The Giles interview: ‘I think I’m a persuader’
In an interview with The Saturday Paper, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles says he is trying to establish a social licence to pursue humanitarian goals.
Andrew Giles doesn’t shout at people. He doesn’t engage in personal attacks or try to shout down those with whom he disagrees. That makes the immigration minister a rare political beast.
Giles doesn’t see it as a weakness, although he acknowledges that over recent weeks, as debate has raged over new immigration laws, there “seems to be a pretty broad consensus” about his weakness.
“I don’t see why it is particularly strong to shout. I’m just baffled by this,” he tells
The Saturday Paper.
“I’m a lawyer. I like sentences with lots of subordinate clauses and to really think my way through what I say. You’d see that in how I speak in parliament, how I give speeches if you’re paying attention. I’m careful.”
That is certainly true, at least in one respect. Compared with the alarmist language used by the federal opposition, and also by some on his own side, notably his senior minister, Clare O’neil, his rhetoric has been careful.
In another respect, however, the legislative response to the High Court ruling on indefinite detention has not looked careful or well considered at all. People were released on wrong visas, which had to be redone. At the behest of the opposition, draconian conditions – ankle bracelets, stringent reporting requirements and curfews – were imposed on all, and then removed from many, out of concern they might be unconstitutional.
Then, ahead of another High Court immigration case, due to be heard in a couple of weeks, a second legislative package was rushed through the lower house in just a day.
That legislation would make it easier to deport non-citizens who weren’t cooperating in their own removal from Australia, and to impose mandatory jail terms of at least one year and up to five years for those who continued not to cooperate.
It also would enable Australia to impose entry bans on people from countries that don’t
“I’m focused on demonstrating to the community a sense of control over our systems. I see that as a long process, not about individual wins. It’s about shaping the arc of conversations. I think I’m a persuader. I’d like to think of myself as deliberate in how I do my work.”
accept their citizens’ involuntary removal. It has been tagged by asylum-seeker advocates as the “entry ban and deportation bill”.
In a rare example of multi-partisan unity, Coalition senators were joined by the Greens and other crossbenchers in sending it to a Senate inquiry.
For this piece, The Saturday Paper spoke to 10 people who have known Giles over long periods of his career – fellow Labor politicians, state and federal; refugee advocates and lawyers. The pictures they painted were remarkably consistent.
Jennifer Kanis, who worked with Giles when he was representing asylum seekers from the MV Tampa, calls him dogged and persuasive. Numerous people spoken to for this story gave similar assessments.
“Often in the political world you can’t necessarily trust people to give you an honest view,” says Kanis, who is now a principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn. “I could trust him.”
In all that time she has known him, she says, “I’ve never seen him raise his voice.”
Even refugee advocates vehemently opposed to the recent policy moves give
Giles credit for his accessibility and patient engagement. A number note the sharp contrast with O’neil, who will not meet with them.
Says one, who has known Giles for decades: “Andrew the individual and Andrew the politician is pretty consistent. That is quite rare in politics, especially in such a contested space as asylum and refugee policy.
“We’ve had robust conversations and debate, but he welcomes that. I find that, with a lot of other politicians, as soon as you start disagreeing on a policy or the politics, they shut down the conversation.
“I’ve said to him, clearly, ‘We oppose this bill.’ And we’ll speak publicly about that. And he understands that.
“He’s a decent person in probably one of the most difficult ministerial portfolios and contested spaces. Immigration is like a poisoned chalice.”
It is notable that back in the Tampa days, Giles was arguing for refugees who the Howard government was sending to offshore detention. Then Labor came to support offshore detention.
Back in 2015, the big debate at Labor’s national conference was about turning back boats that were bring asylum seekers to Australia. Giles, along with others in the Labor Left, including Anthony Albanese, opposed so-called turnbacks.
They lost, although they did get agreement to an increase in the official refugee intake and to providing a path to permanent residency for those already here.
The most recent provisions are widely seen as a further hardening of Labor’s position, however.
When this is put to Giles, he says: “Over the last 23 years that I’ve been involved in this debate, I’ve tried to reflect on what has worked and what hasn’t worked, both in terms of policy and in terms of engagement.”
