Fans of Peter Dutton’s plan for a new mega-department might describe it as a master stroke to keep us safe from the ‘hordes of Muslim terrorists at our gate’. Critics might suggest it’s just a plan by Peter Dutton to give Peter Dutton a promotion… and further institutionalise racial discrimination. Michael Brull is not a fan.
In an story on Tuesday that received less attention than warranted, Peter Hartcher reported at Fairfax on plans being considered by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to create an Australian Department of Homeland Security.
The way this would be done is by merging “at least half a dozen relevant federal agencies from two departments into a mega-department.” The head of the new mega ministry would be current Minister of Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton.
Hartcher reports that the aim of this expansion would be “to improve co-ordination across the government in preventing terrorist attacks”.
The planned DHS would be created by relocating agencies from other offices. For example, the Attorney-General’s department would lose the Australian Federal Police and ASIO. They would fall under the control of Dutton.
There is some resistance to the move within the government. One government official told Fairfax that the plan was “based on an ambition for ‘empire-building’ by the plan’s architect, Secretary of the Immigration Department, Mike Pezzullo, and Mr Dutton.” A Minister said it “doesn’t have the support of any agency other than Pezzullo at Immigration, and Roman Quaedvlieg,” the Australian Border Force Commissioner.
Hartcher reports that the ABF “absorbed the Customs Department under an initiative of Mr Pezzullo”. A minister complained that, “The people who militarised Customs are now trying to take over the entire national security system”.
As Hartcher reported, Dutton is “the most senior conservative in the Turnbull cabinet”. He “strongly” favours the move. His new ministry will ramp up the government’s focus on preventing terrorism, and presumably give expanded resources and perhaps powers to the Australian Border Force.
This story didn’t cause much of a ripple, but it should have caused considerable alarm. Though the official rationale of the proposed body isn’t to institutionalise racism, we can expect that to be an important result. The Department of Immigration has already been brought into a shared portfolio with Border Protection by Tony Abbott in 2013. Now it would be subsumed into a body devoted to countering terrorism.
Read the full article at by Michael Brull at newmatilda.com.