An Australian minister was yesterday under mounting pressure to formally explain why he personally intervened to help au pairs from France and Italy after their tourist visas were canceled.
Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, the driving force behind a bitter Liberal Party coup that unseated Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister last week, has strongly denied any wrongdoing.
However, the scandal is deepening, with an Australian Senate committee inquiry due to scrutinize his decisions next week at the request of opposition politicians.
In the first case, Dutton, then immigration minister and known for his support of hardline policies, used his discretionary powers to free a Frenchwoman from detention in November 2015 and allow her to stay in the country.
The move was made after an appeal to his office by Australian Football League boss Gillon McLachlan, documents released under transparency laws showed.
The woman was reportedly planning to work as a live-in babysitter for a relative of McLachlan, but did not have the proper paperwork when she arrived.
National broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp and other media said Dutton’s intervention also helped a wealthy family that was also a Liberal Party donor.
The opposition Labor Party has been demanding to know whether their political donations influenced his decision to free the woman.
A second case emerged on Thursday involving an Italian au pair.
That woman was detained at Brisbane Airport, also in 2015, because Australian Border Force officials believed she planned to work as a babysitter in breach of her tourist visa.
Dutton overruled the decision, which benefited the family of a man he used to work with when he was a police officer before entering politics, according to leaked documents cited by local media.
Critics have contrasted the cases with Dutton’s unwavering commitment to keeping asylum seekers in overseas detention under Canberra’s immigration policies.
However, Dutton yesterday insisted that they were “common-sense” decisions.
“I make a decision that I believe is in the best interest of our country. I do it every day with visas,” Dutton told commercial radio 2GB. “That’s the whole reason for ministerial intervention, because you believe the department has made a decision that is not right.”
He added in a separate statement that he has dealt with hundreds of representations over immigration matters every year.
“I consider cases on their merits. Any suggestions cases are determined on any other basis, including whether I knew the individual who referred the matter, is completely ridiculous,” he said.
However, Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann said the public would be stunned by the “troubling pattern” of interventions.
“It’s not about the powers, it’s about the process,” Neumann said, adding that most people would have expected the au pairs to be “put back on a plane and deported.”
Dutton launched a leadership challenge against moderate Turnbull last week, but was defeated by Scott Morrison in the race to become prime minister.
Senior Labor lawmaker Anthony Albanese suggested that the leaks about the au pair cases were “payback for his role in wrecking the Liberal Party last week.”
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
RSS