Dutton inquiry study a ‘hoot’: ex-enforcer

Sacked ­Border Force com­missioner Roman Quaedvlieg has been gleefully preparing for a Senate inquiry into Peter Dutton.

Former Australian Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg. Picture: AAP

Peter Dutton and his former top enforcer, Roman Quaedvlieg, were always expected to get along famously, having both cut their teeth as Queensland detectives before turning their focus to the nation’s borders.

Yet the crime-fighting team has disbanded, with the sacked ­Australian Border Force com­missioner preparing for a Senate inquiry into Mr Dutton’s repeated decisions to override his former agency to allow migrants into the country.

Mr Quaedvlieg, acknowledging reports he was poring over the government’s official statements to ensure they were “consistent with the facts as he knows them to be”, said the endeavour had “been a hoot”. “There’s a parliamentary mechanism that has been established and is the appropriate forum to inquire into the facts,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

“Twitter is too limited a ­medium, and it attracts too much chaff to cleanly separate from the wheat.”

It’s been a hoot thanks

— Roman Quaedvlieg (@quaedvliegs) August 29, 2018

There’s a parliamentary mechanism that has been established and is the appropriate forum to inquire into the facts. Twitter is too limited a medium, and it attracts too much chaff to cleanly separate from the wheat.

— Roman Quaedvlieg (@quaedvliegs) August 29, 2018

On social media, where Mr Quaedvlieg has been feted as a “frank and refreshing” commentator, the self-described “geopolitical dilettante” also sniped from the sidelines of the leadership crisis ­instigated by Mr Dutton.

“I privately contacted four MPs during the leadership crisis,” he tweeted on Wednesday, suggesting the representations “didn’t make a jot of difference”.

Mr Quaedvlieg, who was sacked in March for misbehaviour, had a torrid relationship with Home Affairs secretary Mike ­Pezzullo.

Mr Dutton, a federal MP since 2001, was a policeman for nine years, including in the drug and sex offenders’ squads.

Appointing Mr Quaedvlieg in 2015, Mr Dutton touted him as an “exceptional leader” who would ensure “the highest possible ethical and professional standards”.

Mr Quaedvlieg, now a private consultant, was Canberra’s police chief between 2010 and 2013.

This followed five years as an Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner investigating money-­laundering, large-scale fraud, identity crime and corrupt dealings between Australian comp­anies and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Before that, he spent 15 years with the Queensland Police Service, famously catching notorious “postcard bandit” bank robber Brenden James Abbott.

During the leadership challenge, Mr Quaedvlieg also used Twitter to criticise Malcolm ­Turnbull’s “procrastination and indecision”, noting he’d heard ­senior ministers privately disparage their former leader as a “ditherer”. “Glad the agency heads in our national security architecture are operationally independent.”