Giles gone but Labor still can’t be trusted on immigration
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally sacked his factional ally and incompetent Immigration Minister Andrew Giles following two years of self-inflicted disasters and constant mismanagement.
The new minister must do better, and they will be judged on four measures:
• Ensure Australia’s Net Overseas Migration doesn’t overshoot the Government target — migration under Minister Giles exceeded every Government target.
• Clean up the mess that is Labor’s response to the NZYQ court case and demonstrate how you are making public safety a priority.
• Closely monitor the operation of Ministerial Direction 110 and ensure it is not used to allow criminal non-citizens to remain in Australia and reoffend, as happened with the previous direction introduced by Minister Giles.
• Stop the boats that have restarted under Labor and stop the asylum seekers arriving by plane. The monthly number of asylum seekers arriving by plane had been trending upwards under Minister Giles, with 2380 asylum seekers arrived arriving in May, the highest monthly number since Labor was elected.
Minister Giles was a prime example of why Australians don’t trust Labor on immigration or national security.
Australians have paid the price for Labor’s incompetence when it comes to immigration.
Minister Giles’ record of mismanagement makes for sorry reading:
• Record migration of 528,000 arrivals, as Australians endured housing shortages, record rent increases and a cost-of-living crisis.
• Seven murderers, 37 sex offenders, and 72 violent offenders released into the community with weak, or no, supervision.
• More than 150 non-citizens awaiting deportation were released into the community with the wrong visa.
• Removed the ankle bracelet from a criminal released from immigration detention, who went on to allegedly bash and rob a grandmother.
• Signed and introduced Ministerial Direction 99 that saw non-citizen criminals who should have been deported allowed to remain in Australia, with at least one going on to allegedly commit murder, then allowed the Prime Minister to blame public servants for the mess.
• More than 42,500 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by plane.
• Skipped three important meetings with his department about the mass release of hardened criminals from immigration detention and instead promoted the Voice referendum and flew to the United Kingdom to attend a Labour Party conference.
• Tried to ram through legislation with no consultation and debate and when the Coalition recommended sensible amendments following a Senate Inquiry he dropped the “urgent” legislation and it hasn’t been seen since.
• Invented a non-existent drone surveillance program when under pressure in a media interview then blamed his department, which actually gave clear written advice there was no such program.
• Was the star attraction at multiple Victorian Labor party fundraisers where he was lobbied on visa issues as he spent his first six months in the job rattling the tin for the Andrews Government.
• For seven months he did nothing about the Nixon Review which had highlighted serious organised crime operating within the visa system.
Minister Giles was a failure in the Immigration portfolio and Prime Minister Albanese must own that failure.
Prime Minister Albanese gave Minister Giles a job he was ill-equipped to perform and refused to sack him despite a long-running series of mishaps and mismanagement.
Minister Giles told an ALP conference that he did not support boat turnbacks, which were a key plank of the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders that stopped the influx of illegal boat arrivals under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments, and yet the Prime Minister still gave him the job as Immigration Minister.
It is no surprise that when Minister Giles became Immigration Minister the asylum seeker boats started again.
Giles now joins a sorry club of former Labor Immigration Ministers in this Government that includes Chris Bowen, Tony Burke, and Brendan O’Connor, who were ministers when:
• 1200 people, including children, died at sea.
• 8,000 children were forcibly placed in detention.
• 50,000 people arrived on more than 800 boats.
• The cost to taxpayers of managing illegal boat arrivals blew out by $10.3 billion.
Labor can’t be trusted to keep our borders secure, and they can’t be trusted to manage immigration in a sustainable way.