‘You’re not welcome in Melbourne’, Green tells PM, Dutton

Adam Bandt has told the PM he and Peter Dutton are “not welcome in Melbourne”, accusing him of trying to “use race to win votes.”

Greens MP Adam Bandt says crime is down in Victoria and the Sudanese population make up about one per cent of incidences. Picture: Kym Smith

Greens MP Adam Bandt has told Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton they are “not welcome in Melbourne”, accusing them of trying to “use race to win votes and whip up hatred” in comments about African gang violence in Victoria.

Mr Dutton this morning described Victoria as a “parallel universe” and “fairyland”, after there was a 70 per cent spike in complaints to the state’s Human Rights Commissioner over his comments about African gang violence.

The Home Affairs Minister also slammed the New Zealand Justice Minister for criticising Australia’s policy of deporting New Zealand citizens who have committed crimes, and pledged to “sort out” the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after a series of decisions on migration cases which he says are unacceptable to the community.

In January, Mr Dutton said Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”, following a spate of home invasions, car-jackings and violent burglaries involving youths of African descent.

The issue was reignited on Tuesday when Prime Minister told a press conference in Melbourne that he was not personally frightened to go out to dinner in the Victorian capital, but that members of the public clearly were.

“Peter Dutton is one of the worst kinds of politician, using race and fear to try and win votes in a state and a city that he knows absolutely nothing about,” Mr Bandt told Sky News.

“Crime is down in Victoria and the Sudanese population make up about one per cent (of crimes) as far as I understand the statistics, so there is not a problem with African gangs in the way that Peter Dutton is talking about.

“What there is a problem with is Liberal politicians using fear and using race to try to win votes, because we know it ends in violence.”

The Member for Melbourne said the “kinds of comments” Mr Dutton and Mr Turnbull had made “can end in death”, citing the case of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony who was fatally bashed in the Melbourne suburb of Noble Park in 2007 by a man whose crime was found to be racially motivated after he told a neighbour “I am looking to take my town back. I’m going to kill the blacks.”

“When people go out there and use fear against a minority of the population to try and win votes, then they need to take some responsibility for the consequences, and I’m very, very disappointed in the Prime Minister joining in,” Mr Bandt said.

“The Prime Minister should be taking some leadership, should be looking at the evidence, and should be saying, ‘look crime is on the decline in Victoria,’ and instead, he’s out there joining in with Peter Dutton.

“I say to the Prime Minister, if all you want to do is try and use race to win votes and whip up hatred, then stay out of Melbourne.

“You’re not welcome in Melbourne, in a tolerant, multicultural city, if you want to try and use race to win votes, and perhaps this has everything to do with the by-elections that are coming up, perhaps it has everything to do with the Liberals being on the nose in the polls, but this is not a tactic that should be used in Australian politics, and it’s not a tactic the Prime Minister should be endorsing.”

Mr Bandt said three quarters of the crime in Victoria was committed by people who were born in Australia, and the next-biggest ethnic group were New Zealanders.

He conceded there was a problem with unemployment and underemployment among people in Melbourne whose families had come from Horn of Africa countries such as Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, but blamed racial discrimination for the problem.

“People aren’t getting the jobs that I think they’re entitled to if they just happened to be a white member of the population, so the issues that we’ve got, some of the issues that we’ve got are real, but they’re to do with disengagement and discrimination,” Mr Bandt said.

“I spend a lot of time talking to police, talking to agencies, talking to community leaders about this, and they’ll say whether your skin is white or black or whatever background that you come from, if you feel like there’s no future for you and it’s impossible to get a job even after you’ve sent off hundreds of applications, then that of course that makes it much easier for people to fall into crime.”

Mr Bandt said Sudanese leaders recognised that their community was over-represented in crime statistics.

“I’ve heard Sudanese leaders say very clearly, ‘look there is some over-representation’, a small proportion of the population, but too many of them are finding themselves in the justice system, and that’s coming from the mouths of Sudanese leaders themselves, so they’re saying that very, very clearly, but they’re saying let’s have a look at the reasons behind it, and if you want to bring those numbers down, what do you do?” he said.

