Kimberley Caines: Why I’ll be watching final sitting week of the parliamentary year with popcorn in hand

Peter Dutton couldn’t have used a better word when describing the immigration detention debacle — circus. It’s the final sitting week of the parliamentary year, and I’m watching with popcorn in hand. New laws to create a preventative detention and supervision regime for non-citizens released from immigration detention are set to pass on Thursday, but it has been quite the performance from all sides of politics over the past month. The Opposition Leader is ending the year on a high thanks to the Prime Minister’s misfortunes. The first being Labor’s failure to control the group of more than 100 criminal detainees released onto our streets. The other was the undetected arrival of a boat with suspected asylum seekers onboard off the Kimberley coast. And the Government continues to be unable to provide the cost-of-living relief households desperately need. Dutton has called for circus ringmaster Anthony Albanese to put pies in the faces of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil. “The Prime Minister should sack (them) and put ministers who are competent into those roles to clean this (immigration detention) mess up,” he said. He will recalibrate over the Christmas break before rolling out a “bold agenda” next year. Dutton has said from day one in Opposition that he planned to return the Coalition to power after a single term. He’s been keeping a low profile until now but things are about to really ramp up.