The Albanese government has gone to the grubbiest of gutters in its latest, desperate and dangerous campaign to destroy Peter Dutton, accusing the Opposition Leader of protecting pedophiles over children and being an apologist for child sex offenders.
Not only is it grubby, it is also dangerous for Labor because the confected deflection and distraction doesn’t assuage community fears and invites the dredging up of MPs representations for constituents.
In the unfolding and disastrous saga of the High Court’s orders to release more than 100 convicted criminals including rapists, murders and child sex offenders, which requires urgent remedying legislation to be passed next week, the Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles cannot escape the reality that they were unprepared to immediately provide for community safety.
There was no precautionary legislation drafted in anticipation of the High Court’s decision, despite clear warnings, and what rushed measures were implemented have been confused and inconsistent and allowed at least one criminal to abscond.
Ironically, after capitulating to Dutton’s demands for tougher controls on the released criminals two weeks ago and needing his co-operation to pass even more crucial legislation next week, Labor’s tactic has been to attack him with vile personal accusations.
O’Neil told parliament on Wednesday that Dutton had voted “to protect pedophiles over children” and was an “apologist for child sex offenders”.
Giles said “none of this would have happened” if Dutton, as minister, hadn’t “extended the visa” for the criminal who successfully appealed to the High Court (a criminal who had arrived illegally by boat under Labor and who was in jail at the time).
As Dutton has publicly declared to go all-in to win the next election and turn Anthony Albanese into a “oncer” prime minister the entire frontbench of Labor used a co-ordinated attack on the Coalition leader for being a “tough talker and weak actor” as they sought to shift blame for the debacle to him.
O’Neil said Dutton personally was protecting pedophiles over children because the Coalition hadn’t supported a government motion on Monday to introduce emergency laws and he was an apologist for child sex offenders because he had a frontbencher, senator Dean Smith, who had petitioned to have a convicted sex offender released.
Giles likewise held Dutton personally responsible for the “whole thing” and used the example of Smith’s appeal to the minister as evidence of defending child sex offenders.
Labor’s logic in accusing Dutton is at the very least irrelevant to the current issues facing the government; it is risible to suggest that as a former policeman with a long track record of doing whatever he can to stop child sex abuse, Dutton is protecting child sex offenders; and it is a dangerous conflation to use MPs appeals for constituents.
Labor’s proposed laws were superseded by the High Court’s release of the reasons for its decision and the government didn’t even put them on the Senate notice paper after it started to draft precautionary detention laws.
As for Smith’s request to the minister, which Giles said he rejected, it is a dangerous precedent for a government to start to use appeals to ministers. It is just slightly more than possible that Labor MPs have also appealed to ministers in the past on behalf of constituents who have either claimed to be rehabilitated or not what they really are.
Surely, there are enough Labor MPs around to remember the total embarrassment in 2007 – and resignation from the frontbench – after the then legal affairs spokesman Kelvin Thomson was found to have written a reference in 2000 for drug baron and gangster Tony Mokbel for a hotel license in which he described Mokbel as “a family man and local businessman, with a record of years of unblemished conduct”.
O’Neil had the temerity to suggest that it was the Coalition that had decided to launch a personal attack against her as part of a “shameless political campaign”.
The sum total of all this parliamentary fire was that next week the Albanese government will need Dutton and the Coalition to urgently pass preventive detention laws to lock up any released criminals it can.
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