A Canadian-born Australian citizen who called Peter Dutton’s Brisbane office to voice opposition to treatment of asylum seekers says an electorate officer told him to “go back to the United States then and deal with Trump”.
Doug Stetner, an Australian citizen for 21 years, who represented the national men’s team at the 2015 underwater rugby world cup in Colombia, said the response from the immigration minister’s staffer was both “offensive and comical”.
“Basically, go back to where you come from. I felt like I was talking to Pauline Hanson’s party. It was very disappointing,” Stetner said.
The Brisbane resident, who has been eligible to vote in the last eight federal elections, said he decided to contact his local MP Ross Vasta after reading of revelations of the strategic worsening of conditions for Nauru and Manus Island detainees.
But Vasta’s office did not pick up, so Stetner decided to contact the immigration minister’s electorate office in Strathpine. He said a male staffer fielded the call.
Stetner, 55, a university computer systems administrator, said he was polite but firm. “Basically I said I disagreed with the way they were handling things over there [on Nauru and Manus Island] and they should bring all of these people back to Australia until they can determine what’s going to go on with them.”
He said the staffer told him he did not know what it was like in the detention centres as “reporters are not telling you what’s real”.
“I said, ‘If you let the reporters in there, we might get what’s real,’ but they’re blocking the media so you just get to a point where you don’t trust the government on anything they’re saying,” Stetner said.
Stetner told the electorate officer it made him “embarrassed or ashamed to be an Australian to see this going on” in Australian-run detention centres. “And then he came out with, ‘Well, why don’t you just go back to the US then and deal with Trump?’
“I was a bit surprised by that. I said I was an Australian citizen and Canadian, not American. Anyway, they represent us and all I can do is call them and tell them this is what I’m thinking.”
Guardian Australia twice contacted Dutton’s electorate office to seek the staffer’s account of the conversation. Two male staffers who answered calls denied having a conversation with Stetner.
Neither the office, nor Dutton’s ministerial media spokesman, also contacted by Guardian Australia, provided a response.
