Dastyari abuse: true blue? No. They’re yellow

They probably think they’re true blue. They’re not. They’re yellow.

The footage of the Australian senator, Sam Dastyari — who is 100 per cent Australian, thanks to a vigorous effort to strip himself of all links to any other country, before he entered the parliament — being harassed in a pub is sickening for its malice and its cowardice.

The senator is trying to get a beer.

A far-right group — who call themselves patriots, as if patriotism somehow means harassing fellow citizens — start following him around, getting in his face, calling him a little monkey, a terrorist, a puppet of China.

“Why don’t you go back to Iran, you terrorist?”

“Is that halal?” they say, of the drinks he’s ordering.

He tries to brush them. They say: “What race is Islam, mate? What race is Islam?”

It’s ugly. It’s bigotry. It’s also against the law — Australian law — to harass people like this. The senator does his best to ignore them. He doesn’t retaliate. He stays calm. But he’s uncomfortable. More than that, he’s wary. He doesn’t know how this ugly spectacle might end.

The group is small in number, but they’ve got a braying mob feel about them. They’re not shy about getting in his face, following him as he attempts to bring drinks to the table, or as he sits with friends, who are trying to eat.

There’s a reason people don’t like mobs, even small ones. Mobs are unpredictable. The next thing you know, somebody who didn’t even come with the group ends up breaking a beer glass or snapping a pool cue or landing a coward punch.

Senator Dastyari told Channel Nine this morning that he blames the rise of One Nation for the spread of racism and bigotry, but in truth, abuse in politics crosses party lines: Barnaby Joyce is in the paper today, saying somebody sent him a bullet and Pauline Hanson’s inbox has always been ugly.

It would also be wrong to try to say that we don’t do this kind of thing here.

There has long been a little malice — pamphlets going around, complaining about Muslims and Asians and so on — in Australian campaigning; and we have known one political assassination: Labor’s John Newman, gunned down in Cabramatta.

But the transition of power in Australia is fundamentally, and proudly, peaceful, and we need to protect that tradition with all that we have, because that peaceful transition of power — and not this ugly spectacle — is what makes this country great.