Malcolm Turnbull defends attack on migrant report with incorrect claim

PM defends attack on The Australian report that Peter Dutton canvassed lower migrant intake by repeating an incorrect claim.

Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Getty Images.

Malcolm Turnbull has attempted to defend his attack on The Australian’s revelation Peter Dutton canvassed lowering the immigration intake by incorrectly saying the story claimed the discussion took place in cabinet.

The Prime Minister defended his attack on the credibility of the story — which revealed the Home Affairs Minister discussed cutting the migration intake by 20,000 a year — despite Mr Dutton confirming much of the details of Tuesday’s story.

The story never claimed the discussions took place in cabinet.

“What was initially said in media, I think in The Australian, that there had been a submission brought to cabinet by Peter Dutton to reduce the ceiling of permanent migration ... and that he had been rolled by me and Scott Morrison,” Mr Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

“That is untrue. If you are asking me, do ministers discuss migration and migration levels and the composition of the migration program, well of course we do.

“It would be strange if we didn’t. And I might say the permanent migration ceiling, which has been set at 190,000 for some time, and which we were well below last year and we expect to be below this year, that is reviewed every year.”

On Tuesday, when asked if Mr Dutton had canvassed lowering the immigration levels, Mr Turnbull had said: “The story on the front page of — I’m so glad you asked that — the story on the front page of The Australian today about migration and the cabinet is completely untrue. It’s false. It’s completely untrue.”

Yesterday, Tony Abbott accused Mr Turnbull of being “tricky” and acting like a “clever barrister” in his denials that there were talks involving cabinet ministers around lowering the immigration rate last year.

“Look, when I heard both the Foreign Minister (Julie Bishop) and the Prime Minister with some indignation denying this story, knowing what you hear around the traps, I thought, ‘look, they’re being very clever with words here’,” Mr Abbott said yesterday.

“They’re saying it never went to cabinet, but that’s not to say that it hasn’t been discussed by cabinet ministers.”

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann this morning claimed the details in the story “weren’t quite right” and it was “routine” in the lead up to the budget to have discussions with every government department to “assess various indicators in the budget”.

“There has been no suggestion that we should be reducing the overall net permanent migration further,” Mr Cormann told 2GB radio.

Mr Cormann said immigration was just one of the matters that gets revisited every year and former prime minister Tony Abbott, who yesterday threw his weight behind Mr Dutton’s proposal, “would know this very well”.

When pressed by Jones about whether he had ever spoken with the Prime Minister or Home Affairs Minister on cutting the migration program, Mr Cormann said “No, that’s not quite right. Mr Dutton has made it very clear yesterday that his position is identical to Mr Turnbull.”

Jones continued: “All Abbott is asking is why would senior government ministers get their knickers in a twist over what is sensible policy?”

Mr Cormann replied: “The way the story was pitched wasn’t quite right, but that’s beside the point.

“The truth is we support the current immigration level, and there is no proposal to reduce it further and that is really the bottom line.”