Editorial: Lest Yassmin Abdel-Magied regret a hateful slur

EDITORIAL: Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied enjoys considerable prosperity thanks to Australian taxpayers. And she’s repaid that generosity with toxic scorn.

Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied enjoys considerable prosperity thanks to Australian taxpayers.

She has a tax-funded job with the ABC that allows her enormous scope to present her views across a range of issues, and last year travelled throughout the Middle East at taxpayer expense to promote a book about herself.

Most people in her luxurious circumstance would think themselves extremely fortunate. There are very few nations — including the Middle Eastern nations Abdel-Magied visited — that are so supportive of young Islamic women.

\Warren’s view.

Abdel-Magied repaid Australia’s generosity with toxic scorn. As the rest of the ­nation commemorated Anzac Day, Abdel-Magied set out to defile Australia’s wartime sacrifices with a vile Facebook slur: “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine).”

The ABC’s Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

Even worse is her wilful blindness to what is at stake in the areas she cites. The detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru were established as part of a broader strategy to end the people-smuggling trade and to halt the deaths at sea of men, women and children lured aboard flimsy boats by wicked traffickers in human misery. This strategy has worked, which is why Australians no longer wake to news of mass drowning in our waters.

Yassmin Abdel Magied’s offensive Facebook comment.

The only Australians doing the wrong thing in Syria are some of Abdel-Magied’s more extreme coreligionists. Great call on that one, Yassmin.

And throughout the 2016-17 financial year Australian taxpayers will provide an estimated $43.6 million in development funding to the Palestinian territories. Lest we forget, indeed.

Abdel-Magied subsequently claimed to have been unaware that her words had any capacity to wound Australians. “It was brought to my attention that my last post was disrespectful, and for that, I apologise unreservedly,” she wrote.

She actually needed to be told. This points to a narrowness of viewpoints among Abdel-Magied’s friends and ABC colleagues. Abdel-Magied would do well to curb her travels and her time in company with like-minded ABC types and perhaps visit an RSL or two.

Abdel-Magied might then learn something about the reverence held for Anzac Day by those who pay her wages.

And if she doesn’t care for the sincerely held attitudes of her paymasters, Abdel-Magied is welcome to return the money. Every cent of it.

Labor’s on the right track

Anthony Albanese has long been one of Labor’s more formidable talents, distinguishable for sometimes eschewing popular causes for the right ones.

He has also been an early supporter of a second airport in Sydney’s west, even when some of his colleagues were, and still are, determined to kill the idea, which will be a massive economic fillip for the region. A $400 million rail link, to be announced by Labor leader Bill Shorten today, is a vital part of the mix to truly bring Sydney’s western ring to life.

Less wind, more prosperity

Failed US presidential candidate turned millionaire environmentalist Al Gore appeared on a panel in Switzerland this year alongside Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. At issue was Bangladesh’s plan to alleviate poverty with a new coal-fired power plant. “Don’t build that dirty coal plant, but double down on renewable energy,” Gore said.

Hasina’s reply was withering. “We have to provide energy to our people,” she said. “If you cannot develop the economic conditions of your people then how will you save our people?”

We could use the Bangladesh PM’s clarity in NSW, where householders are looking at paying $400 more a year for power thanks in part to doubling down on renewable energy.

“NSW is headed down the same path as South Australia where a love affair with wind farms has pushed electricity ­prices to the highest in the ­nation,” the Australian Power Project’s Nathan Vass warns.

Reflect on Sheikh Hasina’s wise words: “If you cannot ­develop the economic conditions of your people then how will you save ours?”