Dutton says he apologised for Lebanese Muslim remarks. Community leaders never heard it

For members of Australia’s Lebanese Muslim community, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s call to stop Palestinians fleeing Gaza from entering the country has brought back painful memories of 2016.

Dutton, the then minister for immigration and border protection, singled out Lebanese Muslims in parliament after saying the Fraser government had made mistakes in immigration policy in the 1970s.

Peter Dutton during question time this week. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“The advice that I have is that, out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 are from second- and third-generation Lebanese Muslim backgrounds,” he said in November 2016.

The comments were widely condemned at the time and last year, in an episode of the ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet, journalist Annabel Crabb put to Dutton that they were racist.

“They’re comments that I shouldn’t have made,” he replied. “I have apologised for that.”

Peter Dutton told Annabel Crabb on an episode of the ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet that he had apologised for his Lebanese Muslim comments.

But five leaders of Australia’s Lebanese Muslim community now say they have no recollection of Dutton ever making that apology.

The opposition leader’s office did not respond to multiple enquiries from this masthead about when, how and to whom he said sorry.

Secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association Gamel Kheir said he was unaware of any apology, public or private, received by his organisation or any other.

“We don’t believe he’s apologised,” Kheir said. “If you were genuinely sincerely apologetic, you would at least make an attempt to personally apologise to the community you’ve offended.”

Kheir, who came to Australia from Lebanon as a toddler in the 1970s, said he believed Dutton’s 2016 remarks were racist and they had personally pained him.

“[To say] it was a mistake bringing us here as if we’re not Australians, that we’re somehow tolerated, is a stain, is an insult,” Kheir said.

Calling on Dutton to publicly apologise for the Lebanese Muslim comments, Kheir said they were now being “repeated but in a different form” in Dutton’s comments about Palestinian migration.

Dutton said on Wednesday that allowing people leaving the Gaza war zone into Australia “puts our national security at risk” and the Coalition has since called for an investigation into the granting of visas.

Muslim Women Australia chief executive Maha Abdo, who came to Australia from Tripoli in Lebanon’s north as a child, said Dutton’s 2016 comments hurt “every heart in the community”.

The NSW Australian of the Year nominee said she could not recall him making the apology he told Kitchen Cabinet he had made, adding that public remarks required a public apology.

Muslim Women Australia chief executive Maha Abdo says she cannot recall the opposition leader apologising. Credit: Nikki Short

“Australia is such a beautiful mosaic society that he should really be taking pride in,” Abdo said, calling on Dutton to chart a way for citizens to live together, “rather than take every opportunity to defame a culture or faith”.

Dutton in 2016 said that former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser “did make mistakes in bringing some people in, in the 1970s, and we’re seeing that today.”

His specific comment about second and third-generation Lebanese Muslims came in response to a question from then-opposition leader Bill Shorten, who asked “Which people, from which country, does the minister believe should not have been allowed into Australia when Mr Fraser was prime minister?”

Days later, Dutton said on 2GB radio: “The point that I was making is that we should call out the small number within the community, within the Lebanese community, who are doing the wrong thing.”

In his full response to Crabb last year, he sought to further explain why he had made the comments.

“I have apologised for that. But again when you’re in the thrust of it and in the thick of it, we were dealing with people who had been radicalised and many of them shared a background and that’s sort of the factual reality of what we were dealing with,” he said.

Samier Dandan, who was the leader of the Lebanese Muslim Association in 2016, condemned Dutton’s comments at the time as “baseless, unfounded and uninformed” and said this week “I can’t recall him ever apologising”.

He said Dutton had not accepted his invitation to sit down and talk after the original comments and he did not consider Dutton’s comments to the ABC to be an apology in themselves.

“If he wants to be a leader of a society that remains cohesive, he needs to reflect that in his statements and positions throughout his political career,” Dandan said.

Sheikh Youssef Nabha, the imam of Arrahman mosque in Kingsgrove, Sydney, and Dr Jamal Rifi, a GP and long-time leader in Sydney’s Lebanese Muslim community, also said they were unaware of any apology.

Rifi said the “hurtful” comments had made social cohesion more difficult.

However, he said he remained grateful to Dutton for his efforts as Home Affairs minister in helping to repatriate Australian orphans from the Al Hol displaced persons camp in Syria.

Jamal Rifi, a prominent leader within Australia’s Lebanese community, also could not recall any apology from Dutton. Credit: Jane Barrett

“The guy is not heartless,” Rifi said.

“I’m personally indebted to him for taking them from the camp into Erbil [in Iraq], a few days later after our meetings.”

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.