Nat Barr loses out to Anthony Albanese’s government

Nat Barr has fired back at Anthony Albanese’s government after he announced a cabinet change.

Clare O’Neil has been removed from Home Affairs and transferred to the Housing and Homelessness portfolio, while Andrew Giles has been removed from Cabinet altogether after being sacked as Immigration Minister.

Mr Albanese defended his ministers despite the fact that he dismissed them after a Supreme Court ruling freeing more than 150 prisoners caused a major political headache for the government.

Many of the detainees had serious criminal convictions, including murder and rape. According to figures released in March, one in five former detainees has been charged with new crimes since their release.

Barr confronted NDIS Minister Bill Shorten about the reshuffle on Monday morning, asking whether it was an admission that the government had failed on the immigration detention issue.

“Not at all,” Mr Shorten replied. “Claire O’Neil is moving into housing after the good work she’s done on cybersecurity and the three reports identifying Peter Dutton’s blunders. She will now be our chief spokesperson on housing.”

But Barr was unimpressed by Mr Shorten’s response.

“How can we talk about mistakes made by the opposition when clearly mistakes were made on immigration,” Barr asked.

Sunrise presenter Nat Barr clashed with Government Services and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten in a heated exchange over the government’s immigration ‘failure’ to release prisoners

“The prisoners were released, a fifth of them reoffended — 28 out of 153. Where was the application to send any of them back to prison? It was a failure no matter how you look at it,” Barr said.

Mr Shorten responded, saying the prisoners had been released thanks to the High Court ruling.

“And then what happened?” Barr asked.

Mr Shorten responded: ‘What has happened is we have put in place a regime to ensure that we get these people back under control.

“Of course what happened with the attacks is terrible, but the Supreme Court has turned the law on its head after 20 years. The reality is I wish Peter Dutton had written tougher laws so the Supreme Court couldn’t find the loopholes.”

Barr continued to criticise Shorten.

“Bill, we had rapists and domestic abusers using a ministerial directive from Giles to stay in this country. How is he successful?” she asked.

Mr Shorten disagreed with the Sunrise presenter, explaining that the ministerial guidelines were the same as those of the previous government.

Barr interrupted the issue and added that Mr Giles has filed Directive 99 in 2023.

The controversial ruling required the Administrative Appeals Board to take into account a person’s ties to the community when assessing appeals against deportation.

The directive is linked to several cases where Australian non-citizen criminals have had their visas revoked, allowing them to remain in Australia.

“Nat, that’s the third interruption,” Mr Shorten replied.

“I’m telling you the facts of the case. The High Court was the entity that changed the law. We’ve been trying to fix it ever since.”

Barr added that Australians were “angry” about the government’s response to the High Court decision, saying a cabinet reshuffle would not have been necessary if there had not been problems.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce called Giles’s handling of the High Court decision a “complete fiasco”.

‘Why did this guy stay so long? Why is he still here? Not only [the reshuffle] show that he was bad, but it shows how bad he was. In fact, he wasn’t just bad; he was horrible.’