Gillon McLachlan asked for visa help for Argentinian polo player

Eric Abetz slams au pair Senate inquiry as it emerges Gillon McLachlan intervened in a second visa case for an Argentinian polo player.

Gillon McLachlan, left, Peter Dutton and French au pair Alexandra Deuwel.

Liberal senator Eric Abetz has slammed an inquiry into the au pair saga embroiling Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton as a “total non-event”, amid revelations AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan intervened in a second visa case for an Argentinian polo player.

Senator Abetz, who sat through today’s hearing, said the Department of Home Affairs had confirmed that in both of the au pair cases it had recommended Mr Dutton intervene; that he “behaved in an entirely lawful and appropriate manner”; and that neither he nor his office had “pressured or encouraged” the department to make a specific recommendation.

The Labor-chaired inquiry is investigating Mr Dutton’s use of intervention powers for foreign au pairs including for French woman Alexandra Deuwel, who was detained at Adelaide airport in October 2015, and for Italian au pair Michela Marchisio, who had her visa cancelled at Brisbane airport in June 2015.

The intervention for Ms Deuwel followed an appeal to Mr Dutton’s office from Mr McLachlan whose second cousin — Callum MacLachlan — intended to host the yoga instructor, while the intervention from Ms Marchisio came after a request was lodged from a former Queensland police colleague of Mr Dutton’s, Russell Keag.

“Labor senators have now spent weeks telling everyone who cares to listen that today’s hearing would be a showstopper but the reality is that it’s been a total non-event with officials simply confirming that all actions were appropriate,” Senator Abetz said.

“It is interesting that Labor senators confirmed in the committee that they are aware of the providence of the leaked emails that have been reported, something that has been referred to the Australian Federal Police. Given the seriousness of this matter, I trust that these senators will fully co-operate with any Australian Federal Police investigation into the matter.”

Mr McLachlan revealed he had also made inquiries about the visa status of a man with limited English who had sought to come to Australia to play polo.

The second representation occurred in March 2014 when Scott Morrison was immigration minister under the Abbott government.

As in the au pair case, Mr McLachlan said he asked the AFL’s head of government relations Jude Donnelly, a former Liberal staffer, to contact the department about the polo player’s case.

“I was contacted by someone who was awaiting a business visa, a friend of a friend, who was wanting to come into the country and was waiting for their visa to be processed. They had language issues and I asked Miss Donnelly if the visa had been approved or not. So I asked her to find out the status of the application,” Mr McLachlan said.

“My understanding is the visa had already been approved and was in the process of being processed.”

Ms Donnelly said she contacted an adviser in then prime minister Tony Abbott’s office who she had previously worked with to ask about the status of the polo player’s visa, and heard back “within a couple of days” that it had already been processed.

While the French au pair’s and Argentinian polo player’s visa cases were the only two non-AFL related matters she had contacted the government about, Ms Donnelly said she “often” made visa inquiries relating to her job.

“We have Irish players who come out on visas. There’s been examples of some indigenous kids where there’s been parents in jail and they don’t have access to birth certificates so they’ve needed passports issued to go on a Boomerangs tour overseas,” she said.

“We’ve had issues with our international cup before where players come from Pacific nations and it’s been about helping them obtain visas to get into the country, dealing with the department and relevant ministerial offices to see where applications were at.”

On the au pair matter, Mr McLachlan said his “agitated” second cousin Mr MacLachlan contacted him on a Sunday in November 2015 after he had tried to get hold of the relevant office because he believed there had been a mistake.

Ms Deuwel had been detained at Adelaide airport after officials became concerned she may breach her visa conditions by working for Mr MacLachlan.

“He wanted to make a representation because he feels there’s been a mistake on a visa issue for someone who had previously worked for him, who had become a friend of the family’s,” Mr McLachlan said of his second cousin.

“He wanted to make a representation because he thought there’d been an error … and did I have any way of helping?”

Mr McLachlan said he had a colleague and friend who could help and eventually asked Ms Donnelley to forward on an email to Mr Dutton’s office that Mr MacLachlan had written outlining the issue.

“I explained (to Ms Donnelly) what had been put to me by my cousin and said his view was she had become a friend of the family and she wasn’t going there to work, she was going to see the family,” he said.

