Peter Dutton personally intervened to allow a person with criminal convictions to stay in Australia for a further two months despite his department refusing on three previous occasions.
The revelation about Dutton’s decision in February 2018, when he was home affairs minister, is contained in documents that were produced to a Senate inquiry that investigated his personal intervention in favour of two au pairs.
Dutton granted a visitor visa to the person two days after his office requested a submission, despite there being no evidence of a required change in circumstances since earlier refusals and departmental concerns about the person’s claim to be married to an Australian.
Dutton’s record as home affairs minister has come under renewed scrutiny since the Coalition attacked the Albanese government for releasing 149 people from immigration detention to comply with the high court’s ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful where it is not possible to deport the person.
On 13 February 2018 Dutton’s office requested a ministerial submission for the possible granting of a visitor visa or temporary partner visa.
The submission states that the person – whose personal details including name and nationality are redacted – arrived in Australia on a three-month visitor visa, with a “no further stay” condition specifying they were “unable to lodge any further visa applications onshore”.
The document explains the condition is a “desirable safeguard” where a person “appears to satisfy” criteria for a visa “but residual concerns exist”.
The person’s visa was referred to the character cancellation unit “for refusal consideration … due to offshore criminal convictions”, the nature of which are redacted.
A delegate of the minister found the person “did not pass the character test” but decided not to refuse a visitor visa, instead issuing a “warning letter” counselling about further offending. The submission said there was “no information” the person was a security concern.
The person applied for a waiver of the no further stay condition “on three occasions and each time a delegate refused”, the home affairs department submission said.
In a section titled “immigration history”, it said the person had previously had “two visitor visa applications refused” because they “failed to submit the required police clearance”.
The document also reveals the person claimed to be “in a relationship with an Australian citizen” and that “the two were married”.
But they had “not provided evidence of their marriage”, and the department’s systems indicated that one of the couple was “not in Australia on 2 March 2017”, a detail about their “claimed relationship” revealed in a separate version of the document obtained under freedom of information.
The submission noted that Dutton could only exercise his power if he was satisfied “substantially different compelling and compassionate circumstances have developed since the previous refusal”. The person had not advised of any change of circumstances since the delegate’s decision, it said.
Nevertheless, on 15 February – just two days after the submission was requested and one day after it was received – Dutton elected to intervene under section 195A of the Migration Act to grant them a two-month tourist visa.
In a statement to parliament, Dutton said he had decided to do so “as it would be in the public interest to grant this person a visa”.
“In the circumstances, I have decided that as a discretionary and humanitarian act to an individual with ongoing needs, it is in the interest of Australia as a humane and generous society to grant this person a visitor visa for two months.”
According to evidence to the au pair inquiry, the visa was one of 24 tourist visas that Dutton personally granted between December 2014 and August 2018.
In September 2018 the legal and constitutional affairs committee concluded that Dutton “failed to give consideration to the damage to public confidence in the integrity of the immigration system” in his personal decision granting visas to two au pairs.
The committee said Dutton’s “actions have resulted in a perception, if not an actual, conflict of interest”. It recommended mandatory statements to parliament about ministerial intervention should declare whether the decision was within guidelines.
In a dissenting report, Coalition senators said the inquiry was “a farcical and shambolic witch-hunt” that had, in the case of the au pairs, found “not only is there no smoking gun, there is in fact no gun”.
“The evidence has disclosed no instances of inappropriate conduct by the minister for home affairs,” they said.
In November, the immigration minister Andrew Giles revealed that in February 2016 Dutton had intervened to raise the bar allowing the plaintiff in the high court indefinite detention case, NZYQ, to apply for a safe haven enterprise visa.
On Monday the shadow home affairs minister, James Paterson, suggested in Senate estimates that this was done in order to refuse the application, allowing the government to re-detain NZYQ, who had been convicted of raping a 10-year-old.
Giles told Guardian Australia: “The Richardson report released [on Monday] further confirms what Christine Nixon revealed – that Peter Dutton’s wilful and deliberate mismanagement led to abuse of our visa system that we are now working to clean up.”
Guardian Australia contacted Dutton for comment.
