You will be much relieved to learn the Albanese government, at least according to its members, is doing absolutely everything possible to ensure your safety.
“Safety of the community has been and remains the utmost priority of this government,” says Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.
Likewise, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus: “Our first commitment is for the safety of Australians”.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong: “Our first priority is to make sure we keep Australians safe”.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles: “Community safety is front and centre in … every action that we are taking here”.
And not only is keeping Australians safe foremost in the mind of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: it is his government’s “first, second and third priority”. Yes, I think we can agree there is no doubt the government’s top priority, self-interest aside, is to repeat incessantly this talking point.
As part of its ‘keeping Australians safe’ strategy, the government has decided to throw open the doors to hundreds of Palestinians. It began approving the first of the 860 visas in question on October 7, but we did not learn of this until last week. We can only assume the government intended keeping us safe by keeping us in the dark.
Admittedly the Gaza Strip is a haven for terrorists and their enablers, who last month conducted the largest targeted massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But as the supercilious Wong reminded us last week during an interview with Sky News presenter Peter Stefanovic, “Just as not everybody from Afghanistan is linked with the Taliban, not everybody who is Palestinian is a member of a terrorist organisation.”
Wong is right, of course. According to a survey published this month by the Arab World for Research and Development, only 75 per cent of Palestinians said they were either ‘extremely support[ive]’ or ‘somewhat support[ive] when asked ‘How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?’ And 74.7 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea”. Applying those figures to the 860 Palestinians that Labor has invited to stay, over 640 condone Hamas’s methods and long for the destruction of Israel.
Worry not though, for Wong assures us that “all appropriate security checks, character checks and identity checks have been undertaken”. When Stefanovic put to Wong that the applicants could have lied regarding links to or support for Hamas, her response said much about this government’s ability to keep Australians safe. “In relation to any visa application, it’s an offence to give false information to authorities,” she said.
There you have it. Hamas is synonymous with terrorism and mass murder, including that of women and children; rape and kidnapping, but there are some things even its members and their sympathisers will baulk at doing. Lie on a visa application? Not on your nelly, they say. And as you can tell from the increasing number of security guards outside synagogues in this country, there has never been a safer time to be a Jewish-Australian.
Pressed by journalists last week on the integrity of this process, Albanese’s repeated assertions that everything was tickety-boo were belied by his agitated manner. “[They] are the same security checks that are in place for people, for Australians that have been in place, this regime, for a long period of time,” he insisted.
A long period of time? Presumably then Albanese is referring to same checks originally conducted on the 141 unlawful non-citizens released from detention this month. Among them were murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other undesirables, yet some of them had been issued visas upon coming to Australia. Forgive me for having no confidence in this process.
Exhaustive checks in six weeks?
Albanese would also have us believe the responsible agencies completed exhaustive checks for 860 people in a warzone in just six weeks. How this was supposedly accomplished is a mystery. The region’s public institutions are corrupt and unreliable, record-keeping is haphazard, and we have no diplomatic presence in the region. It would be impossible to confirm the identity of the applicants in that timeframe, let alone conduct the necessary character and security checks.
Was it done by Zoom? I can just picture it. “Now remember, Fahad, pinky promise. You have never engaged in terrorist activities?” Or “Salman, you say your Qassam rocket launcher is used only to ward off aggressive plovers, correct?” Or “So just to clarify, Mrs Hamouda, your eldest son was a suicide bomber, your second son is serving time in an Israeli jail for murder, but your youngest boy, Hassan, aspires to be a pastry chef?”
Equally laughable is Albanese’s insistence the visas in question are “not permanent” and only “temporary”. Granted, that category of visa allows for a maximum stay of 12 months in Australia, but you can bet the claims for asylum will swiftly follow. As The Australian reported in August, the number of asylum claims have surged since Labor assumed government. Of the 75,000 unsuccessful asylum-seekers in Australia in July, only 12 were deported that month.
As for those who point out many of the visa holders in question are young children and thus not instilled with Hamas propaganda, dream on. Undoubtedly, many of the atrocities of last month were committed by those who grew up watching children’s shows such as Tomorrow’s Pioneers. It featured characters such as Nahoul the friendly bumblebee, who declared, ”We will liberate Al-Aqsa from the filth of the criminal Jews. We will go on jihad when we grow up.”
Then there was Assoud, a Bugs Bunny-like character who tells children, “I will finish off the Jews and eat them,” and Nassur, a bear, who says of Israelis, “We want to slaughter them so they will be expelled from our land.”
The Danish example
Look at the Denmark experience. In 1992 the country admitted 321 Palestinians who claimed refugee status. According to the Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration, 64 per cent of that group had been convicted of a crime by 2019. So too had 34 per cent of their children.
Yet again under a Labor government, economic migrants are exploiting the immigration system in great numbers. Last week we learned a vessel from Indonesia containing 12 asylum seekers had arrived undetected in WA’s Kimberley region. Instead of coming clean, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office referred media inquiries about the incident to Australian Border Force, which refused to comment. It is for our protection, you see.
Speaking of O’Neil, her recent performances have caused me to reconsider my assessment that Energy Minister Chris Bowen is the most incompetent member of cabinet. Hopelessly unprepared for the High Court’s ruling this month resulting in the mass release of unlawful non-citizens who had committed appalling crimes, she has since proved unable to ensure all were fitted with ankle bracelet monitors in accordance with recently enacted legislation. Perhaps she was too busy tweeting, as she did yesterday, that the government is “keeping Australians safe”.
As for Albanese, little needs to be said regarding whether he has the resolve to fix this debacle.
Responding in parliament on Monday to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, he continued to obfuscate when asked whether he had raised with President Xi Jinping, during his APEC summit meeting with the Chinese leader, the incident this month resulting in sonar-inflicted injuries to Royal Australian Navy divers by a People’s Liberation Army warship.
“What we will not be doing is taking lectures on how to build diplomatic relations from those … who could not get a phone call return for the entire term of the last government,” he said.
To be fair, the Prime Minister has a point. Unlike him, the Coalition cannot claim that when its leaders got Xi on the blower, he greeted the caller by saying, “How’s it going, Handsome Boy”. But if I were Albanese, I would not be advertising that.
As for the sonar incident, the best you could say of Albanese’s response was that he empathised with the RAN members concerned. He did what any navy diver would do when danger appears on the horizon. He went to water.
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