Sky News host Peta Credlin has called out Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil for her “shocking attempt” at misrepresentation during Question Time on Wednesday.
The government confirmed 141 people have been released from indefinite detention since the High Court handed down its landmark NZYQ decision earlier this month.
One of these people includes the plaintiff, known by the pseudonym NZYQ, a stateless Rohingya man, who faced the prospect of detention for life because no country had agreed to resettle him, due to a criminal conviction for sexual intercourse with a 10-year-old minor.
Ms O’Neil claimed NZYQ would not even been here were it not for the “incompetence” of Opposition leader Peter Dutton.
This was followed up by a comment from Immigration Minister Andrew Giles who claimed Mr Dutton intervened as the then-minister for immigration to allow the convicted paedophile at the centre of the High Court case to apply for a new visa.
Ms Credlin hit out at the “completely false” claims, saying the Coalition inherited 30,000 people from Labor who put into the community on bridging visas because the detention centres were full.
“They were full because under Labor, under ministers like Chris Bowen and Tony Burke, still on Albanese's front bench, 50,000 illegal arrivals landed by boat on our shores,” she said.
“And it was the Coalition - first under my old boss Tony Abbott, and then people like Peter Dutton - who were left to clean up Labor's mess and reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas, because - that's right - Labor, under Kevin Rudd, had abolished them.”
Ms Credlin said assessments had to be done by immigration officials on every individual claim for protection.
“So at staged periods in time, Peter Dutton and every immigration minister lifted the bar to allow a certain amount of people to make their application for a protection claim.
“This is not issuing a visa - Clare O’Neil knows that, Andrew Giles knows that, there is a big difference.”
27 сен 2024
