PETER VAN ONSELEN: It’s time to put Australia’s safety before your best mate, Albo

Why won’t the Prime Minister do his job and sack his most incompetent frontbencher, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles?

As we all know, Giles has led the release of rapists and child molesters from immigration detention into the community. He ignored warnings from the Supreme Court and his own department that could have prevented their release, or at least ensured their release was better managed.

Problems continued as authorities lost track of many of these perpetrators after they were released from detention. A number are said to have committed further offences, including bashing an elderly Perth woman.

Now we find out that convicted rapists and other criminals from overseas living in Australia will be allowed to stay, rather than being deported as in the past.

Why? Due to a hint from Giles that these perpetrators should be shown leniency if they have family ties to Australia.

Anthony Albanese (pictured) continues to support his immigration minister, but for how long?

This includes a child molester who attacked his stepdaughter while his wife was in labor. He is given leniency to stay on family grounds. Hard to believe, but true.

Thanks to Giles, the child molester has the right to stay due to Ministerial Direction 99. What do I hear you ask?

They are Giles’ instructions to his own department on how visas should be managed, when they should be revoked and when not. It turns out it’s also a license for convicted criminals to abuse a system that is now tilted in their favor.

Immigration ministers from time to time issue guidance on how visas should be assessed. In January last year, Giles released this new one: Direction 99.

A new primary consideration was added in visa assessment that never existed before: ties to Australia could trump crimes committed. Even ones as serious as child rape.

The incompetence is staggering.

So why doesn’t Albo just fire Giles to send a message that he expects more from his ministers?

Is it loyalty to his friend over the Prime Minister’s responsibility to the nation? Giles and Albo are very close and come from the same faction within the Labor Party. He is one of the Prime Minister’s closest friends in Parliament.

The Australian community has experienced the release of dozens of convicted criminals from immigration detention

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles (pictured) is a close personal friend of the Prime Minister. Isn’t that why he was fired?

Does Albo agree with the decisions Giles makes? The Prime Minister stood next to former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern as changes to immigration rules were announced that prevented long-term Australian residents from being sent home in New Zealand even though they had lived here for decades with binding ties.

But is this latest example really the way the Prime Minister intended this policy change? And does he really believe that the people who elected him to The Lodge agree with his assessment if that is the case?

The policy change does not only apply to Kiwis. It applies to almost every resident who comes here.

There have been a dozen cases at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) where criminals previously deported can now stay, thanks to Giles’ Direction 99.

Which member of the AAT allowed this latest criminal – a child molester of a relative – to stay because of family ties to Australia?

Former Labor Speaker of the House of Representatives Anna Burke.

Remember when the Labor Party complained that the Coalition was appointing too many of its own partisan allies to the AAT?

Oh the irony.

Former Labor leader Anna Burke (pictured) was the AAT member who approved a child molester to remain in Australia due to family ties to the community

Perhaps Albo won’t dump Giles out of pride: he doesn’t want to admit he made a bad choice in his first appointment as first-term immigration minister. Someone who in a past life was an activist for causes in the same policy space.

It was a poor decision, which caused much muttering within Labor at the time.

Albo probably worries that if he dumps Giles, it will only add to the call for other ministers to fall on their swords too. Such as Giles’ senior minister in the Cabinet, Home Secretary Clare O’Neil.

The prime minister is also said to be concerned that dumping Giles could smack of hypocrisy, given Albo’s support for changes to immigration laws when he stood alongside Ardern shortly after becoming prime minister.

After all, would Giles have given such directions without at least tacit support from the Prime Minister?

Whatever the reason Albo won’t fire this failure of a minister, the risk is that by not doing so, the failure will only continue, the government will lose the confidence of the voters who once supported it, and Australia with open arms will continue to welcome. exactly the kind of people most of us would rather be deported for our crimes.

Is defending Giles really the hill this Prime Minister wants to die on?