Albanese and Dutton face-off over public safety and anti-Semitism, as hackers take aim at Australia

Congratulations on reaching the end of a political week that seems — at first glance — to have been designed expressly by a shock-jock producer dreaming of an easy week.

Just to summarise: The government has released some refugees who are also convicted criminals from detention, some of whom are being put up in hotels at public expense.

The PM isn’t here, having jetted off for the second time in weeks to meet the president of the United States, a left-wing octogenarian known for tripping over teleprompters.

And today, the government has made a colossal $7 billion infrastructure announcement! Sounds promising, but they’re being binned, not started. Let’s take events in order.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton used his first Canberra press conference in months to accuse the government of endangering Australians. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)

Albanese and Dutton face-off

The week started with brisk assurances from the government of “significant reforms” and quiet competence, after last week’s unfortunate doughnut week where the only legislation that passed was Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock administering a skilful wedgie to the government’s IR proposals.

But things went to custard fairly quickly, with Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’s announcement on Monday that 80 people had been released from immigration detention.

By Tuesday he was confirming to Question Time that it was a cohort that included three murderers and “several” sexual offenders. (Was the non-specificity of that “several” intended to make things sound less bad? Buh-BOW.)

After an uncharacteristically dozy start, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s inner cop kicked in on Wednesday and he staged his first Canberra press conference in months, accusing the government of putting Australian lives in danger.

He demanded parliament keep sitting until the peril was resolved and that the PM cancel his date with Joe Biden and instead arrange for the National Cabinet to fix anti-Semitism.

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Even accounting for the fact that Mr Dutton once deemed going to a restaurant in Melbourne high-risk, this was clearly a political attack that found its target, judging by the extent to which various cabinet ministers over the ensuing days did the legislative equivalent of running around in circles squealing “I’m a teapot”.

Yesterday, the PM gave back as good as he got in parliament — he and Mr Dutton had the most impassioned face-off we’ve ever seen, in which the PM accused the Liberal leader of weaponising anti-Semitism before hopping onto his plane.

And this was when things started to get really messy.

The government for days had insisted that detainees had been released on strict visa conditions, but as the ABC’s persistent Stephanie Borys revealed, at least a dozen people had been released into the community without any visas at all.

Privately, the government was crying foul but publicly refusing to deny the story. That brings us to this morning, when the government announced it would rush legislation through the parliament to regulate the behaviour of those released. 

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neill, sent out to sell the legislation, said it contained the toughest precautions the government could legally enact.

But by the afternoon, acting PM Richard Marles (not absolutely horrified to find himself in the big chair, as Brett Worthington observes here) pretty much confirmed that they’d agreed to go even harder — ankle bracelets, curfews and the rest.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles opposed the High Court bid to end indefinite detention.(ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

Will all of those released have to wear bracelets? Even the ones who are in fact not violent criminals? Opinions differed depending on which minister’s office you called.

The truly fascinating element in this unspooling situation is the extent to which the political players are at war with their former selves. Mr Giles, who as Immigration Minister opposed the High Court bid to end the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, was well known for arguing the exact opposite in his pre-politics job as a leftie lawyer.

The shocking release of convicted criminals that so enrages Mr Dutton came about because the longstanding practice of indefinite detention (pioneered by the Coalition) was overturned by a High Court dominated by appointees of … the Coalition.

A bridge I’d like to sell you

Mr Dutton’s luck held all week and today he was able to add “meanly not building roads” to the charge sheet against the government, which chose today to announce it was cancelling many billions of dollars worth of promised infrastructure projects.

Now, some of these were kind of pie-in-the-sky anyway, having either been promised by a past Coalition government convinced it was about to lose which then awkwardly didn’t, or offered as a squeaky toy to distract Barnaby Joyce from COP26.

Five commuter car park projects (remember those?) were quietly euthanased among a bunch of other largely unviable plans, as Nicole Hegarty reports.

For an opposition, the chance to curry electoral favour by theatrically mourning the loss of amazing things that you rashly promised to do to curry electoral favour but then didn’t actually have to do because you lost is … well, it doesn’t come along all that often, so you enjoy it when you can.

Especially when the alternative — an incoming government having access to the details of the truly disastrous things you did in office, and using them — is so incredibly embarrassing. See: Albanese Government responds to findings of Robodebt Royal Commission, as reported by Jake Evans.

LoadingA big week for hackers

It was a busy weekend for the nation’s cyber security coordinator, Air Marshall Darren Goldie, due to a hack attack on DP World, Australia’s second-biggest port operator.

The ruthless pre-Yuletide assault has the potential to antagonise Santas everywhere, with the downsides of Christmas malfunction (non-delivery of Barbie landfill for aspirational kiddies) not quite ameliorated by the upsides (perfect excuse for failure to field a gift for puzzling Auntie Flo).

Air Marshal Goldie is the inaugural person to hold the job and was straight into the media, driven by the fire of a thousand suns, or at least the recent memory of what happened when Optus kind of phoned it in.

On Monday, the government announced it would be forcing telcos to report their cyber measures to prevent hacks in the light of Optus’ fiasco last week. On Wednesday, the government blamed China as a major hacker of Australians (with hacks more generally on the up).

This might have been another occasion for the government to roll out Goldie, except, well … ah. It’s a tiny bit awkward, but he’s been recalled to Defence to deal with a “workplace matter”. Hope the HR files are secure!