As I’ve recently written, the re-appointment of Tony Burke to the immigration portfolio is a disaster in the making. When Burke last held the portfolio, illegal boat arrivals peaked, with boats crashing our borders daily. Worse, Burke is absolutely dependent on Muslim-dominated Western Sydney to hang on to his political career.
That dependence has results: already, Burke is jumping through hoops to fast-track visas for Palestinians. Ask other Middle Easter countries just how admitting Palestinians into their midst worked out.
Burke’s utter dependence on pandering to Muslim Western Sydney also makes his appointment as home affairs minister baffling, not to say potentially disastrous.
If anyone doubts that Burke – and by extension, the Albanese government – is governing with at least one eye on Western Sydney need only read yesterday’s announcement on terrorism.
Several aspects of the announcement are baffling, if not completely incoherent.
Not least that the Albanese government has apparently taken until now to cotton on that Hamas’ October 7 atrocities have increased the global terror threat. It’s telling that Burke, whose ministerial purview is supposedly national security, was conspicuously absent from the announcement.
What’s most telling, though, is the announcement’s conspicuous omission of a single word: Islam.
The government still seems to be at pains never to mention Islamist extremism, which remains the primary threat of serious terrorism in all Western societies, and in the Middle East and North Africa, and indeed in Southeast Asia. There is also a growing threat of right-wing terrorism in Western societies.
Even ASIO chief Mike Burgess has been reduced to mouthing Anthony Albanese’s nonsensical platitudes.
For example, Burgess […] says the Gaza conflict is a driver of extremism in Australia but not a cause of extremism. It’s a driver of factors that led to the increased terrorist threat level, but not the cause of the increased terrorist threat level.
Got that? Feeling reassured?
The reaction of Australians to Gaza, specifically, presumably, some Australian Muslims, is a driver of extremism but not a cause of extremism. And if you can work that out, there’s a career for you as an ASIO cryptographer.
It all looks like a desperate attempt to avoid saying anything remotely disobliging in any way to any Muslim who may be in Australia.
In fact, it’s a wonder that Burgess, the head of the nation’s security agency, was even allowed to speak about the nation’s security. At the insistence of Muslim leaders, Burgess was previously removed from the National Security Council.
Yes: the nation’s national security chief was banned from the National Security Council.
Because Western Sydney Muslims were ‘offended’ (again, or still?).
They’ve apparently succeeded in censoring the government, which will now call everything politically motivated violence.
But nothing quite takes the cake for reality-denying willful blindness than this:
The other truly weird element of Burgess’s remarks was this: “There’s plenty of anti-Semitism, but there’s plenty of Islamophobia at the same time. It’s kind of, almost, equal treatment. Not quite, but almost equal treatment.”
Which country – no, which planet – is he living on, to say something so bizarre as that?
People of Islamic background have been arrested and prosecuted for threatening and planning to kill Australian Jews. How many Jews have been arrested for threatening or plotting to kill Australian Muslims? Synagogues have been subjected to demonstrations and intimidation. Has this happened at mosques? A long series of demonstrations, including at universities, systematically showcased anti-Semitic slurs and stereotypes. Where are the equivalent anti-Islam demonstrations?
Indeed, as the Opposition Home Affairs spokesperson James Paterson has pointed out, not one person has been arrested for publicly vilifying and threatening Jews, or displaying Islamic terrorism symbols, in Australia.
It comes as the Australian revealed disturbing images of activists and children wearing clothing items emblazoned with terrorist insignia at pro-Palestine rallies across the country being referred to the Australian Federal Police.
Speaking on ABC Radio National, Senator Paterson said the lack of arrests have emboldened people.
“One practical thing that the police should have been doing since seven October is, we have criminalised the public display of the symbols of a terrorist organisation,” he said.
“In many cases, symbols of Hamas, and even the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, the militant wing of Hamas, have been displayed publicly on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney and other cities, and yet no one has been charged or arrested with those offences.”
We all know who is doing this, and why they’re doing it with impunity.
Yet the simple truth is that the overwhelming majority of Australian Muslims are law-abiding, sensible people.
Poll them on their attitudes to Israel/Jews and we’ll see.
