Scandal has stuck to Morrison, but offshore truths could hit home for Dutton

But Anthony Albanese pounced on what he described as “serious allegations”. The prime minister said: “This is taxpayers’ money and Mr Dutton has a responsibility to explain what occurred on his watch as home affairs minister with this scandal.”

The Coalition’s defence of Morrison during recent inquisitions has been lukewarm; he’s now a backbencher, politically failed and an embarrassment, and on his way out of parliament.

The defence of Dutton, however, as the movement’s leader, will be much more spirited. The Liberal leadership makes the point that, before Dutton was minister, Labor ministers operated in the same way in the portfolio, playing no part in awarding contracts. So they are pursuing him as a political stunt, runs the argument.

For Labor, the allegations are a political gift to keep pressure on the Coalition and to put Dutton on the defensive. For the Greens and the teal independents, it’s an opportunity to remind voters that they campaigned on integrity as a key theme. The Greens were the first of the political parties to call for a federal anti-corruption commission; this week they called for a royal commission into Home Affairs. A brace of teals – Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender, Zali Steggall and Kylea Tink – also demanded a public inquiry.

The particular Bhojani incident was one part of a much broader set of systemic concerns. As McKenzie, Bachelard and Amelia Ballinger wrote this week: “Australia’s Home Affairs Department oversaw the payment of millions of taxpayer dollars to powerful Pacific Island politicians through a chain of suspect contracts as it sought to maintain controversial offshore asylum seeker processing centres.

“Financial data, internal emails and whistleblower testimony implicate Home Affairs’ lead contractors – Broadspectrum, Canstruct and Paladin – in suspected systemic misuse of taxpayer dollars in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.” Some of the biggest and most lucrative contracts were let without competitive tender.

At least one of these three lead contractors was a Liberal Party donor – Brisbane-based Canstruct, which was paid $1.82 billion in taxpayer funds over five years to run the Nauru centre. The relationship between Canstruct and the Liberals is expected to come under close Labor attention in parliament.

One Liberal MP, Tasmania’s Bridget Archer, crossed the party line in calling for an independent inquiry into the allegations: “I certainly think they are very serious revelations and warrant further inquiry,” said Archer. It was “critical that there is trust and integrity in government contracts”.

The chair of the Centre for Public Integrity, former NSW Court of Appeal judge Anthony Whealy, says that the government “is right to hold an independent inquiry”, but he adds a key caveat. “At the moment all that’s been revealed looks bad for the Coalition, but I’m not sure that it reveals what we’d normally call corruption,” says Whealy, one of the original campaigners for a national anti-corruption commission.

“Maybe it shows Home Affairs asleep at the wheel, maybe it shows Home Affairs turning a blind eye, but clearly it warrants closer examination. If there’s anything worse uncovered, that could be referred to the NACC,” the spanking-new National Anti-Corruption Commission, whose commission took effect this month.

He makes the point that there’s a rich backlog of material already on the NACC commissioner’s desk. For instance, just this week, the chief fundraiser for a Morrison cabinet minister, Stuart Robert, left the country and “severed all ties” rather than face a parliamentary committee on Friday to answer some tough questions about his dealings with Robert.

As for Robert himself, a close ally of Morrison’s and a fellow member of the Morrison parliamentary prayer group, he quit parliament in May.

An independent inquiry into Home Affairs and this week’s revelations, says Anthony Whealy, might generate enough extra material to “make a referral to the NACC much more formidable. If it refers for investigation payments through Nauru and PNG, that may generate material – it’s not enough for Home Affairs to say ‘we didn’t have relationships with the sub-contractors’. I think they had an ethical and certainly a moral obligation to ensure that enormous sums like these are handled correctly and not used in any way that’s illegal.”

As for the specific Bhojani incident and the $9.3 million contract, says Whealy, “on the face of it, it was turning a blind eye to something that required a much more vigilant degree of oversight” rather than evidence of corruption.

Beyond any alleged malpractice in the management of the offshore detention centres, the Home Truths series exposed systemic, criminal abuse of the visa system. As part of the series, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published online, in full, a confidential report for the federal government by the former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon.

Nixon found what she describes as “grotesque abuses” of the visa system, with temporary migrants the victims. One example, exposed by the Home Truths series, was the muscling in by Albanian organised criminal syndicates: “State and federal law enforcement officials have issued repeated warnings in confidential reports circulated to Home Affairs that the Albanian mafia has strategically rorted the migration system for more than a decade to build powerful criminal enterprises,” write the investigative reporters.

“Secret policing intelligence links the Albanian mafia to shootings or suspicious deaths in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, large-scale drug importations and money laundering.”

The Nixon report makes a series of recommendations for repairing the system. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil had already declared that the visa system for temporary workers was “broken” – “all the rules that we use to decide who comes in and who doesn’t aren’t working,” she told this masthead.

O’Neil is working on a comprehensive reform of the visa system, expected to be announced in October. It will include policy responses to the Nixon report.

But while the policy repair work goes on quietly in the background, the political cut and thrust of an inquiry – another one – into the Coalition years will rage in the foreground. That’s just another home truth.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.

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