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The same rightwing Australian minister trampling the basic human rights and dignity of refugee families will now be in charge of Australians’ civil liberties, with access to their metadata, including about their health, where they shop and whom they talk to. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is putting Peter Dutton, now immigration minister, in charge of the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the country’s spy agency — as well as Border Force, the Department of Immigration and more. Trailing the Labor Opposition in opinion polls, Turnbull is giving Dutton more power to appease the hard right of his arch-conservative party, misnamed “Liberal”, to keep his job. He has to fear an internal party revolt to remove him from leadership, which happened to his predecessor, Tony Abbot, who is busily and vengefully undermining Turnbull as a backbencher.

Turnbull’s move is trashed by security experts and reportedly opposed by senior Cabinet ministers and the security agencies themselves. Even a Turnbull government minister questioned putting "a fascist like Peter Dutton in charge” of Australian spy agencies.

The civil rights movement GetUp!, which claims a membership of more than one million, is launching a campaign to vote Dutton out of his Brisbane suburban parliamentary seat of Dickson, in Queensland.

In the Australian system of governance a minister must hold an electorate. A former prime minister, John Howard, lost his position because he was voted out by the people of his electorate. Turnbull has a one-seat majority in the main chamber of the bicameral parliament.

“The only sure way to stop Dutton's dangerous influence over our democracy is to vote him out,” GetUp writes to its members. “GetUp members are already hard on the case — building on our grassroots success in the last election, which took Dutton down to a razor-thin 1.6% margin.”

Their plan now is to buy up all the best billboard spaces in Dutton's electorate for the next election, more than a year away. “But once Dutton gets word about what we're planning, we'll need to book them in immediately.”

As usual in GetUp! actions, supporters are being asked for small donations “from thousands of everyday people” to fund the billboard space purchases.

“Dutton has consistently violated core Australian values, like truth, compassion and basic fairness. That's the last person we want in charge of law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and our civil liberties. Even a Turnbull Government minister questioned putting ‘a fascist like Peter Dutton in charge’ of Australia's spy agencies.”