Australian governments on both sides of the aisle have a woeful record when it comes to virtue-signalling over ‘refugees’. In the 1970s, it was Malcolm Fraser’s “Lebanon Concession”. In the 1990s, John Howard flew 4000 Kosovars all the way around the world on strictly limited visas, basically for a photo-op and to shut up the left. Successive Labor/Green governments repeatedly opened the floodgates of illegal boat arrivals.
Fraser’s Lebanon idiocy left a particularly grim legacy. Despite frantic warnings from officials that Australia was riskily importing entire villages of culturally hostile and backwards Muslims, Fraser insisted. By the time he panicked and shut the program down, it was too late. A generation later, Australia still reaps the dubious rewards in extremism, terror and rape gangs.
Here we go again…
Australia is one of the most generous nations in the developed world in accepting Palestinians from Gaza, new figures suggest, fuelling criticism of the Albanese government’s use of tourist visas for those fleeing the war zone.
Generous is one word for it. Insane is another. Blindly stupid fits, too.
International data compiled by the opposition indicates Australia’s nearly 3000 approved visas for Gazans since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel far exceed the numbers accepted by the nation’s Five Eyes allies and like-minded countries such as France.
Belgium is a rare outlier, approving 2506 Palestinian refugees since January and 3249 last year.
Belgium is too-obviously under pressure from its large and militant Muslim diaspora. As is Australia – or, at least, the Labor government, in thrall to the large Muslim voting bloc in its traditional heartland of Western Sydney.
What’s worse is that Australia is handing visas out to almost-certain Hamas supporters, with barely a pretence of security vetting.
While Canada has expanded its cap on extended family visas for Palestinians from 1000 to 5000, it requires applicants to submit to face-to-face interviews and biometric testing in Cairo.
France, which had accepted 260 Gazans by April this year, requires applicants to submit visa applications and undergo biometric tests in Israel, making it technically impossible for them to apply.
In fact, even if they are literal Hamas supporters, the Albanese government will welcome them with open arms.
On the Insiders program, [ASIO chief Mike Burgess] said some moderate degree of support for the Hamas terror group would not be an obstacle to someone wanting to come to Australia, so long as that person did not share the Hamas ideology […]
In 45 years of professional journalism I can never remember any previous minister or official saying it was OK to support a terrorist group, provided that support was just verbal or some such. Even less is this all right for someone seeking to come to Australia. Is it OK to give verbal support to al-Qa’ida, or Islamic State, or even the Ku Klux Klan? Maybe such support wouldn’t get you locked up in Australia, but it certainly shouldn’t earn you a visa either. This is in fact a very radical statement […]
Hamas is not only a terrorist organisation. Its charter contains the most foul and vicious traditional anti-Semitism. The government must clarify what it means to say some degree of support for Hamas is no problem. The opposition would be failing its duty to the nation to leave this matter unresolved.
This would be just one prong of the opposition’s well-deserved attacks on the government’s latest dangerous debacle. As opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson is pointing out, Labor are setting up Australia for years more yet of grifting lawfare by abruptly cancelling visas it had already recklessly issued to Palestinians.
“Why were those things granted in the first place? Was the security checks adequate if they were subsequently cancelled?”
Senator Paterson argued that it was critical that arrivals from Gaza arrived under appropriate vetting procedures to ensure Australia’s migration system did not become more litigious.
“The reason why the problem is if you can get here on a visa before it's cancelled, then you get access to the Australian legal system, and you can draw that out for years before you are ultimately sent home,” he said.
Which is just what happened with Howard’s Kosovars: having got their foot in the door, many refused to abide by the agreement that they go home when the conflict ended. Luckily, that one was defeated in the High Court, but it’s unlikely to, these days, given that the current court is keen to keep even convicted foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles in the country, even after their visas have expired.
