Au pairs raid: Labor seeks privilege on AFP au pair raid documents

In the wake of an AFP raid over leaks in the Peter Dutton au pair saga, Labor wants parliamentary privilege over any material seized.

The AFP carried out raids at the Home Affairs department as part of investigation into damaging au pair leaks, in Canberra. Picture Gary Ramage

Labor has attempted to claim parliamentary privilege over any material seized by the Australian Federal Police after it raided the offices of the Australian Border Force today following leaks in the au pair saga that had embroiled Peter Dutton.

The AFP confirmed it received a referral from the Department of Home Affairs on 30 August regarding an “unauthorised disclosure of information” after a chain of e-mails was leaked to the media.

For months Labor and the Greens have questioned the Home Affairs Minister’s intervention in two foreign au pair visa cases and pursued the matter through a Senate inquiry.

Sources have told The Australian it is alleged a person or people leaked from the Department of Home Affairs to the Labor Party.

Labor senator Louise Pratt, who chaired the au pair inquiry, said she had written to AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin and Senate president Scott Ryan “to claim parliamentary privilege over material seized by the AFP” in Canberra today which were “relevant” to the inquiry.

“I will ask for my claim of privilege to be dealt with by the Senate,” Senator Pratt said. “Parliamentary privilege is an incredibly important principle that enables the parliament to hold the government to account, and it must be respected.”

Labor sources said the AFP will hand material to the Senate clerk as a “neutral third party” and the Senate privileges committee would conduct an inquiry to determine whether Senator Pratt’s privilege claim should be upheld.

If Senator Pratt is successful, the material seized would either be protected by parliamentary privilege or released back to the AFP, and the documents could not be used in any court or tribunal.

The department referred a leaked e-mail chain of correspondence between immigration officials, Mr Dutton’s office, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan, Mr McLachlan’s second cousin who was due to host the French au pair and an AFL staffer to the AFP.

Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo warned in a Senate inquiry into the saga last month that if potentially unlawful disclosures were to continue it would “stab at the heart of public administration”.

“It’s really now a matter for the federal police to establish — if this is what’s occurred — both the exfiltration of the information from our network, to whom it was exfiltrated and what potentially happened to it thereafter,” Mr Pezzullo said.

The Labor-chaired inquiry investigated Mr Dutton’s use of intervention powers for foreign au pairs including for French woman Alexandra Deuwel, who was detained at Adelaide airport in October 2015, and for Italian au pair Michela Marchisio, who had her visa cancelled at Brisbane airport in June 2015.

The intervention for Ms Deuwel followed an appeal to Mr Dutton’s office from Mr McLachlan, while the intervention from Ms Marchisio came after a request was lodged from a former Queensland police colleague of Mr Dutton’s, Russell Keag.

Labor and Greens members on the committee urged the Senate to consider “censuring” Mr Dutton after it found he “failed to observe fairness” when choosing to intervene in the cases and had “misled parliament” over the controversy.

Mr Dutton unleashed a ­blistering rebuke of Roman Quaedvlieg, the man he appointed as the nation’s first Australian Border Force commissioner, after he gave evidence to the au pair inquiry that the Minister labelled “entirely false and ­indeed fabricated”.

Mr Dutton has repeatedly denied he misled parliament when he said he did not have personal connections with the au pairs are their intended hosts.