Peter Dutton turns au pair questions on Labor

The Home Affairs Minister has questioned whether Labor and Greens MPs had tried to help personal connections with departmental decisions.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has singled out Labor frontbenchers Chris Bowen, Brendan O’Connor and Tony Burke over visa interventions. Picture: AAP

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has launched a counter attack against Labor and the Greens after becoming embroiled in the au pair saga, questioning if opposition MPs had personal connections with people — including bikies “involved in serious criminal crimes” — they tried to help.

Under pressure over his intervention in various au pair visa cases, Mr Dutton said he was “digging up” information about former Labor immigration ministers who overturned departmental decisions and was preparing to use that detail in question time when parliament resumes next week.

He is also compiling a list of MPs who have asked him to intervene in immigration cases more than 9000 times since he became immigration minister in 2014.

Mr Dutton singled out Labor frontbenchers Chris Bowen, Brendan O’Connor and Tony Burke, who were immigration ministers during the Rudd and Gillard governments.

“I would like you to ask them questions about the sorts of visas that they have issued or where they intervened to use their ministerial power. I suspect it is completely above board and not too different from many of the facts in the cases where I have been able to act,” Mr Dutton said.

“I’ve got countless examples where Labor were issuing visas to bikies to people who were involved in serious criminal crimes. I don’t know whether those people had links to the CFMEU.

“I’ve got a very good list actually of MPs who have come to me with quirky cases … I’ve intervened in those cases where Labor members have come to see me. I don’t know whether they have a personal friendship with that family or are known to those people. I take at face value the undertakings that have been given to me by Labor members of parliament.”

Mr Dutton’s pledge to use question time next week to “whack back” at Labor follows a fortnight in which he came under fire for using special ministerial powers to allow a French and Italian au pair to enter Australia on tourist visas, on condition they do not work, after representations from AFL boss Gillon McLachlan and a former Queensland police colleague Russell Keag.

The Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday into “allegations concerning the inappropriate exercise of ministerial powers, with respect to the visa status of au pairs”.

Mr Dutton, who lost a Liberal Party leadership ballot last week to Scott Morrison to become Prime Minister, blamed somebody “disaffected within the Australian Border Force” for leaking details of the au pair cases.

“Labor has tried to, or the Greens has tried to, or somebody frankly who is disaffected within the Australian Border Force has gone through and tried to find a way to throw some mud. I’m big enough and ugly enough to take care of myself,” he said.

“I’m a person of high integrity, I pride myself on that. If there are cases where people can point to where I have done something illegal or immoral, point to them. But I’ve looked at cases where I think there’s been an anomaly or I think there’s been some injustice and I’ve acted on it.”

Shortly after Mr Dutton’s press conference, sacked former ABF head Roman Quaedvlieg tweeted: “Two interesting points about self-proclamations of integrity: 1. They aren’t particularly valuable nor convincing, other than to the proclaimer.

“And 2. They never occur outside of a crisis which invokes them. Who ever heard a spontaneous one?”

Bill Shorten said Mr Dutton conceded ministerial discretion should be “part of the system” but questioned if the Minister had used it appropriately.

“I don’t know if ministerial discretion was ever designed to rescue au pairs on tourism visas in Australia. The real issue here that Australians are raising with me, it’s not what you know it’s who you know under this Liberal government. That’s not the way to run an immigration policy,” the Opposition Leader said.

“Why on earth is the whole system available if you know someone who can ring someone and just sort it out in a very quick matter of moments? Beyond that, I think Mr Dutton’s just looking to try to blame everyone else for his own problems.”

Mr Bowen would not clarify if he had any personal connections with those constituents he made representations on behalf of but said making such appeals was his “job”.

“I can confirm that at no stage have I made any representations on behalf of au pairs at airports who are pretty clearly in breach of the rules,” he said. “And neither did I, during my three years as immigration minister, approve any.”