Anti-Islam party pursues Peter Dutton over Geert Wilders visa

The Australian Liberty Alliance is urging its supporters to lobby Immigration Minister Peter Dutton over Geert Wilders.

A newly formed, European-style anti-Islamic party is urging its supporters to lobby Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to allow a Dutch parliamentarian into the country to speak at a campaign launch.

Dutch Party for Freedom founder Geert Wilders is yet to be issued a visa to attend this month’s launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance, a far-right party that has adopted his core policy of opposing the “Islamisation’’ of Western democracies.

The ALA wrote to Mr Dutton’s office last week expressing its concern that Mr Wilders’s security attachment and other members of his travelling party had been given a visa, but the parliamentarian had not.

Having received no response from Mr Dutton, the ALA yesterday issued a “call to action’’ for its supporters to bombard Mr Dutton with phone messages and emails and present their concerns at his electoral office in Gympie in Queensland.

The hold up in Mr Wilders’s visa application is a repeat of the problems he encountered in 2012 when Labor’s Chris Bowen was immigration minister. Although a visa was eventually issued, the delay prompted Mr Wilders to postpone his tour until the following year.

Mr Wilders is one of more than 700,000 foreigners whose names are on a Movement Alert List maintained by the Department of Immigration and considered a potential serious threat to the Australian community. His visa application automatically triggered a MAL warning and detailed assessment by Immigration officials of the risk that Mr Wilders presents.

In these cases, a final decision rests with the minister.

Mr Wilders does not have a criminal conviction, but is facing prosecution by Dutch authorities for inciting discrimination and hatred at a rally in March last year, when he led the crowd in an anti-Moroccan chant.

He was acquitted in 2011 on similar charges for an unrelated incident.

The Australian understands Mr Dutton has not made a decision in the case.

He indicated to The Australian earlier this year that if Mr Wilders applied for a visa he would receive no special treatment.