We were talking with a caller earlier about Justice Tony North and his decision. He ruled that the 433 men, women and children were illegally detained by our SAS troops last month and that they should be freed. He set a deadline of 5pm tomorrow for the Tampa boat people to be returned to Australia. They were heading for Port Moresby. Now the boat is heading towards Nauru. But I’m a bit confused ‘cause the civil rights lawyers said they might even be able to sue the Australian Government for millions of dollars for false imprisonment and yet Justice North said the Migration Act did give the Government some wide powers. To explain some of it to me and other things happening in the world Defence Minister Peter Reith good morning.

Morning Derryn. Let me start by saying I couldn’t agree with you more.

Well I’m confused. I thought that Justice North he did say the Migration Act gives you wide powers to detain and remove unlawful non-citizens who were about to enter or who were in Australia.

Derryn the Government does not agree with Justice North’s decision. We are in the full Federal Court this morning arguing against it. As far as I’m concerned it’s bad in law. It’s very bad for Australia. It might be good for people smugglers but it’s very bad for Australia and we have already had reports from Indonesia that there are people smugglers who are saying that that decision is a green light to send more boat people to Australia. Now that is just unacceptable for this country and the government is strongly opposed to that decision and we’re going to fight it tooth and nail.

If you lose in the Federal Court, the (inaudible) court, would you go to the High Court?

Well, you know I mean the lawyers are going to have to make a decision about all this but from my point of view mate we’re going to fight this thing all the way.

I think you have to.

Of course we do because that decision is just bad for this country. That is a green light and when you get reports that people smugglers are saying that it’s a green light you know it just cannot be allowed to stand and I will forever hold Kim Beazley partly responsible for that because the Labor party voted against the legislation that would have prevented that situation arising. It’s just plain wrong.

But in fairness they have supported you on this idea of an appeal haven’t they?

Well look, oh yeah on the appeal but that’s after the event mate. I mean this thing should never have got to where it got. It was only because Kim Beazley gave in to his Caucus and used his numbers in the Senate with the Democrats to stop us getting that legislation. I think it’s an absolute outrage and then they’ve got the cheek to say ‘oh we’re prepared to negotiate with you’. We said to them when he made that dreadful statement in the Parliament that they weren’t going to support the legislation we said well look we are prepared to talk to you. What about a, you know, a six month sunset clause and then we can have an argument about it later but let’s at least fix the problem we’ve got now and his answer was not prepared to negotiate.

You offered a sunset clause?

Absolutely and they just rejected it out of hand. I mean these, Kim Beazley, look words do not describe how I feel about this. This is an absolute outrage that we cannot use in effect the Australian Defence Force to protect the territorial integrity of our country. Now what do you have a Defence Force for if you can’t use it to prevent people coming into this country illegally?

I thought that you as the Commonwealth and if it was the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister, I thought the Commonwealth had an inherent right, an inherent authority to stop unlawful people coming illegally here?

Well that was the, that was an argument in laymen’s terms which was put before Mr. Justice North and was not accepted and that’s, you know the sovereignty that we have as a Government to protect this country is an argument which we will certainly be putting in the full Federal Court.

Now the Judge, am I right in saying by his decision has virtually ordered an Australian ship, the Manoora, the HMAS Manoora to turn around and come back here with it’s human cargo and deposit them on the Australian mainland?

The state of play is the ship is still heading towards Nauru because that is consistent with the sort of practical effect of his decision. But I mean in the end if that decision is upheld then we’ve got to bring those people, those off the Tampa, back to Australia. Well we are opposed to doing so and as I say we’re going to fight it every inch of the way.

What about the argument I mentioned in my introduction that some civil rights lawyers say they might be able to sue Australia for millions of dollars for false imprisonment?

Yeah, well over my dead body is the answer to that. Well I’m just totally opposed to it. I mean it’s just completely wrong and the fact is that the New York issue, the New York act of terrorism just means that things are not going to be the same in the future as they’ve been in the past. And one of the things that we will need to be looking at is improving security more generally and part of security is to ensure that you can properly process and manage and know whose coming into the country and if we are just going to have an open door then the fact is that that is an invitation for trouble in the future. And the Government is totally opposed to having an open door and that’s why we put the sign up. You don’t come into Australia unless you got through proper process and this country has an excellent humanitarian record per capita better than just about anybody except Canada. So it’s not a question of our humanitarian record. The fact is as a government and as a people we have a right to decide who comes to this country and this Government will not leave stone unturned to protect that very basic right of all Australian citizens.

Now most of the boat people, following the attacks in New York and in Washington, most of the boat people I think are Afghanis fleeing the Islamic repression of the Taliban. But you have to think of the possibility that some of those males could be Bin Laden appointees and could be terrorists.

Derryn, look I don’t know that. We don’t know that.

No we don’t.

We shouldn’t make assumptions about that and I don’t want to refer to any particular group of people by their ethnic background. But there is a simpler, broader point to make and it was in fact made by Jim Kelly the Assistant Secretary of State, the number two bloke to Colin Powell responsible for our region when he was in Jakarta only ten days ago and he said, the press reports were that he said look you’ve got to be able to manage people coming into your country, you’ve got to be able to control that otherwise it can be a pipeline for terrorists to come in and use your country as a staging post for terrorist activities. Now that’s in no reference to anybody’s background, ethnic background, the Middle East or anything else. But you know that, you couldn’t get a clearer message and that is that if you can’t control who comes into your country then that is a security issue. And that is one of the reasons why the Government is so determined to ensure that we can within the law manage the right of people to come into Australia.

Now the day after the attack on the World Trade Center Towers and on the Pentagon, as Defence Minister what contact have you had with your American counterparts?

Well we have daily contact with the US. You’ll appreciate that we have a comprehensive relationship with the US on the defence side. One aspect of that of course is intelligence and I can’t talk about the intelligence side of things but you can fairly speculate we have a day to day very close relationship with the US and as the Prime Minister has said we stand shoulder to shoulder with the US and we’re doing everything within our power to be of assistance.

Things like increased security at Pine Gap. I mean do you get involved in that?

Yes. Overall yes and we do have heightened security arrangements in respect of monitoring and surveillance at various defence assets and facilities around Australia together with US and Israeli properties and personnel.

Okay are you and the Prime Minister in contact over the fate of CHOGM later this month?

Well CHOGM’s going to go ahead. We do have pretty extensive arrangements in place. The Queensland police have the sort of primary role in respect of security but the Commonwealth is certainly involved. We have formal arrangements with Queensland. We’ve put a lot of resources into CHOGM and a lot of preparations of which I’ve been personally involved in. So we obviously monitor that situation very closely. We get a constant feed of intelligence and other information and we monitor the risk and we make sure that our response is relative to that risk.

Are you at all uncomfortable about the fact that you or the Prime Minister or the Queen will have to shake hands with President Mugabe of Zimbabwe?

Look I don’t want to get into that now. The basic thing about CHOGM is that people who are members of CHOGM are entitled to turn up to the meetings. We have our certain views about what’s going on domestically in some of these countries, of course we do, and Alexander Downer’s been in London in the last week I think making some very strong statements as the Prime Minister did when the parliament was sitting ten days ago.

All right Mr. Reith thanks for your time.

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