You are a heartless chameleon to racists

Deborah Cameron on ABC 702 provides a helpful summary of Scott Morrison's comments

ABC Radio's AM on Tuesday:

Reporter Barbara Miller: Do you think you run the risk of being seen as heartless on the day of these funerals to to be bickering over this money?

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison: Well, you're asking the questions and I'm answering them. And when it comes to the question of do I think this is a reasonable cost then my honest answer is: "No, I don't think it is reasonable."

So what you're really trying to say is . . . Cameron yesterday:

Scott Morrison has virtually said: Let their tears fall in the dessert. They cannot come to the graveside. It was a very grave thing for him to say. It also goes to this question of a political conscience really. The sort of person you really are and the sort of person you might have to be in pursuit of a populist kind of line.

Sam North: I don't know Scott Morrison so I can't talk about his character. I do know that I believe that it is very difficult for Australia to have these debates because once the genie is out of the bottle you can't put it back in. Once you allow major political parties to come out and start talking about this then it's bad manners and it gets out and it's no good for the country as far as I can see.

Cameron: I'd like to go back to the personal with Scott Morrison just for a moment. When he was elected to parliament he'd been a former director of the state tourism commission. So you thought, well, an international kind of guy, this. I didn't mind all that sort of thing. He went public with a story about his own private life and he said how much he loved his own children. And then came here and sat in the chair you're in, Adam, and he talked about walking the Kokoda Track in the wake of the Cronulla riots, with young Muslim leaders, because he believed that leadership needed to be shown on a such an important issue as unity in the community. You looked at him and thought here's a fellow who might like to change the world. And now you look at him today, and you wonder. What's going on in the mind of Scott Morrison?

Adam Kilgour: You don't know if it was sent out as a dog whistle to throw out the anti-Muslim type sentiments into the community or whether it was premeditated but I think if it was premeditated it's a pretty sad and cheap shot.

Why bother fact-checking when you can report unsourced gossip? Annabel Crabb in ABC online's The Drum yesterday:

Has no one explained to the shadow minister for immigration the ground rules for the use of a dog whistle? Those who toot upon this fabled instrument do so with a complex purpose in mind; to reach certain receptive ears while maintaining plausible deniability of a darker motive. This nuance appears to have escaped the enthusiastic Mr Morrison, who is reported this morning to have enjoined his shadow ministerial colleagues, in a meeting last December, to use community concerns about Muslim immigration for political advantage.

Bob Carr, also on The Drum yesterday, joins the bandwagon:

What Scott Morrison seems to have suggested gives me the creeps.

Morrison on ABC Radio National's The World Today:

The gossip reported today does not reflect my views.

Labor MP Ed Husic speaking to The Australian online yesterday:

At first we have to bear in mind that this is a position that is being related not by Scott Morrison but by people who claim this is his position and what he is advocating.

The facts. Counter-terrorism white paper Securing Australia 2010:

The continuing resonance of the violent jihadist message within sections of Muslim communities in the Western world (including Australia) will lead to the creation and activity of new violent cells. The scale of the problem will continue to depend on factors such as the size and make-up of local Muslim populations, including their ethnic and-or migrant origins, their geographical distribution and the success or otherwise of their integration into their host society.

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