Helping out ‘mate’

Ex-ABF boss claims Dutton’s office called over au pair detention

THE former head of the Australian Border Force says he was contacted about helping a “mate” of Peter Dutton to get an au pair out of immigration detention.

Roman Quaedvlieg revealed this in a letter on Wednesday night to a Senate committee looking into Mr Dutton’s use of his ministerial intervention powers to release two au pairs from detention.

Mr Quaedvlieg said he got a phone call in June 2015 from Mr Dutton’s chief of staff, who said he was calling on behalf of the immigration minister.

“He told me that the minister’s friend, who he referred to as ‘the boss’ mate in Brisbane’, had encountered a problem with his prospective au pair who had been detained,” Mr Quaedvlieg wrote.

He was asked “what needs to be done to fix this? Can the boss overturn it?”, and told the staffer to speak to immigration advisers within Mr Dutton’s office.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who was immigration minister at the time, told Parliament earlier this year he did not know the people the au pairs were working for. He backed this up during an interview on Sydney radio 2GB yesterday.

“They’re looking for a smoking gun which doesn’t exist. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Mr Dutton said. “There’s a disaffected former senior Australian Border Force officer who leaks this information out.”

But Labor shadow attorneygeneral Mark Dreyfus said Mr Dutton still had not explained why it was in the public interest to give the au pairs visas against departmental advice.

The Italian au pair arrived in June 2015 to work for a former Queensland police colleague of Mr Dutton and was given a tourist visa after he intervened to get her out of immigration detention.

In November 2015, French au pair Alexandra Deuwel was detained in Adelaide and Mr Dutton gave her a tourist visa despite his department saying there was a high risk she would breach her visa conditions.