Dutton lashes out at Labor leader over asylum ‘hypocrisy’

The Home Affairs Minister has lashed out at Anthony Albanese after the Labor leader called for compassion over the Tamil family case.

Nadesalingam Murugappan, Priya Nadarasa and their children, Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, in Christmas Island detention during a visit from family friend Angela Fredericks on Wednesday Picture: 10 News

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has lashed out at Anthony ­Albanese’s response to Australia’s asylum-seeker policy, saying his contradictory position on deporting those that don’t qualify as refugees, reinforces why Labor “cannot be trusted” on Australian borders.

It came after the Labor leader called for compassion and common sense on Wednesday as he ramped up his appeal to the government to overturn its decision to deport a Tamil family after they were rejected as asylum-seekers.

An injunction against the family’s deportation has been extended until Friday, when their case returns to the Federal Court in Melbourne.

On Wednesday, Mr Albanese visited the family’s former community in the central Queensland town of Biloela.

“It’s not too late for the government to recognise that this isn’t a threat to its immigration policy. It’s not a threat to Australia’s borders,” he said.

“What it is, simply, is what Peter Dutton has done on more than 4000 occasions as minister, on an average of three times every day he’s been a minister.

“Using his ministerial discretion to say that it is in Australia’s national interest for this family to be restored into the community that they love and which clearly loves them.”

Q U OT E S

When asked by reporters if Labor still believed people who came to Australia without a visa shouldn’t be resettled, Mr Albanese said the party supported offshore and regional processing, however, the family’s unique circumstances “required ministerial discretion”.

But Mr Dutton said it was “all too easy” for Mr Albanese to take this position without having to worry about any of the potential consequences. “He was one of the senior ministers sitting around the cabinet table when decisions were made that resulted in 1200 people drowning at sea,” Mr Dutton told The Australian.

At a press conference in 2013, the then deputy prime minister defended Labor’s asylum-seeker arrangement with Papua New Guinea, telling reporters those that came to Australia by boat without a visa wouldn’t be allowed to stay.

“The message is very clear: if you come to Australia by boat without a visa, you will not be settled in Australia,” Mr Albanese said then.

Mr Albanese added that the difficult solution was necessary because it had destroyed the people-smuggler’s business model and stopped people drowning at sea — a message echoed by Mr Dutton in Perth on Tuesday.

Again, in July 2013, Mr Albanese told ABC News Breakfast that asylum-seekers who were not deemed to be genuine refugees would not be resettled in Australia and would be repatriated either to their country of origin or to a third country.

Nadesalingam Murugappan and his wife, Priya Nadarasa, came to Australia from Sri Lanka illegally in 2012 and 2013 respectively and were rejected as refugees. They have been living in rural Biloela on bridging visas, which expired last year, having had two children while in Australia.

Their legal bids to challenge the Department of Immigration’s initial ruling have been rejected by multiple courts. Scott Morrison is encouraging the Tamil family to return to Sri Lanka, and then apply for fresh Australian visas.

“If Priya and Nades and Kopika and Tharunicaa want to then come to Australia, like 1500 who have already been sent back before them, well then they can seek to do that,” he told 3AW radio.

On Wednesday in the Federal Court, Judge Mordy Bromberg — who once ran unsuccessfully for ALP preselection — granted an injunction to prevent Tharunicaa, the couple’s two-year-old daughter, from being removed from Australian soil until 4pm Friday.