Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has defended Peter Dutton’s controversial comments on Lebanese-Muslim Australians, telling The Project co-host Waleed Aly the Immigration Minister was being misquoted.
In parliament on Monday, Dutton implied there was a link between second and third generation migrant Lebanese Muslims and terrorism. This was just days after he labelled former prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s 1970s immigration policies – which permitted Lebanese refugees to live in Australia – “a mistake”.
The Foreign Minister appeared on The Project last night to discuss a different matter but as the only member of the government on the show this week, Aly questioned her on her colleague’s conduct.
“I want to ask you whether or not you think Peter Dutton was wrong to say Malcolm Fraser should not have let Lebanese Muslims into Australia in the 1970s?,” Aly asked.
“Well that’s not what he said. He was talking about the situation years ago where we didn’t provide the kind of support and services to people coming in to Australia that we do today, and that can have consequences,” Bishop responded.
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The thing is, Julie Bishop's comments, as reported here, are balanced and reasonable - "Absolutely not, we have a non discriminatory immigration system," Bishop replied.
"We are one of the most successful multicultural nations on earth and that's because we welcome people from all corners of the globe. But we also want them to become contributing members to society and I think that's one of Australia's great strengths." These are unifying and encouraging comments. Dutton's comment "Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people in, in the 1970s." is divisive and unfortunate, as are most of the things he has to say.
I have no doubt Dutton received threats too when his comments were taken out of context by the ALP, Greens and left wing journos like Mr Aly, he just hasn't given them airtime for publicity or justification like some politicians do. Go back to when he made the comments and he was clearly talking about the integration process in the '70's. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, journos doing what Mr Aly did is why Trump won in the US.