From Citizens Party and Cairns News
Dreyfus backdates law to enable
deportation of innocent Australian
citizen Dan Duggan
When the Americans asked the Albanese government in 2022 to extradite former US Marines “Top Gun” pilot-turned Australian citizen Dan Duggan, the government should have only asked one question: is the crime they are accusing Duggan of a crime in Australia? Put aside that he was an Australian citizen at the time of the alleged offense in 2012, has a Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the USA issued by the USA which states he “expatriated himself on 01-26-2012”, i.e. Australian Day 2012 when he was naturalised as an Australian citizen, and therefore was not under US jurisdiction but had the same national status as the other Australians who provided training at the Test Flight Academy of South Africa and who have not been charged with any crimes.
Cairns News first posted about Dan Duggan’s plight after he was targeted by the corrupt Biden regime more than three years ago.
Put aside that he is specifically licensed by the Australian government to provide the kind of training he did in South Africa under Australia’s “limited category” air law, meaning he can train people in ex-military decommissioned aircraft that are used for their aerodynamic, not military, properties, and that South Africa has the same “limited category” air law, which means his activities were perfectly legal in both Australia and South Africa. And put aside that in 2012, Australia was conducting joint military exercises with China, the United States was asking to join those exercises, and China was the country everyone was racing to do business with, not an “enemy”.
All of those factors pale in significance compared to the core question of dual criminality—that it must be a crime in both countries to qualify for extradition. It is not, and the government knew it, but instead of abiding by the extradition treaty’s requirement of dual criminality and refusing the request, Albanese chose to scapegoat Duggan to demonstrate his loyalty to the United States. His then-Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus retrospectively applied an Australian law passed in 2018 to the alleged offence in 2012, to pretend to satisfy the dual criminality criterion, so they could do America’s bidding. If the 2018 law really applied, however, it would mean Australian citizen Dan Duggan broke Australian law; so why hasn’t the Australian government charged him with a crime? At least then he would qualify for legal aid! They haven’t, because it doesn’t.
To get away with this travesty, the government is relying on the climate of anti-China political hysteria to fool the media and citizens into looking the other way.
That’s why we need a Dan Duggan watch. Twice, Mark Dreyfus approved Dan’s extradition under cover of Christmas—first in 2022, and then after extensive appeals, again in 2024. The government calculated this outrage would not get attention. When Dreyfus did it the second time, in December 2024, there was even the possibility that because the courts were closed over Christmas-New Year, and Dan was eligible for transportation from 1 January, the family would not get a chance to take out an injunction to stop it so they could appeal.
Now, his case hinges on the judge’s ruling from his appeal heard on 16 October. We need to pre-empt new Attorney-General Michele Rowland from copying Dreyfus, by flooding her office with calls and emails every day to demand justice for the Duggans and that she not extradite him under cover of Christmas. This is ultimately a fight for Australia’s sovereignty, and Dan Duggan’s only defenders are not his government, but his fellow citizens.
Call and/or email Attorney-General Michele Rowland: Michelle.Rowland.MP@aph.gov.au (02) 9671 4780
