Statements
Richard Ackland: Is Peter Dutton a fit and proper person to wield such awesome powers?
How un-Australian can you get? Lawyers providing pro bono services to refugees are hopelessly “un-Australian”, according to Peter Dutton, the minister for immigration and border protection.
Yet, the minister’s crass joke about Pacific island nations being threatened by rising sea waters is not un-Australian, nor are comments about “illiterate … innumerate” refugees taking Australian jobs; or describing a female reporter in the Canberra press gallery as a “mad fucking witch”; or refusing an abortion to a pregnant asylum seeker after she had been raped.
They all meet Australian standards, according to Dutton’s skewed grasp of decency. This year he tried to reset the rule of law in a way more favourable to his doggedly inflexibility and boundless ambition. He declared that members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal were ideologically motived and for good measure Queensland magistrates were “hopeless leftwing softies” …
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Richard Ackland, The Guardian