Home affairs minister says he is ‘gobsmacked’ at hypocrisy of Greens and Labor who have questioned use of his powers

The home affairs minister Peter Dutton says he’s kept a list of Labor MPs who have approached him with “quirky” visa cases and contends he has not misled federal parliament over the au pair visa controversy.



Under sustained pressure over the use of ministerial powers in 2015, when he approved visitor visas to an Italian and a French au pair facing deportation, Dutton on Monday told reporters he was gathering information about his political opponents “because I’m gobsmacked by the hypocrisy in the Greens and Labor”.

The minister said MPs approached him regularly after question time requesting a use of his discretion as immigration minister. He said Chris Bowen, the shadow treasurer who was an immigration minister in the last Labor government, “has written to me hundreds of times asking me to intervene”.

“Has he got a personal connection? You would need to ask him that. Would it help his electorate? You would need to ask him that,” Dutton said.

A search of parliamentary records by Guardian Australia suggests immigration ministers have intervened to grant more than 30 visitors visas to tourists to Australia over the past six years.

The home affairs minister said he examined all the requests on their merits, and if it was inappropriate to intervene, then he did not intervene.

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Dutton declared the au pair controversy was generated by his political enemies or by “someone disaffected within Australian Border Force” intent on throwing “mud”. He said he was “big and ugly enough to take care of myself”.

“I’m a person of high integrity, I pride myself on that. If there are cases people can point to where I have done something illegal or immoral, point to them”.

Dutton has faced criticism from Labor and the Greens about potentially misleading the parliament because he was asked in March whether he could rule out “any personal connection or any other relationship between you and the intended employer of either of the au pairs.”

Dutton responded: “The answer is yes.” He said he had received no personal benefit from the decision and “I don’t know these people”.

Guardian Australia revealed last week that Dutton saved an Italian au pair from deportation who was due to work for a former Queensland police colleague.

Answering a question on Monday about whether or not he had misled parliament, Dutton said: “Remember when the allegation first came up, the suggestion was that my family had benefited from this arrangement, right?”

“The allegation was that my family had – was going to employ someone who was an au pair.”

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“My wife works, but I can tell you she’s a great wife and a great mother. We never had an au pair, she never asked for one. We have never been in a situation to employ an au pair and made an active decision not to.”

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“That was the initial mud thrown. There was no personal gain for me, or my wife or children.”

Dutton said he exercised discretion in many matters based on the merits of each case. “But to say I had some personal link or that I was acting on behalf of, you know, somebody that I was personally associated with, is complete nonsense.”

Over the weekend, the prime minister echoed Dutton’s argument. “If someone makes an application not even in the name of the person that you worked with 20 years ago, and actually does it through basically the switchboard, I mean that’s what doesn’t pass the pub test,” Scott Morrison said.

“The allegation that is being made, that somehow there was some relationship or knowledge, does not pass the pub test at all.”

“If people want to say that every person that they may have worked with 20 years ago is now all of a sudden their best mate and they talk to each other every other day, well everyone knows that’s rubbish.”