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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Peter Dutton has long been one of the most controversial ministers in the federal government.

As Immigration Minister he became the face of the Coalition’s hardline policy on asylum seekers and refugees.

Now, at a time of rising global tension, especially in our region, he’s become the Minister for Defence.

Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper Karen Middleton on Peter Dutton’s new job, and the concerns already being raised in the defence community.

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RUBY:

Karen, in March, Peter Dutton was appointed the new Defence Minister. Can you tell me how he got here?

KAREN:

Well, he came here most directly from the Home Affairs portfolio and he presided over its creation, and was was a driver behind the creation of Home Affairs, which was a huge mega portfolio that took in elements of the old Attorney-General's portfolio, oversees most of the security agencies, and incorporates the old Immigration Department, where he had been prior to being in Home Affairs.

He's been quite a controversial figure. He's a conservative in the political sense of the word and in the Liberal Party's unofficial factions, he's on the right. He was a leadership contender when Malcolm Turnbull was toppled, but obviously was defeated by Scott Morrison. He's got a close relationship now with Scott Morrison, though.
They work well together.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“He succeeded me in the portfolio of Immigration and Border Protection many years ago, and he has carried on, on that great work, the boats have stopped and he kept them stopped.”

KAREN:

And they have similar ideas on national security.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“And I want to thank Peter very much, for the hard road he has had in that portfolio, I have some knowledge and understanding of it.”

KAREN:

But he has been quite outspoken in some areas, particularly in immigration areas in the past.

Archival Tape -- Peter Dutton:

“Let me make this important point - that people, if they've sought to come by boat, they will not be coming to Australia at any point.”

KAREN:

On issues like asylum seekers, on criticising what he called ‘African gangs’, particularly in Melbourne.

Archival Tape -- Peter Dutton:

“We just need to call it for what it is - of course it's African gang violence.”

KAREN:

And some criticisms of Lebanese migrants.

Archival Tape -- Peter Dutton:

“Out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second and third generation Lebanese Muslim background”

KAREN:

So he's an outspoken and tough political operator that sometimes rubs people the wrong way.

And Peter Dutton had made it known around politics that he was interested in the defence portfolio. You might argue that Home Affairs has perhaps more power in the security space, but there is probably more prestige, certainly internationally, in being Defence Minister. It's not clear where he wants to take it, in terms of his own career, but he's now been put into the portfolio that he has wanted.

RUBY:

And so what has the response been to his appointment as Defence Minister from his colleagues, but also from the defence community more broadly?

KAREN:

Well, it's an interesting response, within the parliamentary Liberal Party, we're increasingly seeing veterans, ex-service people taking prominent roles, winning seats in parliament. We have Gavin Pearce in the seat of Braddon in Tasmania. We have Andrew Hastie, who's a former special forces soldier, who is Assistant Minister for Defence now, whose seat is in Western Australia. And we have Phil Thomson in the crucial seat of Herbert based around Townsville in Queensland, which has one the government very much needs to hold onto.

Archival Tape -- Phil Thomson:

“I spoke with Peter just recently when he was up in Townsville and we spoke to the troops and I spoke about the humble warrior, and the humble warrior is what we must become.”

KAREN:

And he's clearly having a lot of influence on the government. He's a conservative and he's a big supporter of Peter Dutton.

Archival Tape -- Phil Thomson:

“And there’s two shades to the humble warrior; on one shade there's a time for kinship, mateship, values based training and on the other shade it's a time for unapologetic aggression and violence.”

KAREN:

Talking to a number of people in the defence community, I think, they are saying they see Peter Dutton as someone who will be active and on the front foot in the portfolio. A lot of them are welcoming of someone they see as decisive, even if they don't necessarily like the decisions that he's making. They say to me that they're happy that someone is making decisions. So I guess that's a criticism indirectly of his predecessor, Linda Reynolds, and perhaps of her predecessor, Marise Payne, who's now the foreign minister.

In the case of Peter Dutton, who is a more outspoken figure in politics than those other two and a more influential one, arguably, politically around the cabinet table, is that we are likely to see, and I think we're seeing already a more politicised approach to matters of defence.

Traditionally, defence was a bipartisan area that wasn't the subject of politicking. But increasingly over the past couple of decades, we have seen the use of the Defence Force in politics, as much as in operations. We've seen politicians who like to stand in front of people in uniform and make announcements. And so we have seen the politics creeping in, I think, into that domain.

RUBY:

So it sounds like there are plenty of people who are anticipating what Peter Dutton might do as Defence Minister, but he’s actually been in that role for about a month now, is there anything that has happened in that month that can tell us about the kind of direction he's taking?

KAREN:

Well, the first big decision he's made since becoming Minister is the one that people are pointing to as perhaps strong, but also controversial. And that is a decision related to the Meritorious Unit Citation that was awarded to special forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan. It's not the same as a medal which is awarded individually. It was awarded as a group.

Archival Tape -- Angus Campbell:

“Justice Brereton considered in detail 57 allegations of incidents and issues, he found there to be credible information to substantiate 23 incidents of alleged, unlawful killing of 39 people”

KAREN:

As a result of the investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, and the report handed down by Justice Paul Brereton late last year, the chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, had indicated that he was going to accept a recommendation from that report and withdraw that citation from all 3000 recipients because of the alleged crimes of a number of them.

Archival Tape -- Angus Campbell:

“While necessary I appreciate that these latter decisions will be a bitter blow for many.”

KAREN:

That was a controversial decision at the time. He acted very swiftly in saying he was going to accept that recommendation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison indicated late last year, within days really of that announcement, that he didn't support the withdrawal of that citation, that he wanted it to remain. And what we've seen from Peter Dutton as his first decision in the portfolio is making good on that warning and indicating he did not back General Campbell and wanted the citation to stand.

