Mike Burgess was clumsy, but the real fault lies with Anthony Albanese

Confusion without clarification: ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, left, and Anthony Albanese were responsible for weeks of confusion in parliament. Picture: AAP, Martin Ollman/NewsWire

It’s a good thing ASIO director-general Mike Burgess has corrected his earlier absurd remark that some rhetorical support for Hamas could be consistent with being approved for applicants seeking to come to Australia.

Burgess’s initial comments on ABC’s Insiders were at best extremely ambiguous and directly caused a massive political dispute but the moral responsibility for these weeks of confusion rest ­primarily with the Albanese ­government.

Of course, Burgess claims in his new remarks to the ABC that he is not changing his position, merely clearing up confusion resulting from people distorting his earlier comments.

Gimme a break.

In fact never before in Australian history, as far as I can establish, has a senior official or government minister said rhetorical support for a terrorist organisation is consistent with receiving what is in effect, if not formally, a permanent visa to Australia.

On the original Insiders program, Burgess was asked if a Palestinian wanting to come to Australia had expressed support or sympathy for Hamas, would that be a problem for them?

His answer was unclear so presenter David Speers persisted: “But if it’s just rhetorical support?”

Burgess replied: “It’s just rhetorical support and they don’t have an ideology or support for ­violent extremism as an ideology, then that’s not a problem. If they have support for that ideology, that will be a problem.”

This immediately begs the question: how could you rhetorically support Hamas, which has a hate-filled anti-Semitic ideology at its heart, in a way consistent with coming to live in Australia?

Burgess now says, according to the ABC, that any explicit support for Hamas would always trigger an adverse security assessment. So rhetorical support for Hamas is OK, but not explicit support?

This is one of the great messed-up exercises in political communication of all time.

Burgess should also have made clear in the Insiders interview that ASIO doesn’t determine who comes into Australia; the federal government does. Many people are rejected on character grounds who are not explicitly security threats under an ASIO assessment.

Yet for two weeks in parliament Anthony Albanese and his ministers blustered and bellowed and bullied without answering basic, perfectly legitimate, questions arising from confusion caused by Burgess’s original remarks. Thus Albanese was repeatedly asked whether support for Hamas would disqualify an applicant for a visa to Australia on character grounds.

The government would never answer such questions and pathetically tried to claim that even asking them was somehow or other divisive or illegitimate.

Albanese could have shut the controversy down on day one by saying support for Hamas would be something government would find unacceptable in someone seeking to come here and such decisions, where they didn’t rise to a specific security threat, belonged to government, not ASIO.

Such an answer would have located responsibility for the policy where it belonged, with the government, and allowed for a narrow, technical, if in truth pretty implausible defence of Burgess’s original ambiguous if not wholly preposterous comment.

While I think Burgess’s original words were at best extremely clumsy, the main fault lies with the Albanese government.

The idea that even to question the basis of a specific visa policy is somehow or other divisive, or racist or an attack on the integrity or competence of senior officials is nothing more than a low grade attempt to censor legitimate debate.

It is the government that chose to keep the debate going by not answering basic questions in a straightforward manner.

Finally, it’s concerning Burgess is still doing interviews with 7.30. John Howard, who knows more about managing security communications than Burgess, said last week that senior officials in sensitive agencies, no matter how competent, should not appear on political chat shows.

The ASIO boss already gives an annual address, and appears three times a year, with opening statements, at Senate estimates. Governments should carry policy leadership in contested media.

Intelligence bosses routinely appearing on the chat shows inevitably leads to fiascos like the one we’ve just lived through.