Labor has sent the wrong message to Australians worried about their safety at the worst possible time.
The government has made a critical error of signalling to the community that it does not care about victims who might suffer as a result of crimes committed by former detainees released as a result of the High Court’s NZYQ ruling.
This is just the latest political miscalculation from an under-pressure Labor Party that finds itself increasingly responding to a Coalition that has been able to steal the initiative and dictate the terms of a new national debate on community safety.
On Wednesday, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus responded in an intemperate manner to a perfectly reasonable and expected question: would the government apologise to any Australians harmed by the actions of the released detainees.
In a flash of anger, Dreyfus declared on multiple occasions that he would not apologise for “upholding the law of Australia”.
This extended to the woman who was allegedly subject to an indecent assault on Saturday night in an Adelaide motel by one of the released detainees, Aliyawar Yawari, a 65-year-old convicted sex predator with a record of attacking elderly women.
Dreyfus explained that in releasing the detainees, the government was merely abiding by a High Court decision.
He is right. The government must uphold the law. But his message and tone were wrong. It was a political own goal.
“I want to suggest to you that that question is an absurd question,” he said. “You are asking a cabinet minister, three ministers of the crown, to apologise for upholding the law of Australia.
“I will not be apologising for upholding the law. I will not be apologising for pursuing the rule of law. And I will not be apologising for acting – do not interrupt,” he thundered.
“I will not be apologising for acting in accordance with a High Court decision. Your question is an absurd one.”
So far, three former detainees – of a total of 148 released into the community – have been arrested by police.
The latest was Emran Dad, 33, the former ringleader of a child exploitation group that preyed on children in state care.
Dad appeared in Dandenong Magistrates Court on Tuesday on nine charges that included making contact with a child without a reasonable excuse.
The arrest of detainees released into the community was already one of the worst possible outcomes for Labor, which has looked ambushed by the High Court decision.
If further detainees commit more serious crimes that result in serious harm or loss of life to an Australian, Dreyfus’s comments will look particularly ill-conceived.
So far, the opposition has been able to set the terms of the community safety debate by creating the expectation in the public mind that Labor should have prepared a preventive detention regime in advance of the High Court’s November 8 decision.
Since then, it has all been uphill fighting for the government.
It was also the Coalition that brought on a motion in the Senate on Tuesday to commence the debate on Labor’s preventive detention regime, with legal affairs spokesman Michaelia Cash later boasting that the opposition had “taken control”.
Under attack for not publicly addressing community concerns following the arrests of the former detainees in recent days, Dreyfus fronted the cameras on Wednesday morning along with Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.
But rather than assuring the community, that press conference has now created a new political problem for the government.
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