TRANSCRIPT - ABC RADIO NATIONAL WITH SALLY SARA - WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2025
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW – ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST WITH SALLY SARA
SUBJECTS: NATIONAL SOCIALIST NETWORK, MEETING WITH NAURUAN PRESIDENT DAVID ADEANG, MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH NAURU
WEDNESDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2025
SALLY SARA: A South African man who attended a neo-Nazi rally outside the New South Wales Parliament has been taken to immigration detention after the Federal Government revoked his visa. Just days before the protest, the country's top spy warned that community cohesion is under attack by groups such as the far-right National Socialist Network.
Tony Burke is the Minister for Home Affairs and joins me now. Minister, welcome back to Breakfast.
TONY BURKE: Good morning.
SALLY SARA: Matthew Gruter was identified as one of the dozens of men at the protest outside the New South Wales Parliament. You've nabbed his visa. What's his fate today?
TONY BURKE: Well, he's in immigration detention and he remains there. Either he gets his own ticket, at which point he leaves and goes to South Africa straight away, or if he decides to not organise his own ticket, then ultimately, he gets deported. But he's not heading back into the Australian community. I think there's a really simple concept here that when someone's on a visa, they're a guest in Australia. Every visa holder is a very welcome guest, and they treat Australia with incredible respect. But if someone turns up as a guest in your home and they just want to create arguments, abuse people and wreck the place, then you ask them to leave. And this bloke, for whatever reason, has decided that he can arrive in Australia and then tell a whole lot of Australian citizens that they're not welcome here. Well, the person who's not welcome is him and he can leave.
SALLY SARA: Is anyone else from that rally potentially facing deportation?
TONY BURKE: We continue to go through the series of these groups’ immigration status. So, in turn, most people involved in these organisations are in extremism in any direction, most of them are homegrown, sadly. And so most people that you're talking about there are already Australian citizens. But I've got a particular role where somebody's on a visa. And it's also when you cancel a visa, you're not just making - the impact of the decision isn't only on that individual, it also sends a message to the rest of Australia about what we find acceptable. And one of the things that this particular organisation tries to do is they try to clad their bigotry in patriotism.
Now to cancel the visa and say, no, you're the person who's going, sends a really clear message that you're not the people being patriotic - like you hate modern Australia. And modern Australia involves people from all around the world who've made a home here, who get along with each other and are building a really great country. And it's important in moments like this as well that we send that strong national message out. Modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing. It's who we are. And you know, for me, part of loving Australia is loving modern Australia. And yes, that's multicultural with people who've.. some have got heritage that's always been on this land and a whole lot of us have heritage that's come from around the world and we build a country together.
SALLY SARA: Earlier this month, the ASIO Director-General, Mike Burgess, said he's concerned that rhetoric and increasingly violent propaganda of the National Socialist Network will prompt spontaneous violence. Are you looking at legislative reforms in this area at all?
TONY BURKE: At the moment, there's significant powers we handle, but as you'd expect, there are conversations that I'm having with my department to make sure that all the laws that we have are fit for purpose, not only with my department, but obviously the different intelligence and law enforcement and security agencies that are within my portfolio as well. So, I'm always pressure testing with ASIO, with the Australian Federal Police, with the Criminal Intelligence Commission and with AUSTRAC that you've had stories on about this morning as well, just to make sure that our laws are fit for purpose. And I think in this stuff, because you've got bad actors constantly trying to attack wherever your legal situation is, you never get to a point where you say, okay, laws, they're all fixed. You're always reviewing, because the nature of the attack and the nature of what people want to do to our social cohesion is always changing.
SALLY SARA: The Coalition says it's making immigration policy a priority after settling its position on net zero and emissions. Your shadow counterpart, Jonno Duniam, said yesterday that immigrant communities have been made the scapegoat for the government's failure to build enough houses or keep pace with funding health and education. What's your response to that?
TONY BURKE: Well, first of all, if they've been made a scapegoat, it's largely been by the rhetoric of the Liberal Party. And that's where the anti-immigration, a whole lot of the anti-immigration rhetoric over the last 12 to 18 months has come from. So, to make that as a characterisation of the government, I find, well, I find unusual. In terms of anything in immigration policy, the most important thing is we don't get stuck in a debate that just deals with a final number and say, oh, we'll change the final number. You're not in a proper policy conversation until you start to say, okay, which visa class, which category, because everything you change has an impact. Even on the issue that he refers to there for housing.
Yet, I was talking to somebody involved in property here in Perth yesterday who was going through the different skills shortages that he needs immigration to be able to fix in order for houses to be built. If you don't have immigration, you can't fill the hospital system or the aged care system in Australia. There's a series of economic consequences beyond the total numbers with anything to do with immigration. And you need a system that is decent, that respects the country and who we are, but also is really tightly targeted to the different economic needs as well that we have in Australia.
