A refugee who kidnapped and indecently assaulted a three-year-old girl at a Sydney shopping centre has "no right" to be in Australia and will be deported after serving his jail term, the prime minister says.
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Security guard Mohammad Hassan Al Bayati was on Tuesday sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for taking the unsupervised girl from the DFO Homebush playground a week before Christmas in 2016.
The Iraqi-born man, who still denies the crimes, was in Australia on a permanent protection visa after seeking asylum in 2011.
But Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on Thursday said his visa has been cancelled and he will be deported once his time behind bars ends.
"This individual didn't come as a welcome guest - he came by boat when Labor lost control of the borders," Mr Dutton told 2GB radio.
"Good riddance to him and people like him."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Al Bayati had "no right" to be in Australia and said it should serve as a warning to anyone on a permanent protection visa who breaks the law.
"His abuse of the generosity of a country that gave him a new start, it is absolutely appalling," he told the Seven Network on Thursday.
By law, the minister - or delegate - must cancel a person's visa if they have been convicted of a sexual crime involving a child and serving a full-time prison sentence for the crime.
Mr Dutton said Al Bayati had the right to appeal the decision in court, but he was confident it would stand up.
Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus agreed there was no place for Al Bayati in Australia, describing his crimes as "abominable".
But he hit back at suggestions that Labor was somehow responsible because he arrived in the country under their watch.
"Many thousands of people are in Australia, sitting here on a visa issued by Mr Morrison personally as immigration minister. Is he accepting responsibility for all of their conduct and all of their behaviour for so long as they remain in Australia?" Mr Dreyfus told reporters in Canberra.
Al Bayati, who was working as a security guard at the shopping centre, had responded to a report of an unattended and distressed girl at the centre's playground when he took the girl by the hand and walked her towards the fire exit.
There, he exposed his penis and touched the girl's underwear during 11 minutes away from surveillance cameras.
Police only became involved after the girl told her father later that day the guard showed her his "needle" and "tried to kiss my bum bum".
During Al Bayati's sentencing, the NSW District Court was told he spent years as a child in Iran as an undocumented asylum seeker before being kidnapped by terrorists on his return to Iraq, where he saw a fellow abductee beheaded.
He then made his way to Malaysia and attempted to reach Australia by boat, which ended up sinking in the Indian Ocean, the court was told.
He spent time on Christmas Island before eventually being granted a permanent protection visa.
Al Bayati will be eligible for parole in mid-2021.
Australian Associated Press
