Pauline Hanson should ask Sam Dastyari’s family what it’s like to live in fear

HEY Pauline Hanson, if you want to know what it’s really like to live in fear, ask that bloke who sat next to you last night.

HEY Pauline Hanson, if you want to know what it’s really like to live in fear, ask that bloke who sat next to you last night.

We are talking genuine, one-step-ahead-of-the-executioner fear, and it was endured by the family of Sam Dastyari, the first Iranian-born member of the Australian Parliament.

Compared to them, you have had a life of over-protected bliss.

On the ABC’s Q&AMs Hanson explained how she was afraid of Islamic terrorists and that Australians were tired of living in fear.

“People in Australia are in fear because they can’t walk in the streets. They’re in fear of terrorism which is happening around the world. Why? Because of Islam,” she said.

Ms Handson swapped jibes with Mr Dastyari and provided the show-stopper of the night with the wide-eyed question to him, “Are you a Muslim?”

It seemed to explain a lot to her. Had she genuinely been interested in his history, she might have seen her own situation in a less fervid manner.

In 1979, Mr Dastyari’s parents were pro-democracy student activists during the revolution which removed the Shah and gave power to the ayatollahs, he told news.com.au today.

The Senator said some of their friends were executed by revolutionary authorities and they were under surveillance.

For safety, they moved to a small town in northern Iran to escape attention, and Mr Dastyari was born there in 1983.

Senator Sam Dastyari came to Australia from Iran as a four-year-old. Picture: John Grainger

The national focus then shifted to the war with Iraq and his parents felt safer.

But as the war wound down Iranian authorities resumed their attention to pro-democracy elements.

“In ‘87, as the war was coming to an end, my parents were very, very scared that the regime would come looking for them again,” Mr Dastyari told news.com.au.

“So in January, 1988, we migrated to Australia.”

They used family-reunion provisions to take themselves and four-year-old Sam to western Sydney.

That was the easiest way to do it, but Mr Dastyari believes they could have come here under refugee applications. It’s something the family will never know for sure.

Under senator-elect Hanson’s response to her own fears, the Dastyari family would have been kept out.

Pauline Hanson on Q&A last night.

Mr Dastyari sees the incoming senator as opportunistic and simplistic, as seen by her fascination in his religion.

“Somewhere in Iran there is a bit of paper which says I was born in the Islamic faith,” said Mr Dastyari, who today considered himself a non-practising Muslim.

He said, “I am a Muslim like a lot of my friends are Catholics.”

And last night he said: “By being born in an Islamic nation and under Iranian law, under Islamic law and in places like Iran and my parents fled to be able to come to this country …”

Ms Hanson appeared intrigued Mr Dastyari could have sworn on the Koran the oath taken on entering the Senate.

Certainly that’s what Ed Husic did when he became the first Muslim in Parliament.