Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil is attacking Opposition leader Peter Dutton where it really hurts: his much-priced record as being tough on immigration and tough on criminals.
And she is being extremely effective in doing so. She has accused Dutton of “starving” the immigration system during his time in Home Affairs, with dwindling resources opening opportunities for criminal syndicates to exploit weaknesses in the immigration system.
She has accused him of being central to a system-wide breakdown in the immigration system, resulting in the worst possible crimes in Australia, including sexual slavery and human trafficking.
And she has been cool, calm, and direct but cutting in the process.
“Peter Dutton, who’s built his political career talking to everyone about what a tough guy he is on borders and at the same time he’s been cutting funding to compliance, cutting funding to the immigration section of the department,” she told ABC’s 730 Wednesday night.
“And on his watch, literally people with criminal convictions walked into the country and oversaw large rings of human trafficking and sexual slavery, literally the worst crimes that can be committed on this great Earth.”
Speaking after the release of the Nixon report, which highlighted how bad actors are using the slow immigration systems to live and work in the country and are blocking the pipeline for genuine appeals, O’Neil took aim at the previous government for cutting resources in immigration.
The review claimed such actors are intentionally lodging appeals to adverse asylum claims to take advantage of the nine to 11 years they take to resolve, a processing problem made worse with the number of immigration compliance staff dropping from 360 to 203 between 2013 and 2022. It also found that 15 per cent of international students coming to Australia for VET courses are withdrawing from education but staying in the country.
The review was undertaken by Christine Nixon, a former Victoria Police chief commissioner, and raised key concerns about abuses of temporary migrants in the system, including human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
O’Neil said Dutton’s “starving” of home affairs ultimately allowed criminals to coordinate crimes like human trafficking and sexual slavery, some of the “worst crimes that can be committed on this planet.”
Rattled by the release of the Nixon report and the questioning of his record, Dutton immediately called a press conference to defend it. He proudly said that he had cancelled the visas of more than 6000 criminals.
That record, too, was questioned by O’Neil last night.
“Saying that he kicked people out of the country is just, you know, that is just the price of entry to being migration minister of this country — it doesn’t excuse at all the fact that he presided over a system wide-breakdown. We’re talking about literally rings of women that were caught in sexual slavery in our country,” she said.
“And if you can’t be a good immigration minister, I don’t know why you think you can be prime minister.”
O’Neil’s taken one of the most powerful roles in the Albanese Government, with her Home Affairs responsibility also seeing her take the lead on cyber security since 2022 – a huge and growing issue, especially given recent attacks on sensitive data. O’Neil is also one of the youngest ministers in government and, even at 43, one of the youngest MPs. She made history before her federal political career, becoming the youngest female mayor in Australia, when she was elected mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong in 2004.
She is proving herself a better fit for a future prime minister than her Home Affairs predecessor.