Support for Hamas OK? John Howard says not a chance

Anthony Albanese and ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess speak during a press conference at Parliament House.

The unbelievable fiasco of the Albanese government’s apparent position that giving rhetorical support to the terrorist group Hamas is perfectly OK for people seeking to come live in Australia will not, and should not, go away.

Now Australia’s senior elder statesman, John Howard, has entered the controversy, telling the Albanese government that in the national interest it needs to clean up its mess.

For the first time, too, a senior Jewish leader has called out the absolute incompatibility of giving rhetorical support to Hamas with seeking to come to Australia.

Here are three key questions the government must answer.

The first arises from the statement by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess on ABC’s Insiders that a Palestinian who applied to come to Australia would face no problem if they gave rhetorical support to Hamas, so long as they didn’t hold violent extremist ideology. No one has any idea what that deeply odd, historically radical, statement actually means. The government so far has refused to clarify it.

The government will not repudiate, endorse or explain the statement. In a democracy this is a shockingly arrogant attitude, that we citizens should just shut up and accept anything the government tells us or indeed doesn’t tell us.

John Howard and Peter Dutton

Second, the government must explain why it gave 3000 Palestinians from Gaza visitor visas, essentially tourist visas, rather than using a special humanitarian visa as in previous similar cases, and why it didn’t announce this as it was happening.

Third, it must tell us what the policy will be going forward. Do these two new principles of policy – that rhetorical support for outlawed terrorist organisations by visa applicants is acceptable, and that the government will issue only visitor visas, with their much lower level of checking – apply in the months ahead, as well as the months just gone?

This is not a hypothetical or theoretical concern. If, God forbid, conflict between Israel and Hezbollah becomes more intense, the government could be faced with a far bigger demand for visas than has arisen in Gaza. The Australian people are entitled to know what the policy basis will be going forward.

Howard is aghast at the mess the Albanese government has made of this and perplexed that the government hasn’t cleaned the mess up. Howard was prime minister for nearly 12 years and a deeply steady and reliable leader on national security. He generally takes a bipartisan approach on questions of security. That he is speaking up on this occasion illustrates the depth of his concern.

“Where you’ve got a body that’s a declared terrorist organisation, I don’t think for a moment that someone who has declared support for that organisation should come to Australia,” Howard told me.

“The majority of Australians would feel that a lot of people want to come and live in Australia, and why not, you’ve won life’s lottery if you come here, so why let these people in if they’re spruiking for a declared terrorist organisation?”

Howard cannot quite believe that Australia actually has a policy of admitting people who offer rhetorical support to Hamas to come into Australia but, like everyone else, he can’t understand just what the Albanese government’s policy really is.

“I can’t understand why they haven’t cleaned it up,” he says.

“They (the Albanese government) have got themselves in a terrible muddle and it’s not good for the country. With these sorts of things you just want to cut your losses and clean it up as quickly as possible.”

Colin Rubenstein

Without making any direct criticism of Burgess, Howard also has a word of advice that officials and governments alike should take to heart: “I don’t think it’s good practice for senior officials, however competent, in sensitive positions to be engaging in general political debate on chat shows.”

A senior Jewish community leader, Colin Rubenstein, of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, offers a reaction to the Burgess comments, and the government’s failure to clarify them, which strongly echoes Howard.

“It seems obvious that any support for a listed, proscribed terrorist organisation in this country – including rhetorical – should be strong grounds for failing the character test essential for Australian citizenship or residency,” Rubenstein says.

“Australia’s policy of multiculturalism, whatever rights it certainly confers, requires an overriding responsibility and commitment to uphold certain shared, core democratic values.

“It’s hard to think of a more egregious violation of those shared values than supporting a group which is actually unlawful in this country because of its undoubted record and commitment to violence and extremism.”

The concerns of Howard and Rubenstein are irrefutable. They are the concerns of many, many Australians. Probably almost all Australians would share them if the facts of the matter were brought to their attention. The government’s blank refusal to answer questions and to clarify the policy is intensely undemocratic, profoundly damaging to community confidence in key agencies and processes, disobliging to Palestinians who’ve already come here and politically dead stupid.

The government blusters and obfuscates to avoid responsibility, transparency and clarity. In parliament, Peter Dutton asked Anthony Albanese whether rhetorical support for Hamas would be grounds for an applicant failing the character test for a visa application. Albanese replied with a great harangue of irrelevant bluster about ASIO being involved in security clearances, just as with the last government.

As we now know, procedures were very different under the last government, but leaving that aside there is a clear and fundamental distinction between a security or terrorist threat and the character test generally. Thus the Coalition government cancelled the visa of far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos on character grounds. He was not a terrorist threat.

It is barely conceivable, though not very plausible, that ASIO could decide someone who offered rhetorical support to Hamas would never under any circumstances become a security threat. Beyond that, however, the government then has to decide whether that person fails the character test because they support Hamas.

It is of the highest importance in this regard to remember that in its core ideology Hamas bases itself on hate-filled anti-Semitism and endorses a general cosmology in which the West, the US and its allies such as Australia are inherently evil.

There may well be occasions when people are coerced into expressing support for Hamas. That would be understandable. But in seeking to come to Australia, it’s simply grotesque that continuing rhetorical support for Hamas should be regarded as acceptable.

This mess, entirely created by the government, is not the fault of a cynical opposition. The Albanese government is failing the most elementary duty of governance in, as Howard puts it, failing to clean up this mess.