Dutton must apologise over Michael Pezzullo’s Nazi statement: ALP

Labor says Peter Dutton must apologise after staffer issued statement on detention centres and “alleged” Nazi regime.

Richard Marles demanded Peter Dutton (pictured) and Michael Pezzullo “withdraw and apologise” for the “deeply offensive” remarks.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton must apologise after his chief bureaucrat issued a statement denying that the Nazi regime promoted indifference towards abuse of minorities, Labor says.

The Immigration Department secretary Michael Pezzullo yesterday launched a strident defence of his department and its officers in a rare message to “set the record straight” declaring the policy of keeping children in detention was used “only as a last resort”.

“Recent comparisons of immigration detention centres to ‘gulags’; suggestions that detention involves a ‘public numbing and indifference’ similar to that allegedly experienced in Nazi Germany; and persistent suggestions that detention facilities are places of ‘torture’ are highly offensive, unwarranted and plainly wrong – and yet they continue to be made in some quarters,” the statement read in part.

Mr Pezzullo’s statement was today updated to explain it was “bad history” to allege the Nazi regime promoted indifference towards its human rights abuses.

“The Nazi regime promoted racial hatred. Far from seeking to numb an indifferent public, it sought to vilify and persecute Jews and others, before engaging in the systematic and evil genocide of the Holocaust,” it read.

“It is deeply repugnant and historically false to bracket immigration detention and these atrocities and crimes against humanity in the same sentence.

“Regrettably this occurs in so-called commentary and reporting on immigration detention. It is offensive – both to the staff of the Department and the ABF (Australian Border Force), and to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants.”

Richard Marles, the opposition immigration spokesman, demanded Mr Dutton and Mr Pezzullo “withdraw and apologise” for the “deeply offensive” remarks.

“To use the term ‘allegedly’ in connection with the events that occurred during Nazi Germany is deeply offensive. It is so important that the reality of what occurred during the Nazi era is accepted so that this greatest documented evil of humanity never happens again,” Mr Marles said.

“To be sure, the German government of today would never imagine using the term ‘allegedly’ in connection with the Nazi era.”

Mr Marles said it was a “great error of judgment” for Mr Pezzullo’s to attempt to justify his earlier remark, which he suspected was at first a “simple mistake”.

“There’s only one course now available to the government. The minister – not his department, but the minister, Peter Dutton – needs to come out today and clearly withdraw these words and apologise,” he said.

“The reputation of the department is at stake; indeed the reputation of Australia is at stake. We cannot see a repeat of Operation Fortitude when, in the face of Border Force bungling, we saw the minister throw the Border Force commander under a bus while he himself went to ground.”

Mr Marles rejected comparisons between Australia’s immigration detention arrangements and Nazi concentration and extermination camps.