Shorten’s the one fanning racist fires over immigration: Vanstone

Former immigration minister Amanda Vanstone has accused Bill Shorten of ‘fanning racist fires’ and stifling ­debate.

Former immigration minister Amanda Vanstone. Picture: Calum Robertson

Former immigration minister Amanda Vanstone has accused Bill Shorten of “fanning racist fires” and stifling important ­debate after he used a national ­security and counter-terrorism speech to attack comments from Peter Dutton on Lebanese immigration.

UPDATE: Peter Dutton says Bill Shorten has been caught out over his Lebanese Muslim comments.

Ms Vanstone said comments from the current Immigration Minister that former prime minister Malcolm Fraser had “made a mistake” by bringing in large numbers of Lebanese-Muslim and Vietnamese migrants in the 1970s were likely to have been made on the advice of his department.

She said it was known to have been an example of poor immig­ration practice in her time leading the portfolio under John Howard.

Mr Dutton said on Monday that two-thirds of the 33 people most recently charged with terrori­st-related offences in ­Australia were second- and third-generation Lebanese Muslims.

In a speech to parliament yesterday, the Opposition Leader ­accused Malcolm Turnbull of lacking leadership and demanded Mr Dutton be “brought into line” for his comments.

Mr Shorten said Mr Dutton was “profoundly wrong” when he had said the Fraser government “did make mistakes in bringing some people in” as part of Australia’s migrant intake in the 1970s.

“Suggesting it was a mistake to allow a generation of migrants to come to Australia, more than three decades ago, because of the crimes of a tiny handful of their grandchildren, is not just ignorant and insulting,’’ he said. “His ignorant comments contra­dict and undermine and fly in the face of every briefing I’ve ever received from our security agencies, who explain to us how best to counter radicalisation, about defeating extremism.’’

In question time, the Prime Minister accused Mr Shorten of “misrepresenting” Mr Dutton’s comments. “He (Mr Shorten) has no regard for the truth. He gave a long speech today in which he thoroughly misrepresented statements by the Minister for Immigration, dishonestly did so,” Mr Turnbull said.

He took aim at Mr Shorten for quoting the member for the West Australian seat of Cowan, Labor’s Anne Aly, who said: “I am fearful that the Minister’s comments will be used by an ­extreme few who would seek to harm the fabric of our society.”

Dr Aly, a Muslim counter-­terrorism expert, said earlier that her criticism of Mr Dutton had ­resulted in death threats against her family. “I don’t worry about myself, because in this place I am afforded the protections that not many people are afforded,” she said. “But these were death threats against my family.’’

The Egyptian-born MP said she had received “some rather nasty emails” since criticising Mr Dutton. “I had one saying that Peter Dutton is correct and that I need to go home and take all my terrorist friends with me. Now if I’m getting those kinds of emails, you can be sure that there are people out there in the communities, people out there in Liberal-held seats of Arab, or Muslim, or Lebanese background, or just any kind of migrant background, who are also going to be getting comments like that in the streets. And we don’t need that in this country.”

The Australian Federal Police is investigating a Facebook post to Dr Aly saying “I would love to kill you and your poison family”.

Ms Vanstone, immig­ration minister from 2003 to 2007, said Mr Shorten’s remarks reduced an important debate to the “lowest common denomin­ator”.

“Given immigration is so important to us — it’s one of our essential characteristics that we’re an immigration nation — any debate should be a frank and truthful one and not used as a cheap political football,” she said.

“By doing this, I think you can quite fairly say it is Shorten who’s fanning the racist fires.

“Dutton would’ve been in prim­ary school when this happened, so I’m assuming he’s had some advice from professionals with long experience in the ­department about past mistakes.’’ Ms Vanstone’s comments come as former NSW Police assistant commissioner Clive Small backed Mr Dutton’s comments, describing them as simplifying a complex problem but “not wrong”.

He said, historically, first- and second-generation mig­rants had been heavily involved in crime.

“A classic example of that in the 80s were Vietnamese families in the Cabramatta-Fairfield area (of western Sydney),” he said. “They became quite notorious when we had large-scale migra­tion. They became quite a problem and significant drug dealers.

“I think that explains a lot of the problems over the last 10, 15 years with Middle Eastern gangs. There are some similarities ... but we’re finding that these youngsters have become more strongly connected than other gangs.

“They’ve persisted longer; the second generation is heavily involved. \

“It’s now come beyond a gang of teenagers misbehaving. It’s become a way of life … they’re recruiting younger people.”