In order to maintain what he calls a “broad social licence” for Labor to pursue its humanitarian aims, he says, the government must be seen to maintain strong borders.
In an attempt to explain this, Giles points to the bigger picture.
“Every day since I’ve been the immigration minister, there’s been a record number of people displaced in the world, a record number of refugees, that is the really big picture in which our humanitarian efforts are located,” he says.
“We are a majority migrant nation. More than half of us are either born overseas or our parents born overseas. We’re also a nation that has welcomed nearly a million refugees since World War II. So it’s written into Australia’s DNA in a pretty profound way.”
That said, however, “we have seen in Australia, as well as elsewhere in the developed world, reactionary politics deployed on these issues”.
Whether it’s Donald Trump in America, or the various right-wing populists who have gained power in Europe, or Brexit in Britain, migration has become a hot-button concern.
“If you look at the politics of this question in Australia since Tampa, I think it’s striking that the last two elections are probably the only two where asylum hasn’t been a big issue,” Giles says.
Clearly the Dutton opposition, inadvertently aided by the High Court, wants to make it one again.
Says Giles: “Immigration broadly plays into, I guess, a reactionary form of populism and concern about cost of living, particularly housing. That is obviously a significant concern. So you have seen through a number of decisions that we’ve made over the last several years, it’s an effort to sort of get a rebalancing happening across immigration.”
To do this, Labor is winding back the demand-driven temporary visa system and preferring permanent residency that provides necessary skills.
“If you look at the debate here, the debate in the UK, the debate in Canada, it’s playing out in very similar terms,” Giles says. “And, again, for people who are concerned about social cohesion, it’s obviously something that we worry about.”
The question is whether, in Giles, the government has a person with the right “skill set” for the job. That is the terminology used by Giles’s major political mentor, Gavin Jennings.
It was back in 1999, says the former Labor Left powerbroker, that Giles first impressed him.
At that time, Jennings was in a tight preselection battle for a seat in the state’s upper house. Giles fronted up and told him he would not be voting for him and set out his reasons.
Jennings liked the younger man’s forthrightness, and later lured him away from the law to work as his chief of staff. In Giles he saw someone with a similar skill set to his own: a policy formulator rather than a retail politician.
“The thing about Andrew is that everything he says and does is through the framework of being a lawyer. He’s a politician who tells the truth; he won’t say disingenuous things,” Jennings says.
“There are many, many, many politicians who will say one thing to a public meeting or a community group. But when they get behind closed doors, in the party room or in cabinet, they say something different or they don’t say anything. But if Andrew says something that he will do in a forum, all whipped up in the room, that matters.”
Jennings concedes, however, that Giles is not so good at translating complex issues into simple messages.
“He’s not good at operating in a world where things are distilled to puerile grabs or gibes. And in parliament people are often measured in terms of whether they’re strong or weak people through the way in which they present themselves.”
Strident looks strong, Jennings says; considered does not.
“Andrew is a thoughtful person. So some people questioned his competence, because he looks as if he’s thinking about what he says, not giving an off-the-cuff response. Andrew currently is suffering because every single word that comes out of his mouth is carefully thought about … unlike those who are attacking him.”
Giles himself puts it differently. In the current circumstance, he says, the more important thing is “to get the policy settings right”.
The political communication, he says, is made difficult because of “the interplay with the courts, which is obviously challenging to speak about, because there are things that we can’t say. That mitigates against delivering very crisp propositions.”
He continues: “I’m focused on demonstrating to the community a sense of control over our systems. I see that as a long process, not about individual wins. It’s about shaping the arc of conversations. I think I’m a persuader. I’d like to think of myself as deliberate in how I do my work.”
It seems that will be a tough task in the months ahead. The Senate inquiry will raise questions, the pending High Court hearing could yet see more detainees released. The opposition attacks will continue.
Yet Giles does not sound like a man feeling the pressure. “The portfolio I have, it’s a job that I absolutely love. And every day I get enormous satisfaction out of the opportunities
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I have to change people’s lives.”