SALLY SARA: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast. My guest is the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke. Minister, you met with Nauruan President David Adeang last week. What did you discuss and why wasn't the meeting flagged ahead of time?
TONY BURKE: Oh, President Adeang and I meet quite a bit. It's often the concept with leaders throughout the Pacific that they're in and out of Australia at different points in time. But it wasn't flagged in advance. I put out a Tweet straight after the meeting to let it be known that the meeting had happened.
SALLY SARA: After media inquiries?
TONY BURKE: I'm not sure of the answer to that. I don't… in respect to my Twitter account, I asked someone to put out the Tweet. I don't know the timing as to when it went out but I don't do it on my own phone. It comes up on my account but there's someone in the office who does it for me.
SALLY SARA. So, it wasn't you that put it out?
TONY BURKE: Well, a whole lot of my social media… the same as anybody else, we've got people in our office who help us with it. Yeah, I don't think that'd be a surprise. To answer your question, the meeting went through all the different issues as you expect that, that we're dealing with in my portfolio, with respect to Nauru. I've got a very long relationship with President Adeang. He was the Finance Minister and the Justice Minister back in 2013 when I was first the Minister for Immigration when at that point there was a whole lot in regional processing that we were putting together. We've reconnected since I've come back to the portfolio and you know, whenever we meet we talk about regional processing and also the third party
resettlement arrangements that we now have in place.
SALLY SARA: Whistleblowers have alleged to Nine newspapers that the Finks outlaw motorcycle gang has infiltrated the Border Security operation, winning a key taxpayer funded contract to provide security on Nauru to former detainees. Is there anything you can do about that, given it's an issue that ultimately lies with the Nauruan government?
TONY BURKE: The contracts that you're talking about are contracts independently taken as a decision of the Nauruan government. Australia is not party to the contracts in any way. But as you would expect, and I think, as any Australian taxpayer would want, anything involving criminal associations or anything that my security agencies can help with, we provide that information. And I can simply assure you that when that information is provided, as it has been and was part of that discussion, it's taken very seriously of Nauru. What they then do with it, though we're not a party to the contract, is a decision that they will take. But I have no doubt that they're taking those issues very seriously.
SALLY SARA: Labor as Opposition, was highly critical of the secrecy around the Coalition's handling of asylum seeker matters. Now you're in government, are you abiding by your own standards? Does the Federal government have a transparency problem?
TONY BURKE: There are some issues with respect to, particularly where you've got people trying to break your system, where you don't want to basically be providing information that will be used by bad actors to further break your system. So, for example, we've had a visa system in Australia, when you've got people who are trying to get into Australia without visas and the criminal networks that are trying to do that, they know that none of their operations have been successful, they know that nobody gets to stay in Australia, but exactly the processes as to why their methods keep going wrong, they don't know. And I don't intend to be helping them with that. Where it's information -
SALLY SARA: So, how would releasing something like a Memorandum of Understanding with Nauru, how - would that fall into that category?
TONY BURKE: Oh, there's different points where the Australian legal system asks for different documents and at that point those things do become public. The different parts of this -
SALLY SARA: What does that mean?
TONY BURKE: The document that you've described, there's different documents that are there, including the one you've described, that I think will become public at various points in time. We work on the basis -
SALLY SARA: Is there any legal barrier to that MoU currently being released, Minister?
TONY BURKE: Sorry, I was talking when you were talking. I didn't mean to talk over you, I apologise.
SALLY SARA: Is there any current legal barrier to the MoU with Nauru being released right now?
TONY BURKE: Oh, the normal barrier with anything involving another country is we wait, ideally, we wait until there's agreement from both countries for documents to be released, sometimes under the judicial system of either Australia or Nauru, before you've reached agreement on the timing of the release of a document.
SALLY SARA: Is there any legal barrier at the moment and has there been any objection from Nauru to releasing the MoU?
TONY BURKE: We don't have an agreement between Australia and Nauru at this point in time about the release of the document but as I've said a couple of times now, there are times where the legal system asks our lawyers to provide different documents because pretty much everything I do in this portfolio ends up legally challenged that's the nature of the job, the immigration minister……
SALLY SARA: So, it might come out in court is that what you mean or?
TONY BURKE: It may well - these documents are likely to be provided during the course of different legal actions that take place.
SALLY SARA: But not before, likely?
TONY BURKE: Unless there is an agreement between Australia and Nauru.
SALLY SARA: Tony Burke Minister for Home Affairs, thank you for your time this morning.