Archival Tape -- Peter Dutton:

“The appropriate decision is to make sure we recognise the vast majority, and three thousand people who received this recognition have done the right thing.”

KAREN:

That's being seen very much as responding to political pressure from within the Special Forces community. People have been campaigning saying it was unfair that those who didn't do anything should have their citations stripped away

Archival Tape -- Peter Dutton:

“The handful of people that might be convicted or might be found guilty through another process, more or less than that, whatever the number is, that shouldn’t taint the exceptional work of those soldiers.”

KAREN:

The government's decision and Peter Dutton's execution of it to not proceed with stripping the Meritorious Unit Citation is certainly giving rise to questions about the degree to which politics is going to impinge on operational matters with the military. It's a rebuff to the chief of the Defence Force, and there are some people who are quite worried about it.

People are also watching whether or not this is an indicator about how seriously the government is prepared to take the Brereton findings, beyond just having set up the prosecutor's office, whether it's prepared to have a conversation about them publicly or whether it would really rather they just go quietly away.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this

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Karen, we've been talking about the decision enacted by new Defence Minister Peter Dutton to allow 3,000 Special Forces personnel to keep their citations, but this, it all goes back to the Brereton report, and the alleged war crimes that that report uncovered. Do you think that this decision signals that we might be in danger of forgetting about these allegations or moving on from them too quickly?

KAREN:

Well, I guess it depends who you talk to. Some people would, I think, be happy if we stopped talking about them and moved on. And others think it's very important that they be tackled head on, dealt with, in a legal sense, properly; but also dealt with in an administrative and a system sense within defence, because Australia's reputation really depends on it.

Archival Tape --Neil James:

“It's not about fairness in the way it's being pictured, it's about Australia showing the world that we are serious about tackling a serious problem in our special forces.”

KAREN:

The Australia Defence Association's chief, Neil James, has been talking a lot about this recently.

Archival Tape -- Neil James:

“I mean, it's quite frankly, a disgrace that the CDF’s decision, based on the recommendation of an independent judge inquiring, has been overridden in this fashion.”

KAREN:

And saying it's incredibly important that criminals, if they are found to be criminals, not get away with these things just because they're in a theatre of war, that the laws of war must be upheld.

Archival Tape --

“But unfortunately, the hysteria in the media that keep painting this is somehow people's individual medals are being taken from them, keep forgetting the simple principle that a Meritorious Unit Citation is a collective award, not an individual medal. And if you bask in the collective acclaim, you have to cop some of the blame if some of that service isn't meritorious.”

KAREN:

So he's very much on the side of removing the citations to drive home that point of collective responsibility. And he also says that unless we have an open and honest public debate about this, we are not going to change the culture within the Defence Force that has allowed this to occur.

But the messages coming from the government with Peter Dutton's rise is all seem to be leaning towards the praise of the Special Forces and less focus on the bad things that clearly have happened.

RUBY:

And Karen, when we talk about the bad things that have allegedly happened - has there been much fallout, in terms of our international standing, our reputation, since the allegations of war crimes were made public? How are we being seen by our allies as a result of this?

KAREN:

Well, I think Neil James has said the world is watching, and I think he's correct.

We've already seen responses from other countries. For example, back in late January, the Pentagon in the United States announced its own enquiry into the activities and operations of its own Special Forces in the wake of the Australian report, just to make sure that their own house was in order. And there have been some criticisms of some parts of the Special Forces in the United States and their behaviour. So the Pentagon is looking into that.

But I've also been told that historically there have been some more privately expressed concerns from some of our allies about the behaviour of Australia's special forces on operations in Afghanistan.

The suggestion is not that they were aware of alleged war crimes specifically, but that more the complaints were about what they say was a cowboy attitude and some queries about the high kill count that was being reported from Australian Special Forces, just a sense that they were perhaps not as disciplined as other forces.

RUBY:

Hmm. And Karen, Australia is now withdrawing from Afghanistan in line with the US government's decision. That will happen later this year. So what do you think that that means in terms of where Dutton as defence minister will look to engage next?

KAREN:

Well, if you talk to people about where the next conflict will be, it's likely to be different to that last one we were engaged in insofar as the Afghan conflict was in a landlocked country, we were fighting a non-state actor in terms of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

It's possible that we could see something in some ways in a more traditional sense in future in a battle over territory and a battle against a sovereign state. But we may also be entering domains we've not been in before, like cyberspace and outer space. So the nature of warfare is changing.

We also see the rise of China, the very fragile, damaged relationship Australia has with China now, not getting better if anything, getting worse. And there's great concern about where that might lead and what sort of a challenge that will pose.

Peter Dutton has certainly been very forthright on the issue of China in the past week or so, and saying outright that we won't be pushed around by China and really not taking a backward step in terms of Australia's stance against China on trade matters, on cyber security matters, and just generally on its ambitions, particularly around the region. So that is a huge issue, I think, for the government to deal with.

So we wait to see what Peter Dutton does with his portfolio. There are certainly a number of big challenges, not least the management of tension around the region and the acquisition of huge pieces of hardware in aircraft, submarines and weaponry that needs to be overseen that has been overrunning time wise and money wise. So he's got plenty to do and he's certainly not going to be shy and retiring while he's doing it.

RUBY:

Karen, thanks so much for your time today.

KAREN:

No problem. Thanks, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that Australia will suspend all direct flights from India into the country until at least May 15.

The decision came after state premiers in Western Australia and Queensland called for a pause in flights from India, citing concerns about hotel quarantine capacity.

There are about 9,000 Australian citizens and permanent residents in India who have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as wanting to return home.

Infections in India over the past week have surged to their highest levels. The country added more than 350,000 cases alone on Monday.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see ya tomorrow.

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