Labor says Prime Minister Scott Morrison deserves credit for “stopping the boats” but has warned people smuggling is now being done in the air.
An apparent spike in the number of asylum seekers arriving into Australia by plane will be targeted by a Labor roundtable meeting with border security and industry figures.
Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally said Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had overseen a blowout in air arrivals, with nearly 230,000 people now in Australia on bridging visas.
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“Peter Dutton has lost control of the border at our airports,” Senator Keneally told Sky News on Sunday.
“We’ve got to give Scott Morrison and Kevin Rudd credit for stopping the boats and stopping asylum seekers coming by boat but Peter Dutton has seemed to miss the fact the people smuggling operation has shifted from boats to planes under his watch.”
She said she hoped a Labor round table meeting with border security and industry figures on Monday would help identify solutions.
“Ninety per cent of these people are found not to be refugees,” she said. “But they are coming largely from Malaysia and China and being sent here by criminal syndicates and illegal labor hire companies that come on legal visas.”
“They are made to apply for asylum knowing they’ll be put on a two to three-year bridging visa and then they are sent to work in exploitative conditions”
She also blasted Melbourne’s Catholic archbishop for his response to Cardinal George Pell losing his appeal against child sexual abuse convictions.
Senator Keneally, herself a prominent Catholic, said she was gobsmacked Archbishop Peter Comensoli maintained Pell was innocent and questioned whether his victim was mistaken.
“It’s distressing for so many reasons.”
Archbishop Comensoli has also said he would sooner go to prison than comply with proposed Victorian laws making it mandatory for priests to report suspected child abuse to authorities.
“Here we have an archbishop just declaring he is going to break the law rather than report a child sexual abuse that is revealed to him in the confessional,” Senator Keneally said.
“I can’t understand how he can stand in front of the Australian people and make that statement, given all the evidence that has come out of the royal commission in relation to the Catholic church and child sexual abuse.”
Reporter
Sydney
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