A defiant Clare O’Neil is resisting demands for her to fall on her sword after a cancer-surviving grandmother was allegedly bashed at the hands of a released immigration detainee.
The Home Affairs Minister rejected calls from the Coalition and Sunrise host Natalie Barr to resign over the saga after Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan was charged over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Mr Doukoshkan, 43, was among the 152 detainees released after the High Court ruled last year that indefinite immigration detention was unlawful.
After being accused of being “missing in action” on the issue, the beleaguered minister fronted up on Sunrise on Wednesday morning and Barr was frank in her assessment of Ms O’Neil’s performance.
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READ NOW“There are calls this morning for your resignation over this catastrophic failure that has left 73-year-old grandmother Ninette (Simons) and her husband bashed and bruised. Will you resign?” she asked.
Ms O’Neil expressed her “deepest sympathies” with Ms Simmons before pointing the finger at the Coalition.
“I would just say I think it was a bit disappointing yesterday to see the opposition immediately outplaying the politics on this matter,” she said.
It’s alleged Mr Doukoshkan was part of a Perth trio who posed as police officers, beat Ms Simons, tied up her husband Philip and stole $200,000 worth of jewellery.
The incident is reported to have occurred two days after he was bailed after being arrested on a drug-related charge.
According to The Australian, Mr Doukoshkan has appeared in court three times since he was released from immigration detention after last year’s NZYQ High Court ruling.
Ms O’Neil said if she “had any power to put that person back in detention, that is exactly what I would do”.
“There is a bunch of decisions that were made by state courts, usually with regard to state crimes,” she said.
“I’m not going to refer to the specifics of this individual case, but as a Commonwealth minister, I can’t do anything to change what state courts decide to do with regards to bail.”
The Australian Federal Police and Border Force are responsible for monitoring the cohort. State police investigate state-based offences allegedly committed by non-citizens.
But Ms O’Neil refused to be drawn on whether Mr Doukoshkan was wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet at the time of the alleged offence.
“One of the layers of protection that we have in place, Nat, is a group of very experienced law-enforcement officials making decisions about how people will be monitored in the community,” she said.
Barr hit back: “So you accept no responsibility?”
“What I have to do is manage the situation that the High Court has left for us in changing the law, whether I am home affairs minister, whether Jane (Hume) was home affairs minister, whether Peter Dutton was home affairs minister, we would be grappling with the same problem,” Ms O’Neil responded.
Coalition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume questioned why the government had not opposed Mr Doukoshkan’s bail.
“Clare, for the last six months, you have come on this program and said if there is anything you could do, you would do it. Yet you did not oppose bail to this,” she said.
“Where was this man’s ankle bracelet? Where was his electronic monitoring that you promised us? Why was he out in the first place? Why has he been allowed to continue to wander around the streets and to (allegedly) commit these crimes?”
Senator Hume called for the minister to accept responsibility and resign.
“You must resign now. Every time you look at Ninette Simmons’ face you will see the failure of your junior minister (Immigration Minister Andrew Giles) and yourself. This is unacceptable and I’m afraid it’s time to go,” she said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers stood by both Ms O’Neil and Mr Giles when asked by Barr later on Wednesday.
“Should (they) keep their jobs over this?” the Sunrise host asked.
“Yes, in short. They are working very hard to deal with some of the legacy issues in the system but also to respond to this High Court decision and if the opposition were serious about finding a solution here, they’d be part of the solution rather than playing their usual nasty and negative politics.”
The saga is just the latest in a series of flashpoints over the government’s handling of the High Court’s ruling in the NZYQ case last November that prompted the release of non-citizens into the community.
Many of those released had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder and rape.
Preventive detention laws that would allow individuals to be held for up to three years at a time if they were deemed by a court to be an unacceptable risk to the community were also passed.
Last month, Labor tried and failed to rush through last-minute laws would jail asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal avenues for up to five years if they did not co-operate with an attempt to deport them.
It would have also allowed Mr Giles to block visa applications from countries outside of Australia that did not accept their citizens being involuntarily returned, such as Iran.
The proposal was ultimately delayed after the Coalition teamed up with the crossbench to send the laws to a senate inquiry.
The inquiry will hand back its report on May 7.