He’s remained remarkably tight-lipped over the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in the past, but Peter Dutton has finally let rip at the controversial independent government body – claiming they don’t “reflect the views of the Australian people”.
The AAT provides independent reviews on decisions made by government departments. Its panellists are not publicly named, although its most senior executives are, and most of its decisions are not made publicly available. While they have the power to overturn an initial decision by the immigration department, Dutton’s team can then overturn that decision again in certain, more extreme, circumstances.
That’s exactly what happened recently, when Dutton intervened in its bizarre decision to allow a Palestinian man who was once jailed for belonging to a terrorist group to move to Australia on a partner visa.
According to the Australian, the AAT had claimed he didn’t fail the character test, despite his extensive criminal record. However, Dutton decided the man posed a threat to Australia’s national security and cancelled any possible entry to Australia.
Read more: ‘Blood on its hands’: Murdered woman’s family blasts immigration tribunal
Asked about that incident – as well as many more controversial ones before it – on Ray Hadley’s 2GB radio show, Dutton took the rare opportunity to slam the tribunal as a whole, and confirmed he’s calling for some of its members to be replaced.
“We have a problem with the AAT and there’s no sense pretending otherwise,” he began “The AAT does not reflect, in many of these cases, the view of the Australian people. In my judgement, it’s unacceptable to be appointing people who clearly don’t have the confidence of the government, and clearly don’t have the confidence of the Australian people.”
He passionately insisted that his main priority is to ensure foreign criminals can’t re-offend in Australia, and he vowed to deport anyone posing a potential security threat.
“We are looking at ways in which we can reform the migration aspect of the AAT and I want to make sure that if we cancel the visa of someone who has committed serious criminal offences, or someone we know has been involved in crimes… that person has their visa cancelled and they’re deported from our country,” he added on the show.
“I’m not going to take a backward step on this. We are going to make sure that the AAT reflects community standards. We aren’t going to allow people to stay on and commit further crimes, for further victims to suffer at the hands of these people. We are talking about serious criminals, we don’t want them in our country. I want them out.”
Read more: Tribunal blocks Dutton’s attempt to cancel visa for deadly boob job nurse
It comes after a series of shocking decisions from the AAT. More recently, it went against the immigration departments and allowed an Iraqi father-of-seven with multiple criminal convictions to remain in the country – despite him allegedly pretending to be a gay Christian to stay in the country.
Elsewhere, the Herald Sun revealed there were 164 cases in which criminals were saved from having their visas cancelled, or simply not granted, over the past eight years. Of those, eight were convicted murderers, 17 were rapists, 33 were drug dealers and 23 were found guilty of armed robbery.
In a statement released on April 27, the AAT noted that “recent media coverage included claims questioning the transparency and accountability of the AAT’s operations”. The tribunal noted that decisions on whether to approve or set aside decisions by one of the Immigration Department’s delegate on visas on character groups made up only a small part of its workload.
“In 2016-17, there were 168 reviews relating to visa cancellations and refusals on character grounds undertaken by the AAT,” the statement said. “Of these, 19% set aside the decision made by the original decision maker, 52% affirmed the decision made by the original decision maker, and the remaining 29% of cases were withdrawn, dismissed or not reviewable.”