in parliament when they have been accused of something as serious as not just misleading parliament but misrepresenting ASIO’s director-general in the process.

In the context of heightened social division, raised terror threats after the Hamas attack on Israel, protests and violent attacks on MPs’ offices, there can hardly be a graver allegation to make against the Prime Minister.

Yet Albanese, shuffling his papers and turning to nasty personal attacks on Dutton, left the parliamentary chamber on Thursday afternoon, leaving a junior minister to respond to the accusations that he had “deliberately twisted” the words of the ASIO director-general to cover for gaps in the security vetting of people coming from the radicalised, war-torn Gaza zone and to cover for his own mistakes.

Once again, Labor was left lamenting the vexed issue of immigration, visas and security checks as it diverted attention from the government’s core business and vital political interests.