“You find ways of pulling people back into paid employment, making them feel like they’ve got training, making them feel like they’ve got a place for you in Australia, and the more that you hear people like Peter Dutton and the Prime Minister saying ‘we’ve got a problem with you’, instead of ‘how can we make sure that Melbourne’s got a place where everyone’s got a place and that you’re pulled in’, Dutton and Turnbull will make the problem worse.”

Victoria in ‘fairyland’ on gangs

Mr Dutton said he agreed with Joint Standing Committee on Migration chair Jason Wood, a Victorian Liberal MP, who told The Australian this week he was concerned that victims of crimes by foreign nationals did not have their side of the story heard in AAT hearings.

“I think it’s a sensible suggestion, and Woody’s been on this issue for a while,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.

“He was one of the first people to call out this African gang violence, which in Victoria you’re not allowed to use those words.”

Asked whether the fact that Mr Turnbull had used the same words this week made him a “genius”, Mr Dutton said: “No, no. I’m a racist, and there’s been a 70 per cent spike in the number of complaints to the Human Rights Commissioner in Victoria because I called people involved in home invasions African gang members, even though they’re of African descent and they’re involved in gang activity in Victoria.”

“It’s like some parallel universe going on down there at the moment where you’re not allowed to refer to these people as ‘in gangs’. I mean it’s fairyland stuff,” Mr Dutton said.

Dutton slams New Zealand minister

Mr Dutton also slammed the New Zealand Justice Minister for criticising Australia’s policy of deporting New Zealand citizens who have committed crimes, saying Australia does a lot for New Zealand and he hopes Andrew Little does not repeat his remarks.

Mr Little told the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent that Australia was breaching human rights with its hard-line deportation policy.

Mr Dutton said Mr Little should be aware that there’s a lot Australia does for New Zealand.

“We’re a big land mass between them and boats coming from Indonesia and Southeast Asia,” Mr Dutton said.

“New Zealand don’t contribute really anything to the defence effort that we’ve got where we’re trying to surveil boats that might be on their way to New Zealand, so I hope that Andrew Little reflects a little more on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand where we do a lot of the heavy lifting, we intercept boats, we try to stop them making their way to New Zealand, and there’s a lot to this relationship and I was really disappointed in Mr Little’s comments during the week and I hope that he doesn’t repeat them.”

Lack of deportation powers for dual citizens ‘a deficiency in the law’

Mr Dutton hit out at the AAT when asked about the case of a convicted sex predator and former drug trafficker who injected a girl with ice on the Sunshine Coast who beat a deportation order due to his “good character”, according to a Courier Mail report this week.

Mr Dutton said he could not have Adam Carey, a 49-year-old Queensland resident with 39 criminal convictions deported, because Mr Carey is a dual Australian and New Zealand citizen.

“This guy is a citizen. He’s not on a visa,” Mr Dutton said.

“In certain circumstances, in limited circumstances, I can strip citizenship from somebody who’s been naturalised, and the AAT can overturn my decision in that regard.

“Now I think it’s a stupid situation, I think it’s a deficiency in the law, I’ve tried to get it through the Senate, Labor won’t support the change.

“This guy is a creep and he should be kept out of the country, and that’s very clear on the facts, and you’ve read some of those out, but this is a big frustration.

“In the visa area, if he was from New Zealand for example, he’s here on a visa, I can cancel the visa, the AAT can’t overturn my decision, but they can overturn the decision of a delegate, and then I can reinstate the original decision of the delegate, this related to citizenship, and I really want to get this law through.”

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton. Picture: AAP

Asked how the AAT had found him to be of “good character”, Mr Dutton said there was “change coming” to the tribunal.

“You can’t go anywhere in the country without people stopping you saying, ‘sort out the AAT,’ and Christian Porter I think is doing a great job as the Attorney-General,” Mr Dutton said.

“We’re doing some work with him at the moment to look at ways we can sort this out, because it can’t stand that these people are here committing multiple offences, serious offences against multiple Australian victims and somehow they’re allowed to stay.

“As I say people should have their day in court, but at the moment the way in which the AAT’s operating in many of these cases is completely unacceptable to the community.”