Parliament isn’t back in session yet but the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs is in Canberra having a good old chat with folks from Home Affairs about its minister, Peter Dutton, and his whimsical habit of seemingly approving visas for au pairs against departmental advice.
And while the former police officer is playing the nothing-to-see-here card pretty heavily, today’s revelations have made things even less good for the ol’ Dutthead.
First up, a representative for Inclusive Migration Australia confirmed that she’d made six requests for intervention from Dutton: two were knocked back, two were currently in train, and two were approved. And that one of those two approvals was for an individual which had worked on Liberal MP Andrew Hastie’s campaign, and that the other had been through the personal contact of Liberal MP Ben Morton.
And then AFL boss Gillon McLachlan, whose relative was one of the au pair employers, casually mentioned that he’d chased then-PM Tony Abbott’s office up about a visa for “a friend of a friend” who was coming out to play polo, to be told that it was being sorted out.
Au pairs. Polo players. Honestly, are the next lot of approvals going to be for stablehands, scullery maids, governesses and underbutlers?
And while this is admittedly hilarious, it’s also adding up to a massive, potentially career-ending headache for Peter Dutton.
When the House of Representatives returns next week Greens MP Adam Bandt is planning to move a motion of no confidence against Dutton on the grounds that he misled parliament when he replied to Bandt’s request that he confirm that he did not have “any personal connection or any other relationship between you and the intended employer of either of the au pairs”.
The problem is that the Duttster replied “The answer is yes” rather than the more accurate “well, one au pair was working for an old police colleague and the other was with a family of major Liberal donors. Also, big ups to the backbench, Hastie-A’n’BenMo! Dutty out!”
Just a reminder: a fortnight ago it looked like Pete was going to be our PM. Now it’s a line call as to whether he’ll even be in parliament.
We live in interesting times, friends.