Credlin: Why Anthony Albanese is not up to job of being Australia’s prime minister

Australians will usually forgive a first-term government for honest mistakes but not only have shocking mistakes been made, they’ve consistently been lied about, writes Peta Credlin.

In politics, you can’t always predict the issues that cut through with the community because they don’t always correlate to the money being spent. Back in the Howard era, I remember a $15,000 grant that upgraded the change room showers at a footy club getting the front page of the local paper, while a billion-dollar highway bypass barely rated a mention.

More often than not, what cuts through isn’t about money anyway. It’s about something far more personal, and that’s Anthony Albanese’s problem as the images of a bashed Perth grandmother made headlines across the country last week. My mum could have been Ninette Simons, your mum too. Or any other Australian woman.

And in a week where the safety and security of women was supposedly a key focus of the Albanese government, it was the government’s own incompetence, and attempts to cover it up, that put Ninette at risk.

The fact foreign criminals can be accused of repeatedly breaking the law, and yet seemingly never get locked up, makes a mockery of the government’s pledge to keep Australians safe. This is a test of character that this government is consistently failing, because whatever it claims in public, in practice, it always finds a reason to back the rights of illegal migrants here in Australia over the right of the community to be kept safe from dangerous criminals.

These asylum seekers who the Australian legal process has rejected refuse to go back to their home countries, we refuse to send them, and now when picked up for allegedly committing crime after crime, we let them have bail, and they stand accused of offending again. It is a cycle made worse by the government’s incompetence and dishonesty.

Assault and burglary victim Ninette Simons.

Under the new laws that the Prime Minister rushed through the parliament before Christmas, the 150-plus foreign criminals earlier let out of detention after a High Court decision could be returned to jail for up to five years for breaching their visa conditions, such as a late-night curfew. As well, the government could apply for preventive detention of any foreign criminals deemed a risk to the community without waiting for a crime to be committed.

Not only has the government failed to apply for a single preventive detention order despite having almost six months to do so, but it’s also failed to make any attempt to keep Mrs Simons’s alleged attacker locked up, even though it is claimed he’s breached his visa conditions at least six times.

Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, who was released from immigration detention, was arrested along with two other men for the violent bashing and robbery of an elderly cancer survivor.

When convicted drug trafficker Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan first went before a court in February for breaching his bail conditions, the government prosecutor admitted to concerns about his reoffending.

“Notwithstanding that”, said the prosecutor, “we do not oppose bail … but further breaches may not have the same response”. The magistrate then told the alleged attacker that he was “on very thin ice” and was only getting bail because “the Commonwealth is being very generous”.

Later, in March or April, despite the seriousness of Doukoshkan’s original crime and despite these repeated bail breaches, and a new drugs charge, he was allowed to remove his ankle monitor, leaving him unsupervised in the community.

Last week, the government falsely claimed that it had opposed bail for Kuwaiti-born Doukoshkan. Then, the government insisted that the decision to allow bail and to remove his ankle monitor had all been made at arm’s length from ministers by the Community Protection Board, even though that is not actually the law.

This board does not make decisions; instead, it gives advice to the minister and it’s the minister who decides. Or it should be the minister, unless he hands it off to a delegate to make the call. In three court appearances this year, Doukoshkan has got bail. Yet on Friday, the PM insisted it was none of his government’s business, saying the board had made the “wrong decision” to release him, but “they make the decisions independently”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks virtually before a National Cabinet on gender-based violence on Wednesday. Picture: Gaye Gerard/Pool/Getty Images

That is a lie. Anthony Albanese does not even know his own legislation. The board can only make a recommendation and that must then be approved (or rejected) by the minister or his delegate. By late on Friday, the government was forced to come clean with the truth with Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’s office admitting it was an unnamed ministerial “delegate” who had signed off on the decision to remove the ankle bracelet from the convicted criminal alleged to have bashed and robbed Mrs Simons. So not only is Giles incompetent, he’s now delegating the most serious aspect of his job to a faceless bureaucrat in the public service.

Honestly, just when you think this detainee mess couldn’t get worse, it does. What’s now on display is a PM pretending bad errors of judgment are anyone’s fault but his own or that of his ministers. Even though we elect leaders to lead – not to hide away when the going gets tough or to blame others. And this mess is emblematic of this government’s inability: first, to get things right; and second, to take responsibility for its own blunders.

Australians will usually forgive a first-term government for honest mistakes, but on this issue, not only have shocking mistakes been made, but they’ve consistently been lied about. It’s a character test that Anthony Albanese and his ministers have monumentally failed. He is just not up to the job of Prime Minister.

HEY BIG-SPENDER LABOR, HOW ABOUT SOME CASH FOR OUR HARDEST-HIT?

With the budget less than a fortnight away, the government is talking economic responsibility, while practising the big spending and vote buying that’s in Labor’s DNA.

It’s hoping for an interest-rate cut that would take some of the cost-of-living pressure off families, but its spending addiction means the next interest rate move could be UP rather than down. Every time it announces new spending – which is virtually every day – it’s adding to inflationary expectations and hence the chances of interest rates rising even further.

Last Tuesday, $1bn of your money went to a US quantum computer company to build an outpost in Brisbane, after lobbying by ex-Labor staff.

Professor Toby Walsh, a UNSW computer engineer, said it was “outrageous” that this was done via “a secret expression-of-interest process” and that $1bn is “a heck of a lot of money for what the government promises is 400 jobs in Brisbane”, at, would-you-believe, an eye-watering $2.5m a job! And yet there are families living in tents in parks in Brisbane?

On Wednesday, the government announced $950m to help women escape domestic violence, but did nothing about lax bail laws that are the biggest problem.

On Thursday, the government offered the states an extra $4bn a year for public hospitals – and to buy peace with the Labor premiers.

And on Friday, the government flagged yet more spending to shore up votes in Western Australia and Queensland.

If there’s a surplus on budget night, it will be an accidental one, off the back of high resource prices – including for the coal and gas exports the government wants to scrap – rather than the result of good economic management.

With this government, all that ever counts is the politics.

Why else would it be spending $40m to advertise the tax cuts that everyone gets anyway?

Got a news tip? Email [e-mail]

Originally published as Credlin: Why Anthony Albanese is not up to job of being Australia’s prime minister