New Ministerial directive ordered on visa cancellation
The Opposition has accused the government of putting the relationship with New Zealand ahead of the safety of Australians when introducing a ministerial direction last year on how visa cancellation cases should be dealt with.
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TVTranscript
00:00 For three days in a row now, the opposition has posed question after question about this
00:08 Direction 99.
00:10 And today the focus of the line of questioning from the opposition was about the discussions
00:15 that Australia was having with the New Zealand Government ahead of Immigration Minister Andrew
00:21 Giles introducing this ministerial Direction 99 early last year.
00:27 Now we know that the way it was previously working had angered the New Zealand Government
00:33 for years because from their perspective they were seeing cases of people who were born
00:40 in New Zealand but had spent the majority of their life in Australia being deported
00:44 back to New Zealand after being convicted of serious crimes.
00:49 And so the New Zealand Government had a problem with that issue and that was, as we know,
00:55 a factor in why the Government introduced this Direction 99.
01:00 But Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was accusing the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today
01:05 of putting the relationship with New Zealand ahead of public safety.
01:10 Take a listen.
01:12 Direction 99 was created as a result of the Prime Minister's meeting with former New Zealand
01:16 Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in July of 2022.
01:20 Why did this weak and incompetent Prime Minister put his close and sycophantic relationship
01:25 with Jacinda Ardern ahead of the safety of Australians?
01:30 All the anger is there in just one question.
01:33 The anger, the abuse, it's all there Mr Speaker.
01:41 Now this line of questioning continued throughout question time in the House of Representatives
01:46 this afternoon.
01:48 The Opposition Leader Susan Lay also put in questions to the PM.
01:54 My question is to the Prime Minister.
01:56 Did the Prime Minister implement Direction 99 at the request of New Zealand Prime Minister
02:01 Jacinda Ardern?
02:03 What we do is we determine our own policy.
02:07 Our own policy according with our own interests.
02:10 And that is what we have done.
02:15 So how many of these reinstated visas has the government now actually cancelled?
02:21 Immigration Minister Andrew Giles says that he's now cancelled eight and he's been working
02:27 day and night looking at these cases.
02:30 He says there are around 30 under review.
02:33 So the Immigration Minister says that his Direction 99 in his view wasn't being applied
02:39 by the officials at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with common sense because it had
02:45 resulted in people with serious criminal convictions avoiding deportation from Australia.
02:52 And so the government has now committed to rewriting this ministerial direction to prioritise
03:00 the community safety of Australians as the top priority.
03:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]