Nat Barr lashed out at Anthony Albanese’s government after announcing a reshuffle of his cabinet.
Clare O’Neil was sacked from the Home Office and moved to the Housing and Homelessness portfolio but remains in the cabinet, while Andrew Giles was sacked as Immigration Minister.
Mr Albanese defended his ministers despite sacking them, following a political headache for the government over the handling of a High Court ruling that freed more than 150 former detainees.
Some of those detained had serious criminal records, including murder and rape. According to figures published in March, one in five former detainees has been charged with new crimes since their release.
Barr confronted NDIS Minister Bill Shorten about the reshuffle on Monday morning, asking if it was an admission that the government had failed in the immigration detention saga.
“Not at all,” Shorten said. “Claire O’Neil is going to be moving into housing after the good work she has done on cybersecurity and the three reports identifying the mistakes made by Peter Dutton. She will now be our lead spokesperson on housing.”
But Barr was not impressed with Mr Shorten’s response.
“How can we talk about mistakes by the opposition when there were clearly mistakes made on immigration?” Barr asked.
Sunrise presenter Nat Barr clashed with Minister for Government Services and NDIS Bill Shorten in a heated exchange over the government’s “failure” on immigration to release detainees
“The detainees were released, a fifth of them reoffended, 28 out of 153. Where was the request for any of them to return to prison? It was a failure, no matter how you say it,” Barr said.
Mr Shorten hit back, saying the detainees were released because of the High Court’s decision.
“And then what happened?” Barr asked.
“What happened is we put a regime in place to make sure we could get these people back under control,” Shorten said.
“Of course, what happened with the assaults is terrible, but the Supreme Court, after 20 years, turned the law on its head. The reality is that I wish Peter Dutton had written stricter laws so that the Supreme Court could not find loopholes.”
Barr continued to attack Shorten.
‘Bill, we’ve had rapists and domestic abusers who have used a ministerial order issued by Giles to stay in this country. How is that a success?’
Mr Shorten disagreed with the Sunrise presenter, explaining that the ministerial guidelines were the same as those used under the previous government.
Barr stepped in, adding that Mr. Giles introduced Directive 99 in 2023.
The controversial order required the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to consider an individual’s community ties when reviewing deportation appeals.
The directive has been linked to several cases where non-citizen criminals have had their visas revoked, allowing them to remain in Australia.
“Nat, that’s the third interruption,” Mr Shorten replied.
“I’ll tell you the facts. The Supreme Court was the one that changed the law. We’ve been trying to fix it ever since.”
Barr added that Australians were “angry” at the government’s reaction to the High Court decision, saying that if there had been no problems, a cabinet reshuffle would not have been necessary.
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce called Giles’ handling of the High Court decision a “total fiasco”.
‘Why did this guy last so long? Why is he still there? (The restructuring) not only proves that he was bad, but it proves how bad he was. In fact, he wasn’t just bad, he was atrocious.
(tags to translate)dailymail
