PETER VAN ONSELEN: How Anthony Albanese and his best mate Andrew Giles committed the seven deadly sins in their latest balls-up
How can the Prime Minister think it is appropriate not only to refuse to sack a minister as incompetent as Andrew Giles, but also to put him in charge of efforts to clean up the mess he has created in his portfolio?
It’s unbelievable.
The answer lies in Labour’s seven deadly sins that dictate its woefully inadequate response to a colossal government failure.
PRIDE
The main reason the Prime Minister doesn’t want to fire Giles is pride. Albo does not want to give the opposition a ministerial scalp, let alone the scalp of one of his best friends in parliament.
He thinks this could cause more problems and that it would be a bad thing after being so embarrassed by the Voice’s failures.
So Anthony Albanese is acting out of pride when he protects his immigration minister, rather than acting in the best interests of his government and the Australian people.
The saying goes: pride comes before a fall. If Albo doesn’t do the right thing and fire this incompetent minister, Labor will have to find a new Prime Minister who will.
Pride before the fall? Anthony Albanese (photo) is too proud to dump his friend and party colleague Andrew Giles
SLOTH
The failure to respond to his department’s warning that Direction 99 would backfire was extremely slow.
Giles was clearly warned in advance that chaos would ensue if he introduced these new rules. That’s exactly what happened. Instead, he is now trying to blame the department for not keeping him informed.
Giles’ lazy unwillingness to heed the advice and warnings of his own department is an important piece in the puzzle of how and why Labor has botched this issue so badly.
GREED
Protecting a close ally and keeping him within the ministry also clouds the prime minister’s judgment.
His greed to maintain the numbers around him. Greed because he wants his friends to enjoy the trappings of government. Greed because he wants to keep his tight-knit group of left-wing faction allies on the front bench in positions of power.
It is an unedifying quality, especially for a prime minister who has long been proud of his humble origins.
Pathological hatred? Labor can’t hide how much it loathes Peter Dutton (pictured), clouding the Prime Minister’s judgement
WRATH
Labour’s hatred of opposition leader Peter Dutton is almost pathological.
That wrath, directed against Dutton, determines the government’s response to this crisis: digging in, not wanting to give Dutton a political victory, trying to shift the blame back onto him through a distortion of illogical arguments.
It makes Albo look like he’s just playing the blame game – the very criticism he used against ‘I’m not holding a snake’ Scott Morrison in the 2022 federal election.
It makes the Prime Minister look like a hypocrite.
JEALOUSY
Labor has long been jealous of the Coalition winning political campaigns with its “tough on border protection” mantra.
The Labor left in particular is always looking for ways to soften these policies. That’s exactly what Direction 99 was intended to be: a policy change aimed at making it harder to deport Australian residents and visa holders, making it easier for them to stay here.
That is why Albo appointed his left-wing buddy Giles to the portfolio.
The unintended consequence is that rapists, child molesters, and perpetrators of domestic violence have been able to hide behind their ties to the community—and, incredibly, ties to the families they abuse—that have allowed them to stay.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles (pictured) has tried to blame everyone but himself for his mistakes in preventing rapists from being deported
LUST
Bloodlust explains one of the most ridiculous defenses Giles has deployed to keep his ministerial job.
When it came to his office, Labor focused on Coalition appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It promised to abolish the body and replace it with something better.
That bloodlust for bringing down an institution in the name of partisan political point-scoring led Giles to think he could absolve himself of culpability by simply attacking the AAT for making the decisions to allow these criminals who commit heinous crimes into Australia to stay.
The only problem? The AAT acts under the rules that Giles changed and established, forcing them to downgrade the criminal actions of those eligible for deportation. A number of AAT statements make this explicit.
GLORITY
The new Prime Minister enjoys praise. He loves it, even feeds on it.
In this case, he wanted it from former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern. She was hypercritical of Scott Morrison for refusing to weaken deportation laws, which would have allowed criminal Kiwis to remain in this country.
Feeding off a voracious dose of praise, Albo stood next to Ardern and promised to do what Morrison wouldn’t by announcing the policy change that has caused all these problems. This was the unholy birth of the infamous Direction 99.