Rita Panahi: Cutting our migrant intake is not racism
It should come as no surprise that cultural warriors of the Left are using the Christchurch massacre to paint Australia’s immigration cuts as pandering to racists. Whatever happened to reasonable debate on population policy, asks Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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News that the Coalition is set to cut immigrant numbers has been met with the usual howls of outrage from race baiters eager to characterise reasonable debate about population, migration and social cohesion as “hate speech”.
The Morrison Government is expected to cap Australia’s annual intake of permanent residents at 160,000, a drop from the previous ceiling of 190,000. That doesn’t include temporary residents with hundreds of thousands more coming to Australia to study or work under temporary visas.
The policy pivot shows the Coalition has been listening to the electorate, with a number of polls in recent years revealing the majority of Australians want a cut to migration levels and population growth.
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Australia has among the highest population growth rates in the OECD, more than double that of the US and UK, with the bulk of that growth coming from overseas migration. The new figure will still see an above average growth rate but one that is lower than the levels we’ve experienced in the past decade.
However, cultural warriors of the Left are using the Christchurch massacre to paint the cut as pandering to racists.
They want to impose ever greater restrictions on free speech, including, it seems, censoring debate on population policy.
Former Labor staffer and Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane was among those who lashed out at the expected policy announcement.
“There was an opening this week to reset on racism and white supremacy,” he tweeted. “There could have been funding for a national anti-racism campaign, strengthening of hate speech laws, a concerted No to race politics. Instead: a pivot to an immigration cut. Be on guard against dog-whistles.”
When did a modest cut to immigration translate to a racist dog-whistle?
I don’t recall New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern facing such ugly criticism despite being elected on a protectionist platform which included an election promise to massively cut immigration numbers by up to 40 per cent — a far bigger percentage drop than that being proposed by the Morrison Government.
Speaking about inconsistent and incoherent emoting, there has been plenty of that on the ABC in recent days from pieces that have needed lengthy corrections to the sharing of debunked data that seeks to minimise Islamist terror while inflating supposed “right-wing terror” numbers.
Monday’s edition of The Drum featured an all-female Muslim panel who were meant to “discuss the social, cultural and political influences leading up to the Christchurch terror attack” but disregarded facts, logic and the alleged terrorist’s own manifesto to instead savage Australia and Australians.
If you were unfamiliar with Australia and took the program at face value, you’d be left believing that Australia was a deeply racist, hostile and backward nation teeming with white supremacists.
Indeed if you’ve had the misfortune to read the fact-free diatribes published and broadcast on the ABC, Guardian and Fairfax echo chamber, you’d believe that this tolerant and cohesive country is so virulently racist that no migrant should risk settling here.
Those who argue after every Islamist attack that Islam must not be unfairly maligned and that we must be vigilant in avoiding a backlash against the Muslim community now want to slander half the country and lay the blame for the Christchurch massacre at the feet of anyone who is centre, centre-right or right wing.
The Drum’s women were supposed to represent the wider Muslim community but their view of the country didn’t align with the Muslims I know who are grateful to be living in a country that is welcoming and inclusive, people who work hard, contribute and have seized the opportunities Australia provides.
They would not settle here if the picture the ABC painted was accurate.
“White supremacy doesn’t know any border, religion, or colour. Australia’s system is propped up and enabled by politicians and media shock jocks that have made a political career out of Islamophobia and inciting hatred and white supremacist views,” said panellist Sara Saleh, who also argued that the likes of Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton “have blood on their hands” for “weaponising racism” and pandering to “neo-Nazis”.
It’s an absurd suggestion but not surprising that it came from Saleh, a GetUp board member and enthusiastic support of the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement.
She’s the same woman who is a figure of ridicule among many moderate Muslims and secularists around the world after a video of her berating British-Pakistani Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz went viral.
In the 2016 discussion Saleh berates Nawaz for only believing in democracy and for denouncing theocracy and Islamism.
The Muslim community in Australia deserve better than these self-appointed leaders.
The same people who argue that Islamist terror has nothing to do with Islam are arguing that white supremacist terror is intrinsically linked to people who denounce identity politics.
The truth is that white supremacists have far more in common with the far Left than the average conservative who abhors the toxic rise of identity politics that seeks to divide us by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and other factors beyond our control.
— Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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