Politics

Silver Lining: Peter Dutton Is No Longer The Home Affairs Minister

Nine asylum seekers died in offshore detention centres under Peter Dutton's care.

by Max Koslowski  21 August 2018
Peter Dutton

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Since almost-Prime Minister Peter Dutton started managing Australia’s offshore detention program in 2014, nine asylum seekers have died in our camps.

In the wake of Dutton’s leadership tilt this morning (in which he fell just 13 votes short of taking over from Malcolm Turnbull), Dutton has resigned as Home Affairs Minister and will move to the backbench — where he’ll be free to organise for another shot at the leadership.

There are tentative reports suggesting that Dutton could have another run at the top job as early as Thursday. Historically, getting a result this close in a first leadership spill suggests that Turnbull’s time is running out.

In the meantime, it’s worth taking stock of exactly what Dutton has done while running our country’s immigration program.

Asylum Seekers Have Died

Yes, nine asylum seekers have died since the end of 2014. Their names are Farborz Karami, Salim Kyawning, Jahingir, Rajeev Rajendran, Hamed Shamshiripour, Faysal Ishak Ahmed, Kamil Hussain, Rakib Khan and Omid Masoumali. You can read about who they were and how they died here.

While there have been multiple attempts to resettle the 1600 asylum seekers still in offshore centres, less than 200 refugees have ultimately been resettled during Dutton’s tenure.

In 2016, a huge number of incident reports were obtained by Guardian Australia. They revealed that almost every month on Nauru asylum seekers were self-harming, starving themselves, or were victims in sexual or physical assaults.

When describing conditions for refugees on Nauru and Manus Island last year, Dutton said that they were “out enjoying themselves outside this centre, by the beach and all the rest of it.”

He’s Gone After Immigrants Repeatedly

Ahead of the 2016 federal election, Dutton said that many refugees coming to Australia “won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English”. Seconds later, he said that “these people would be taking Australian jobs”.

Later that year he said that former PM Malcolm Fraser “did make mistakes in bringing some people in” to Australia, particularly those of a Lebanese-Muslim background.

“The advice I have is that out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second and third generation Lebanese-Muslim background,” he said in Parliament.

More recently, Dutton said people were worried about going out to dinner in Melbourne because of the threat of African Gangs, which is nonsense.

He Really Doesn’t Like Journalists

Earlier in the year, Dutton took aim at left wing media:

“Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC and on The Guardian, Huffington Post,” he said, “can express concerns and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it, they don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.”

And of course, he accidentally sent a text to a journalist in which he called her a “mad fucking witch”. She accepted his apology.

He Boycotted Kevin Rudd’s Apology To The Stolen Generations

Peter Dutton was one of the very few politicians who did not attend Kevin Rudd’s famous apology speech. When asked why, he said that the speech was merely tokenism and that he had no regrets.

He Joked About Pacific Island Nations Drowning Due To Climate Change

In September, 2015 Dutton was caught under a hot mic muttering a joke about how Pacific Island nations might be caught under rising sea levels.

The foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony deBrum, responded:

“Next time waves are battering my home [and] my grandkids are scared, I’ll ask Peter Dutton to come over, and we’ll see if he is still laughing”.

So, if there’s any silver lining to the shitshow that is Australian politics, at least Peter Dutton is no longer the Home Affairs minister. Good riddance.