Ms Donnelly then contacted Mr Dutton’s chief of staff, Craig Maclachlan, to “make him aware” of the case and ask that “they consider it” with the “hope they’d do whatever they thought was the right thing”.

Mr McLachlan said he had not spoken to Mr Dutton about the issue and could only recall meeting with the Minister in both a formal and informal capacity on three occasions.

Mr McLachlan did not think Ms Deuwel would have been deported if he had not intervened. He simply “expedited” the process.

A submission to Mr Dutton by the Department of Immigration and border protection in November 2015 gave him the option of intervening in the case and of imposing a condition on her visa that she not work while in Australia — both of which he did.

Senator Eric Abetz on the committee for Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee into Allegations concerning the inappropriate exercise of ministerial powers, with respect to the visa status of au pairs. Picture: Kym Smith

Peter Dutton visa leak referred to AFP

Mr Dutton’s department has referred leaked e-mails revealing details of an au pair case to the police, as secretary Michael Pezzullo launched a staunch defence of the Minister and his use of discretionary ministerial powers.

Mr Pezzullo, who heads the Department of Home Affairs, confirmed an email chain of correspondence between immigration officials, Mr Dutton’s office, an AFL staffer and Mr McLachlan and his second cousin had been referred to the Australian Federal Police.

He warned if potentially unlawful disclosures were to continue it would “stab at the heart of public administration”.

“It’s really now a matter for the federal police to establish — if this is what’s occurred — both the exfiltration of the information from our network, to whom it was exfiltrated and what potentially happened to it thereafter,” Mr Pezzullo told the Senate inquiry.

Dutton intervened on visas 25 times

Earlier, the Senate inquiry heard Mr Dutton intervened under the Migration Act to grant tourist visas on 25 occasions since December 2014 for foreigners who had been detained.

In total, the inquiry heard that the Minister for Home Affairs used his intervention powers to grant 4,129 visas across the board between December 2014 and the end of August 2018.

Mr Pezzullo said that, in the 2018 calendar year, Mr Dutton had so far received 207 submissions requesting that he intervene to grant visas under section 195A of the Migration Act. This had resulted in 607 individuals being granted visas.

Labor Senators this morning challenged the figures provided by Mr Pezzullo, saying they understood Mr Dutton had intervened only 14 times to grant visitor visas and that the first such case was the June 2015 intervention for Ms Marchisio.

“So, for all the talk we’ve heard over recent days about thousands of cases where minister Dutton has compassionately, generously intervened to assist people — sometimes at the request of Labor MPs and Senators — it could be that it’s as few as 14 times that he’s intervened to grant someone this type of visa,” said Queensland Labor Senator Murray Watt.

Mr Pezzullo responded that it was “just a matter of checking the record”, but used an opening statement to clarify that Mr Dutton granted 2,023 visas in the 2015 calendar year using his ministerial intervention powers.

Senator Watt questioned whether any compliance had been conducted to ensure the foreign au pairs granted visas by Mr Dutton did not go on to work as nannies in breach of their visa conditions, with West Australian Labor Senator Louise Pratt suggesting this would create an “underclass of domestic workers”.

Mr Pezzullo said that “one of the conditions of being here as a tourist is that you don’t work” and later clarified the department did not monitor the two foreign au pairs for compliance with their visa conditions because there was no evidence of any wrong doing.

“You’ve got to make risk selections,” Mr Pezzullo said. “We deal with dangerous criminals, murderers, terrorists. I mean we issue nine million visas per annum Senator. You’ve got to risk manage and triage the caseload”.

Senator Abetz ridiculed the idea of authorities monitoring foreign tourists to ensure compliance with their visa conditions without first receiving intelligence of a potential breach, arguing that Australia was not a “police state”.

“Do you know whether Senator Watt has committed a crime in the last 48 hours?” he asked Mr Pezzullo. “There is a presumption of innocence under Australian law, thank goodness. This sort of besmirching does the Labor Party Senators on this panel no credit whatsoever. If there is no evidence, there is no evidence”.

“Otherwise you would be investigating and popping into everybody’s household to see whether any tourist who is visiting might be undertaking paid work and thank goodness we do not live in a police state which engages in that sort of behaviour”.