Don’t accept Australia’s values? Then Australia’s not for you | Alexander Downer

Tolerance is a core Australian value and the pro-Islamic terrorism demonstrations show none whatsoever if you disagree with them, writes Alexander Downer.

Australia should have an immigration policy. We need to be hungry to absorb the best and the

brightest from around the world.

We need people with an entrepreneurial spirit, with creativity, who want to work hard and contribute to the building of our country.

If we can get these people to come to Australia then Australia will boom.

We should also welcome foreign students.

Not only do they help to fund our universities but they invariably become champions of Australia if and when they return to their countries of origin.

I’ve seen that around Asia during the time I was foreign minister.

There were business leaders, politicians, judges and public servants who had been educated in Australia and retained a love of our country. They became champions of Australia.

There are two qualifications to immigration.

First we have to get the numbers right.

That means adjusting the numbers year by year depending on economic and social circumstances.

If we don’t have enough growth in housing and our schools have trouble accommodating the children of migrants, then we need to reduce our numbers.

In years when we don’t have those problems we can increase numbers.

A flag bearing the face of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is waved on October 06 in Sydney. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

The second qualification is that people who migrate to Australia – as distinct from visitors and students – must accept that we as their hosts have an expectation they will embrace our core values.

It’s not that they need to abandon all aspects of the culture from which they have come.

But Australia’s success as a country depends on adherence to its values.

It should be clear that Australian citizenship is not to be a flag of convenience. It means accepting our core values.

If not, Australia’s not for you.

As I watched the demonstrations in support of Islamic terrorism over the last year and the accompanying outbursts of anti-Semitism, I thought about who these people might be who show such contempt for Australian values.

They seem to fall into two categories.

There is the usual group of loony extremists who want to “deconstruct our whole civilisation”, Socialist Alliance and these days the Greens.

But a number of the demonstrators are either migrants or the immediate descendants of migrants from the Middle East who are playing out the bitterness and conflict of the Middle East.

We have no place for that sentiment in Australia.

Australia has several core values which should be embraced by all Australians whether they are recent migrants or descendants of people who have settled here thousands of years ago. One of those is tolerance.

Millennia of intolerance have taught us that people have different views, different religions, different racial characteristics and so on.

At the very least we should recognise the inevitability of differences and show respect for differences.

The demonstrators show no tolerance whatsoever for people who disagree with them.

Their trenchant anti-Semitism is an illustration of the point.

Another core value of Australia is adherence to the rule of law.

We operate on the basis that all Australians are equal before the law – there aren’t special laws for people of different ethnic groups or different social classes.

The law applies equally to everyone.

Our parliaments make the laws and we expect all Australians to adhere to the law. If they don’t they will be punished.

Some demonstrators seem to think the law shouldn’t apply to them.

As its heart, Australia is an egalitarian society.

Not all people are equal of course. Some are cleverer than others, some more athletic and some diligent and others less so.

But the point is, they are all of equal value.

We don’t value people who are Jewish less than we value people who are Muslim.

We don’t value people of colour less than we value people who are white.

Whenever Australians are asked this question they always come down on the side of egalitarianism, as they did a year ago.

So the abuse and the contempt that demonstrators have for so many of their fellow Australians is inconsistent with one of the core values that make our country what it is.

When the Home Affairs Department is assessing migrants who want to come to Australia, they need to remind the applicants of our country’s core values.

If they are hesitant or unsupportive of those values, frankly they’re not welcome.

And if they are visitors and they decide to demonstrate in support of terrorist organisations, their visitors’ visas should be terminated and they should be bundled onto the first plane out of Australia.

Our national leaders need to show leadership for a change and assert unequivocally support for our national values and create an expectation of what is reasonable and unreasonable behaviour.

Support for brutally sadistic terrorist organisations is the antithesis of everything Australia has

ever stood for. You’d think our leaders would be prepared to say that regardless of their politics.

Apparently not.

Originally published as Don’t accept Australia’s values? Then Australia’s not for you | Alexander Downer