Nat Barr has unleashed at Anthony Albanese‘s government after he announced a reshuffle of his cabinet.
Clare O’Neil has been dumped from Home Affairs and moved to the Housing and Homelessness portfolio, while Andrew Giles was removed from Cabinet entirely after being sacked as Immigration Minister.
Mr Albanese defended his ministers despite moving them on after a High Court ruling which released more than 150 detainees caused a major political headache for the government.
Many of the detainees had serious criminal convictions, including murder and rape. According to figures released in March, one in five former detainees has been charged with new crimes since their release.
Barr confronted NDIS Minister Bill Shorten about the reshuffle on Monday morning and asked if it was an admission that the government had failed on the immigration detention saga.
‘Not at all,’ Mr Shorten responded. ‘Claire O’Neil is moving to housing after the good work she’s done in cyber security and the three reports identifying the mess-ups Peter Dutton made. She’s now going to be our lead spokesperson on housing.’
But Barr was not impressed with Mr Shorten’s response.
‘How can we be talking about mess-ups from the Opposition when there were clearly mess-ups with Immigration,’ Barr asked.
Sunrise host Nat Barr clashed with Government Services and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten in a heated exchange over the government’s immigration ‘failure’ for freeing detainees
‘The detainees were released, one-fifth of them reoffended — 28 out of 153. Where was the application to return any of them to prison? It was a failure by anyone’s language,’ Barr declared.
Mr Shorten hit back, saying the detainees were released because of the High Court’s decision.
‘And then what happened?’ Barr asked.
Mr Shorten replied: ‘What happened is we put in place a regime to make sure we can get these people back under control.
‘Of course, what happened with the assaults is terrible, but the High Court, after 20 years, turned the law on its head. The reality is that I wish Peter Dutton had drafted stronger laws so the High Court couldn’t find the loopholes.’
Barr continued to unleash on Shorten.
‘Bill, we had rapists and domestic violence offenders using a ministerial direction made by Giles to stay in this country. How is he a success?’ she asked.
Mr Shorten disagreed with the Sunrise host, explaining that the ministerial directions were the same ones used under the previous government.
Barr interjected, adding that Mr Giles introduced Direction 99 in 2023.
The contentious order required the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to consider an individual’s community ties when reviewing deportation appeals.
The directive has been tied to several cases where non-citizen criminals had their visa cancellations overturned, allowing them to stay in Australia.
‘Nat, that’s the third interruption,’ Mr Shorten fired back.
‘I’m telling you the facts of the matter. The High Court was the entity that changed the law. We’ve been trying to fix it ever since.’
Barr added that Australians were ‘angry’ at the government’s reaction to the High Court decision, claiming that, if there was no problem, a cabinet reshuffle would not have been needed.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce labeled Mr Giles’ handling of the High Court decision as a ‘complete fiasco’.
‘Why did this guy last so long? Why is he still there? Not only does [the reshuffle] show he was bad, but it shows how bad he was. In fact, he wasn’t just bad; he was atrocious.’
