Dutton Squirming Away From Qs About Kids In Detention Is Really Somethin’

If you ever find yourself in an unsavoury situation in which you are being questioned about topics you *really* don’t want to be questioned about, just take note of Peter Dutton‘s astounding ability to avoid answering the question: “Are there children in detention?”

As you may recall, his department put out a press release last Friday evening (a bizarre time to post super positive news) that all children had been released out of detention. Bravo all round! Someone pop the damn bubbly.

In all of about two seconds later, a source within Dutton’s department leaked to The Guardian that the “release” was merely a reclassification from “held detention” to “community detention”. Super. 

And not long after THAT, there was a riot – or incident, or altercation, depending on which source you look at – on Nauru, in which two children were believed to have been involved.   

Department of Immigration vs SMH vs The Daily Telegraph

Dutton gave an interview to ABC‘s Mark Colvin last night, and was perhaps hoping to address some of the communities concerns about the riot / incident. What he actually managed, however, was to waste half of it avoiding questions about whether there are children in detention, Y or N, in one of the greatest answer-wiggling displays this country’s ever seen.

MARK COLVIN: So I mean, are you saying that there were no children involved in this?

PETER DUTTON: Mark what I’m saying is that I think these people are being used as pawns, frankly, by some advocates in Australia –

MARK COLVIN: Sorry, could you answer my question about the children.

PETER DUTTON: I’ve already answered the question in relation to the children.

MARK COLVIN: Well can you give me that definitively, there were no children involved in this incident.

PETER DUTTON: And I’ve given you that advice already…

MARK COLVIN: Well what is it, is it that there were no children?

PETER DUTTON: Well it’s, as I said, I’m not advised that there were children involved –

And so on and so forth. Literal entire minutes later, Colvin finally managed to extrapolate the words from Dutton’s mouth with all the consistency of a three month-old piece of gum you’re peeling off in strips from your shoe.”Which is the misinformation [being peddled by the media?” he asked.

“The misinformation is in relation to children,” Dutton replied, before adding, “There is no child from a boat in detention. I’ve been very clear about that” in a positively wild misunderstanding of the word “clear”.

For clarity, this is how long he spent avoiding the question:

Well. Glad that’s cleared that up, then.

Listen to the interview / read whole transcript here, it’s a bloody doozy.

Source: ABC.

Photo: Getty / Hagen Hopkins.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV