Too early to say whether Bernier’s PPC will have a similar impact on the Conservatives:
In the crucial Australian state of Queensland, Arthur Plate says he’ll turn his back on mainstream politics when he steps into the ballot box later this month. Instead, the retired miner will pick between a pair of right-wing populists.
The major parties have lost touch and are just out to “line their own pockets,” said the 76-year-old, taking refuge from the searing 100-degree Fahrenheit heat in Clermont, a small mining and farming community.
It’s a refrain heard frequently in the district — one of a handful of closely-held constituencies across the northeastern state that Prime Minister Scott Morrison must retain to stop the left-leaning Labor party from ousting his center-right Liberal-National coalition.
The growing tide of support for populist, single-issue parties in Australia has already reshaped the political landscape, dragging both Labor and the coalition further to the right over the past two decades. Voters like Plate could prove decisive in determining the outcome of the May 18 election, and affect the next government’s ability to pass laws, ranging from proposed tax cuts to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.
“Right-wing populists have taken advantage of major parties’ failure to come up with policies that appeal to white voters on low incomes who aspire to the middle-class but feel they’ve missed out due to negative impacts from globalization and multiculturalism,” said Jo Coghlan, a lecturer at the University of New England and co-author of The Rise of Right-Populism.
Queensland has long been a solid base for Morrison’s coalition, which currently has 21 of the socially conservative state’s 30 seats. But eight of those are held by a margin of less than 4 percent, making them key targets for Labor. The main opposition party is leading in opinion polls and favorite to win office.
But it’s not just a two-way fight between the coalition and Labor. The state is also home to the strongest populist forces in Australian politics — the anti-Muslim immigration party One Nation led by Pauline Hanson, and mining magnate Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.
Hanson and Palmer are both tapping into disaffection among voters who feel left behind despite almost 28 years of uninterrupted economic growth. While recent scandals have seen support for One Nation slip, a Newspoll released on Monday showed support for Palmer’s party more than doubled in the past month to 5 percent.
Adding to the Morrison’s problems is that regional voters are becoming increasingly disenchanted with his junior coalition partner, the Nationals. The rural-based party has been damaged by infighting and disquiet over its support for coal-mining interests on agricultural land.
While Hanson and Palmer are unlikely to win lower house seats, the pair may take spots in the Senate and together with other fringe groups hold the balance of power in the upper house — giving them crucial influence over the legislative agenda.
Populists and single-issue parties have frequently wielded such power in the Senate, with One Nation and other minor parties in August banding together to kill off planned company tax cuts. In February, four independents helped pass a bill against the government’s wishes enabling better medical care for asylum seekers kept offshore.
Hanson, a former fish-and-chip shop owner, rose to prominence in the 1990s with her outspoken attacks on Asian immigration. While she served less than three years in the lower house before her party collapsed, she left an indelible mark on politics as she shaped the immigration debate and dragged both Labor and the coalition to the right.
That’s created bi-partisan support for the nation’s controversial system of transferring asylum seekers arriving by boat to Pacific island camps, with no right to be settled in Australia — a policy opposed by the United Nations and human-rights groups.
The 64-year-old returned to parliament, this time in the Senate, in 2016 and campaigns against Muslim immigration, multiculturalism and free trade. She has another three years before she has to re-contest her seat.
Her party’s brand in this election has been tarnished by revelations One Nation officials last year sought cash donations from the National Rifle Association in the U.S. in exchange for a pledge to help water down Australia’s gun-restriction laws.
Despite winning four upper house seats in 2016, One Nation is now down to two Senate seats due to defections. The party has often under-performed at the ballot box and polls show support may be bleeding away to Palmer’s United Australia Party.
Palmer, 65, is self-funding a $30 million advertising blitz for his party. Hundreds of yellow “Make Australia Great”billboards have popped up across the country, while advertisements have flooded television screens. His thinly articulated manifesto includes cutting taxes and warning that the Chinese government plans a “clandestine takeover of our country.”
Like Hanson, his first foray into politics imploded. He served just one term in the lower house from 2013 to 2016, and two of his three senators in the then Palmer United Party defected. He’s also now embroiled in legal action brought by the government over the collapse of his Queensland Nickel project that left hundreds of workers unpaid.
Nevertheless, Palmer is gaining enough traction for Morrison to take him seriously. The billionaire announced a deal this week that will see the coalition and United Australia back each other’s candidates on how-to-vote cards. That could prove decisive if Morrison continues to close the gap with Labor. The deal may also help catapult Palmer into the Senate.
Australia’s upper house was branded the home of “unrepresentative swill” in 1992 by then-Prime Minister Paul Keating. The most notorious recent example of a fringe populist winning a Senate seat is Fraser Anning, an independent who defected from One Nation. He’s riled mainstream lawmakers by claiming he wants a “final solution” to Australia’s “immigration problem” and blaming New Zealand’s mosque massacre on the nation’s intake of “Muslim fanatics.” Polls show he’s unlikely to retain his Senate seat this month.
If Palmer does win an upper house seat, he’s unlikely to form a voting bloc with One Nation. He and Hanson have often criticized each others’ policies and personalities.
Compared with the populist sentiment that swept Donald Trump to power in the U.S. or delivered the Brexit referendum in the U.K., the power of fringe parties remains muted in Australia by a lack of organizational skill and competence, according to University of New England’s Coghlan.
But their influence remains pervasive.
“The faces in right-wing populism may come and go,” she said. “But the changes they’ve made to Australia’s social agenda seems permanent.”
Odd case for the Australian government to be defending:
Australia, a country taken over by white colonizers after the Black indigenous population had lived there for 65,000 years, will now determine if Aboriginal people without Australian citizenship are aliens who are subject to deportation.
There is a case before the High Court of Australia that will establish whether an indigenous person can be considered an alien under the nation’s constitution. Two men, Daniel Love and Brendan Thoms, have filed a lawsuit in which the court will determine whether an Aboriginal Australian with at least one Australian parent — one who was born in another country, came to Australia as a young child and has only left the country briefly — and is not an Australian citizen is an alien under section 51 (xix) of the Australian Constitution. That section allows the Parliament to enact laws concerning “naturalization and aliens.”
The answer the plaintiffs have gotten is no. “For descendants of Australia’s first peoples, an indelible part of the Australian community, to be ‘aliens’ for the purposes of Australia’s Constitution, is antithetical to their indigeneity and to the social, democratic and political values which underpin and are protected by the Constitution The concept of Aboriginality is inconsistent with the concept of alienage,” the men say in their filing with the court.
Under a 2014 federal immigration law, known as a “bad character” law, deportation is mandated for people living in Australia with visas who are sentenced to at least 12 months of imprisonment. The Australian government wants to make their immigration laws even more draconian by broadening the government’s power to revoke visas of people with criminal records. The policy has increased the deportation of people who have lived in Australia most of their lives to countries such as New Zealand, Papua New Guinea or other islands in the Pacific, even when those people have no ties to the country to which they are returned. One third of the 1,300 people in immigration detention are there based on bad character, and in New Zealand, where the Australian deportation plan has been criticized, 600 people were returned in 2017.
Daniel Love, 39, is a member of the Kamilaroi people who was born in Papua New Guinea to an Aboriginal Australian father and a Papua New Guinean mother. Love is also a common law holder of native title —traditional land rights claimed by Aboriginal Australian people under the original ownership of the land. He has been a permanent resident of Australia since the age of 6, but his parents did not complete the necessary paperwork to obtain his Australian citizenship. Last year, Love was sentenced to 12 months in prison on an assault charge. The government canceled his visa and Love was placed in immigration detention. After spending seven weeks in detention, Love was released and the government revoked the cancellation of his visa.
Love sued the government for AU$200,000 (US$142,920) in compensation for false imprisonment, claiming the government illegally detained him and that he has suffered loss of appetite, sleep deprivation and anxiety. He was unable to see his five children, all of whom are Australian citizens, and feared for his safety with the prospect of being sent to a country with which he has no family connections.
Similarly, Brendan Thoms, 31, is a Gunggari man born in New Zealand to an Aboriginal Australian mother and a New Zealander father. Thoms was entitled to Australian citizenship by birth but has not acquired it, and has lived in Australia since the age of 6. He was sentenced to imprisonment of 18 months for assault causing bodily harm, and his visa was canceled because he was deemed an “unlawful non-citizen.” Thoms, who has one Australian child, remains in detention.
In its own court filings, the Commonwealth of Australia claims that whether Love or Thoms is an Aboriginal person or is a common law holder of native title is irrelevant in determining if they are aliens. Rather, the government argues that what is important is the men are not citizens and they owe allegiance to a foreign country, and that having an Australian parent or deep ties to the country is irrelevant. “Accordingly, as persons who are not Australian citizens, the Plaintiffs are, and always have been, aliens,” the government argues, adding “it was recognised that the effect of Australia’s emergence as a fully independent sovereign nation with its own distinct citizenship … that the word ‘alien’ in s 5 l(xix) of the Constitution had become synonymous with ‘non-citizen’.”
The state also claims that “Aboriginality does not prevent a person from being an alien,” particularly when that person is a citizen of a foreign country. The citizens of Papua New Guinea, the commonwealth claims, may have traditional and cultural associations with the Torres Strait Islands of Australia — which lie between Papua New Guinea and Australia — yet they are still regarded as aliens.
This case comes in a country that granted citizenship to indigenous people only relatively recently, with a 1967 referendum to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the national census for the first time. Prior to that time, Black people were rendered invisible and treated like animals, supposedly “discovered” by the British in 1788, although they had lived on the land for millennia. Now there is cruel irony in the fact that indigenous Black people would be regarded as aliens on land stolen from them.
Given my work with MIREMS matching riding-level data with ethnic media election coverage (diversityvotes.ca), found this article regarding Australia of interest. Did a quick check on the Canadian Heritage site for information on the situation in Canada, where it appears that the main source would likely be the Canada Periodical Fund:
The fact that the community ethnic and multicultural broadcasting sector didn’t receive additional funding in the latest budget reflects a misunderstanding of the important role of ethnic media in Australian society.
Ethnic print and broadcasting have a long history in Australia, dating back to at least 1848 with the publication of Die Deutsche Post.
Early foreign language broadcasting featured on commercial radio in the 1930s, and throughout the middle of the 20th century. This was before the boom days of the 1970s, when both the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and community radio were firmly established.
Today, along with SBS, more than 100 community radio stations feature content in over 100 languages. There are also ethnic media organisations that broadcast or print content in English.
How ethnic media are funded
Much like mainstream print, ethnic newspapers receive little if any direct government funding. They rely on advertising dollars, as well as occasional small grants.
Ethnic broadcasting is primarily funded through two streams:
government funding of SBS
funding of community ethnic broadcasters through the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF), which is itself funded federally.
According to the peak body of ethnic community broadcasting in Australia, the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council (NEMBC), an annual indexation freeze in funding introduced by the Liberal government in 2013 has cost the sector almost A$1 million. That’s approximately 20% of their total support.
A significant fund of A$12 million over four years has been granted to the community broadcasting sector. But this is generalist funding rather than aimed at ethnic broadcasting specifically. It’s directed towards assisting community stations to transition to a digital signal, the production of local news in English, and management training.
The NEMBC is also in its third year of a new competitive grants process introduced by the Community Broadcasting Foundation.
According to the NEMBC, many ethnic broadcasters are facing a precarious funding environment. This is due to the lack of specialist funding, the costs associated with transitioning to digital broadcasting, and the complexity of the Community Broadcasting Foundation grants process.
Why it’s important
The difficulties facing ethnic broadcasting impact the unique contribution it can make to modern Australia. And it’s a problem that extends beyond policy – media funding for public service, community and ethnic broadcasting is regularly under siege. It’s also a broader social issue.
Ethnic media are often thought of as either quaint services for nostalgic migrants, or as dangerous sources of ethnic segregation. For many, the role of ethnic media rarely, if ever, extends beyond a specific cultural, ethnic or linguistic community.
What’s missing from this image is the role of ethnic media in facilitating successful migrant settlement. Research shows that ethnic media can facilitate feelings of belonging and social participation among first and subsequent generation migrants. Ethnic media connect migrants and culturally and linguistically diverse Australians with other social groups, as well as with their own local communities.
On a more practical level, ethnic media are important sources of information. When advice is needed on a range of issues, from health care services to migration law, ethnic media play a vital role.
This is not a case of migrants staying in their linguistic “ghettos” and building separate ethnic economies. Rather, it involves seeking sources of relevant, and culturally and linguistically appropriate, information in order to live and thrive in Australian society.
That might be providing advice on voting or taxation to migrants from Sudan. Or informing elderly German migrants of changes to aged care services. Ethnic media provide information that is attuned to the particular needs of their audience.
This is a service that mainstream media are largely unable to provide, with their focus on a broad audience. But without it, migrants potentially miss out on important information.
These are also services that benefit both recent migrant groups, such as those from Africa or the Middle East, and more established communities. For elderly Germans in South Australia, information today comes in the form of German broadcasting in Adelaide, with presenters and producers who understand the needs and histories of their audience.
Essential sources of vital information
Ethnic media may also be valuable allies to relevant government departments and settlement service providers. My own ongoing work with ethnic broadcasters and community leaders indicates a level of dissatisfaction with the way government services are communicated to migrant groups from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Ethnic broadcasting is often able to capture the subtleties and nuances that one-size-fits-all government communication campaigns cannot. They are therefore in a unique position to effectively communicate government initiatives at a local, state and national level.
It is no surprise that what would become SBS Radio was originally designed to inform migrants about the introduction of Medibank health insurance scheme.
It’s important that the services provided by the ethnic media sector, particularly those that cannot be measured in purely economic terms, are understood and supported.
A reminder just how different Australia is to Canada, despite some similarities in terms of more opposition in rural areas with relatively few immigrants compared to urban centres. And very few Canadian immigration critics have focussed on crowding issues (save perhaps Grubel) and more on values or irregular migration:
Five days after 50 Muslims in New Zealand were killed in an attack attributed to an Australian white supremacist, Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, unveiled a plan he said would address a fundamental challenge to the nation.
But it was not a proposal to combat hate groups and Islamophobia. It was a cut to immigration.
The government’s plan, which had been in the works for months, is a potential turning point for a nation that has been shaped by newcomers since its days as a British penal colony and that has presented itself in recent years as a model of how immigration, properly managed, can strengthen a country.
Now, amid a global backlash against immigration that has upended politics in the United States, Britain and much of Europe, even Australia is reversing course, turning away from a policy of welcoming skilled foreigners that helped fuel decades of economic growth — and transformed a nation once closed to nonwhite immigrants into a multicultural society.
Mr. Morrison presented the move as a reaction to crowding in the nation’s largest cities, which has led to congested commutes and costlier housing. “This plan is about protecting the quality of life of Australians right across our country,” he said.
Such concerns are widespread as views in the country have turned sharply against population growth over the past year. There is worry, though, that these “quality-of-life” complaints have been amplified by — or perhaps have masked — a deeper ambivalence about a new wave of non-European immigration, especially from Muslim countries, along with Africa and Asia.
There’s no denying the rapid pace of change, nor its benefits. Australia’s population has grown by nearly 40 percent, from 18 million to 25 million, since the 1990s, and economists argue that the nation’s record-breaking 27 years without a recession would have been impossible if not for surging immigration.
Most of the 4.7 million foreigners who have arrived since 1980 have been skilled migrants, especially since 2004, when an average of more than 350,000 students and skilled workers arrived each year, according to government figures.
Many Australians say it is time for these trends to end. In one recent poll, more than two-thirds said their country no longer needed more people. As recently as 2010, a majority of Australians disagreed with that statement.
Mr. Morrison and his Liberal Party — which has often used anti-immigrant sentiment to stir its conservative base — clearly believe that immigration will be a winning issue for them in the national election on May 18.
The government has slowed visa approvals, and plans to cut annual immigration by 30,000 people, to 160,000 a year, a reduction greater than any since the early 1980s, according to archival data.
Mr. Morrison also plans to shift work visas to steer newcomers outside the big cities, requiring recipients to live in those regions for three years before they can secure permanent residency.
In contrast to some of the anti-immigrant language and more restrictive immigration policies:
The federal government is putting $71 million towards ensuring multiculturalism blossoms across Australia.
Immigration Minister David Coleman announced the scheme on Wednesday as part of the government’s migration plan.
The money will go towards various programs to “promote, encourage, celebrate multicultural Australia”, the minister said.
Religious tolerance education charity Together for Humanity, chaired by retired teacher and former Liberal Party president Chris McDiven, will receive $2.2 million.
“It is so important as a society that we are cognisant and accepting of our differences,” Mr Coleman told reporters in Canberra.
“Religious freedom is so fundamental to this nation.”
Mr Coleman said $10 million will be provided to community languages schools, with grants of up to $25,000 on offer to help young Australians connect with cultures.
“It helps to enable them to learn more about the culture that maybe their parents or grandparents have come from,” the minister said.
“Of course, there are other kids who learn languages that are not their background culture but also enable them to learn more about the diversity of our nation.”
Interesting that no mainstream political party in Canada has talked about urban congestion as an immigration issue. Nor has it been prominent in questions ongoing increases immigration levels:
The Morrison government is clearing the ground for a major shift on immigration policy ahead of the April 2 budget by insisting the debate over congestion must not be “hijacked” by racial and religious fears in the wake of the New Zealand terror attack.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison slammed a growing “tribalism” in public life that distorted debate over issues like immigration and multiculturalism.
New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush has confirmed there was only one attacker in the mosque shootings
“The worst example being the despicable appropriation of concerns about immigration as a justification for a terrorist atrocity,” he said.
“Such views have rightly been denounced. But equally, so too must the imputation that the motivation for supporting moderated immigration levels is racial hatred.”
The government was preparing to release a new statement on congestion and population this week, ahead of a fall in permanent migration to be revealed in the budget, but held off after Friday’s assault on two mosques triggered a debate over far-right extremism.
Mr Morrison moved to separate the new migration policy from the political argument over extremism by saying a discussion about the annual migrant intake was not a debate about the value of migrants.
“It must not be appropriated as a proxy debate for racial, religious or ethnic sectarianism,” he said.
“Just because Australians are frustrated about traffic jams and population pressures encroaching on their quality of life, especially in this city, does not mean they are anti-migrant or racist.”
The budget is expected to show a fall in the annual intake of permanent migrants from about 190,000 to about 160,000, in line with Mr Morrison’s comments last year about making the growth more sustainable.
While the permanent intake does not include hundreds of thousands of overseas students and temporary workers, the official cut is likely to lead to a fall in projected tax revenue to be confirmed on budget day.
The government is also finalising measures to encourage migrants to work in regional areas after months of debate about sponsorship programs with regional councils.
Mr Morrison warned that the “mindless tribalism” of political debate could undermine practical work on migration and was fuelling a wider hatred in public life that could lead to immense costs.
“We cannot allow such legitimate policy debates to be hijacked like this,” he said in a speech to the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne.
“Managing our population growth is a practical policy challenge that needs answers – answers I will continue to outline as we approach the next election.”
He said this would include road and rail investments as well as setting the migration programme to meet the needs of the economy as well as the “capacity of our cities” and the needs of the regions.
The warning against an “us and them” debate triggered a swift response from Mr Morrison’s critics, who blamed him for fuelling anxiety about migrants and refugees.
“This is the same man who has built his career on scaremongering against people of colour and asylum seekers,” said Tim Lo Surdo, founder of activist group Democracy in Colour.
“Scott Morrison is a professional fear-monger whose desperate scapegoating of the Muslim community over many years has normalised the kind of hatred that was at the root of Friday’s terrorist attack. He has no moral footing to talk about a better standard of public debate.”
Labor frontbencher Ed Husic said Mr Morrison and other Liberals and Nationals shared responsibility for failing to speak up against racism in the past.
Mr Husic said he had been targeted by Liberal opponents who raised his Muslim faith against him during the 2004 election campaign and he did not see Mr Morrison, who was NSW Liberal Party director at the time, express any concerns at the tactics.
“I think there is a need for leadership in political and media circles to be exercised at the right point of time – not some time later when you’re trying to airbrush what’s gone on, but to deal with in the public space,” Mr Husic said.
“People should not be victims of terrorism or extremism regardless of what background or faith they are. We all have a responsibility to speak up and deal with it.”
Mr Morrison’s speech comes at a time of incendiary debate over the responsibility of conservative politicians and some parts of the media, such as conservative commentators at Sky News, for fuelling racial hatreds, even if the same politicians and media outlets express sorrow at the killings in Christchurch.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott dismissed the problem of Islamophobia less than two years ago, while Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton was subject to strong criticism from the Muslim community for questioning the contribution of Lebanese Muslims to Australia.
Mr Morrison used his speech to announce $55 million in new funding to offer grants to mosques, churches, synagogues, Hindu temples and religious schools to protect against attacks.
The grants will range in size from $50,000 to $1.5 million and will be made available for safety measures such as closed-circuit television cameras, lighting, fencing, bollards, alarms, security systems and public address systems.
“When I say I believe in religious freedom – and I am one of its staunchest defenders in Parliament – I know it starts with the right to worship and meet safely without fear,” Mr Morrison said.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten also called for caution in public debate but focused his remarks on the media and, especially, the social media platforms that spread the live-streamed video of the first Christchurch attack.
“The traditional media – newspapers, radio stations, television – they have to exercise caution before they publish stories. Now with the new media, with the new social media platforms, we haven’t seen that same caution before something is published,” Mr Shorten said in Perth.
“And after the event, eventually, despicable, dangerous, vile, perverted things get taken down.
“That’s really shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.”
Mr Morrison pointed to a growing extremism in some debate as people interacted only with those they agreed with and showed no respect to those with whom they disagreed.
“As debate becomes more fierce, the retreat to tribalism is increasingly taking over, and for some, extremism takes hold,” he said. “This is true of the left and the right.”
While we often, in immigration and citizenship policy, compare ourselves with Australia, the political culture and overall dynamics are quite different, even if we also see mainstream Canadian politicians flirting with the far right or presenting their positions in a somewhat xenophobic manner:
Words from a vile manifesto, written by an Australian, have been floating around the internet following the New Zealand terrorist attack that saw 49 people killed at mosques during Friday prayers.
It calls Islam a “savage belief” and the “religious equivalent of fascism.” “Worldwide, Muslims are killing people in the name of their faith on an industrial scale,” it reads. “The entire religion of Islam is simply the violent ideology of a sixth century despot masquerading as a religious leader, which justifies endless war against anyone who opposes it and calls for the murder of unbelievers and apostates.”
But it wasn’t written by the alleged shooter, Australian citizen Brenton Tarrant. It was written by an Australian politician.
Sen. Fraser Anning also tweeted, even before Friday’s death toll was public, “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?” That link is Fraser Anning, and people like him.
Anning—the Aussie Steve King, perhaps—is a now-independent senator who is too racist even for the extremely racist party that elected him. Elected in 2017 as a One Nation party replacement candidate (after “free speech” crusader Malcolm Roberts was caught up in the citizenship debacle), Anning chose to sit as an independent, then opted to join another fringe party, until he was kicked out of that one too, for his infamous speech calling for a “final solution” to the Muslim immigration problem.
His latest comments have been roundly condemned by everyone in Australian politics—by the prime minister, the recent ex–prime minister, the soon-to-be prime minister. Prime Minister Scott Morrison tweeted that Anning’s comments were “disgusting” and “have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament.”
Of course, they shouldn’t have a place—but they do.
Anning and Tarrant may be extremists, but they are extreme representatives and undeniable products of a racist Australian culture—one that is at best quietly tolerated and at worst wildly stoked by politicians, not to mention a Rupert Murdoch–fueled mass media. Whether it’s demonizing asylum-seekers, demonizing African youths, demonizing Indigenous Australians, or demonizing Muslims, racism is insidious in the mainstream culture.
Note that while Anning’s 2018 final solution speech was condemned, he wasn’t removed from Parliament over it. A man who made an approving Hitler reference remains an Australian senator, a tacit endorsement of his bigotry. Politicians are falling over themselves to condemn Anning now, amid another open show of racism, but there seems to be no rush to condemn the dog whistle kind going on in the media every single day.
The alt-right has a strong presence Down Under, inviting figures like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak and holding fascist rallies—one of which Anning defended attending earlier this year. (Anning was also expected to address a meeting of neo-Nazis with Hitler fan Blair Cottrell later this weekend.) It’s alive and thriving online, a community that Tarrant was reportedly a part of. This report dives into one of the favorite memes of the Australian far right, one recently used by Tarrant both on the forum 8chan and on Twitter. It shows a highly stereotypical Aussie bloke, wearing Outback get-up, brandishing the bottle of a popular Aussie beer, with the caption “hold still while I glass you.” The same meme is frequently used by the Dingoes, an online group known for anti-Semitic views. Lest you think this is a murky subculture, a onetime Labor Party leader has appeared on the Dingoes’ podcast. That leader, Mark Latham, is now a One Nation candidate.
Latham, admittedly, has fallen far in the years he has been out of politics. But this excellent tweet thread from Guardian columnist Jason Wilson, who covers the far right, chronicles the horrific racism even mainstream figures have engaged in. “Remember when the Australian Senate almost passed a literal white nationalist meme?” he tweeted. “Remember all the free media Milo and Lauren Southern got? Remember ‘African Gangs’? Remember ‘white farmers’? Remember the Soros conspiracy theories during the SSM referendum?”
I don’t speak for all Aussies when I say I was not surprised to learn the shooter in the mosque attack was an Australian—but I do speak formany. Tarrant may have been radicalized online, but he was emboldened by the words surrounding him on national platforms, by right-wing commentators writing in major newspapers that a “tidal wave of immigrants sweeps away our national identity” (this from one of the most well-known “journalists” in Australia). His article was called “The Foreign Invasion.” Tarrant’s manifesto is called “The Great Replacement.”
Other parts of Tarrant’s manifesto echo words by other public figures. Australia, you may recall, is not in Europe, but Tarrant refers to himself as European and treats Australia as an outpost of Europe. One recent former prime minister seems a little obsessed with Australia being part of “the Anglosphere,” while Anning was ultimately kicked out of his second party for continuing to distinguish between “European” and “non-European” migration.
The nationality of the other suspects has not yet been revealed, so it’s hard to speculate on any extent to which New Zealand’s own alt-right was involved. I often tell Americans that New Zealand is Australia’s Canada, a better, more progressive version of Australia with a reputation as a welcoming place. The relationship between white and indigenous New Zealanders is much better than that of many colonial societies, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Ironically, the National Front, a far-right group with only about 1,000 members, is said to have been influenced by the Canadian alt-right—the Lauren Southerns and Stefan Molyneuxes and Jordan Petersons—to adopt a “pseudo-academia, clean-cut appearances.” New Zealand journalist Paula Penfold spoke to i24 on Friday, saying that while New Zealand is not known for hate crimes or mass violence, “there has been knowledge of white supremacy in Christchurch for some decades now. We’ve never seen violence like this, but there is a sense now that this is a situation that has been building.”
As Joshua Keating noted Friday, “New Zealand has had one of the fastest-growing immigration populations among developed countries in recent years, much of it from Asia. This has led to at least some political backlash, with [Winston] Peters’ New Zealand First party calling for immigration restrictions and accused of fomenting racism. Police clashed with right-wing nationalists who rallied outside the Parliament in Wellington in 2017.”
The world is again in shock, but it’s no surprise that Tarrant was Australian. After all, as he wrote in his manifesto, he was a “regular white man from a regular family.” So true.
Both countries provide an exception for those who would be left stateless and appear to be applying that consistently unlike recent cases in the UK (Begum) and Australia (Prakash).
Starting with Germany:
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have agreed a plan to strip some Germans who fight for the Islamic State militant group of their citizenship, a German newspaper reported on Sunday.
More than 1,000 Germans have left their country for war zones in the Middle East since 2013 and the government has been debating how to deal with them as U.S.-backed forces are poised to take the last patch of territory from Islamic State in Syria.
About a third have returned to Germany, another third are believed to have died, and the rest are believed to be still in Iraq and Syria, including some detained by Iraqi forces and U.S.-backed fighters in Syria. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, citing unnamed government sources, said three criteria must be met to allow the government to denaturalise Germans who take up arms for the Islamist group.
Such individuals must have a second citizenship, be adults and they would be stripped of their citizenship should they fight for Islamic State after the new rules go into effect.
The compromise ends a dispute over the issue between conservative Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and SPD Justice Minister Katarina Barley.
Spokesmen for both ministers were not available to comment on the report.
U.S. President Donald Trump last month urged Britain, France and Germany to take back more than 800 captured Islamic State fighters and put them on trial.
Germany said it would take back fighters only if the suspects have consular access.
Last month Britain revoked the citizenship of a teenager who had left London when she was aged 15 to join Islamic State in Syria.
The case of Shamima Begum highlighted the security, legal and ethical dilemmas facing European governments dealing with citizens who had sworn allegiance to a group determined to destroy the West.
A New Zealand man detained in Syria after joining the Islamic State militant group will not be stripped of citizenship but could face criminal charges if he returns, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.
New Zealand is the latest of a number of countries, from Australia and Britain to the United States, forced to grapple with legal and security challenges in dealing with former members of a hardline group that had sworn to destroy the West.
Mark Taylor, who traveled to Syria in 2014, told Australian broadcaster ABC from a prison in the Kurdish-run north that he expected to face time in prison if he returned to New Zealand.
Taylor’s joining the group was illegal and could have legal ramifications, Ardern said, but added that her government would provide him with a travel document to return, if possible.
“We have long had plans in place in the event that a New Zealand citizen supporting ISIS in Syria were to return,” Ardern told reporters, using an alternative name for the group.
“Mr Taylor only holds New Zealand citizenship and the government has an obligation not to make people stateless.”
Ardern said officials had identified that a small number of New Zealanders had joined IS, but declined to give an exact number.
New Zealand law allows revocation of citizenship only in limited situations, Ardern said, adding that the government could not render stateless anyone who did not have dual citizenship.Officials had told Taylor he would need to travel to a country where New Zealand has a diplomatic presence, such as Turkey, to receive an emergency travel document to return, said Ardern, adding that would be difficult as he is in detention.
In an interview aired on Monday, Taylor told the ABC that he had worked as a guard for the group for five years and had been detained in its prisons a number of times, such as after he accidentally leaked location details in a tweet in 2015.
He also appeared in an IS promotional video that year, calling for attacks on ANZAC Day celebrations in Australia and New Zealand.
Taylor told ABC he had witnessed executions while with the group and was sorry.
“I don’t know if I can go back to New Zealand, but at the end of the day it’s really something I have to live with for the rest of my life,” he said.
In February, Britain said it was revoking the citizenship of 19-year-old Shamima Begum, who had left London with two school friends to join up when she was 15, but now sought to return with her newborn son.
After Australia’s conservative government lost a key vote on the treatment of asylum seekers held in offshore camps on Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Wednesday that he would reopen a controversial immigration detention camp on Christmas Island, a part of the country but almost 1,000 miles to the northwest of mainland Australia. The camp was shut last October after years of controversies and riots there.
Lawmakers had voted to ease medical transfers from offshore migrant camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to Australia on Tuesday, despite governmental warnings that the evacuations may encourage more asylum seekers to risk the perilous boat journey. The Australian Senate approved the bill on Wednesday. Conditions in the Nauru and Manus camps had been called “inhuman” by the UN and physicians had long been clamouring for the authority to bring the asylum seekers to Australia for medical treatment.
As critics of the prime minister’s hard line immigration policies were still celebrating their success, Morrison announced that the Christmas Island camp would have to be reopened instead, “both to deal with the prospect of arrivals as well as dealing with the prospect of transfers.”
Christmas Island is part of Australia, so asylum seekers could be transferred to the facility and still kept far away from the mainland, despite Tuesday’s bill passage.
But human rights groups and the opposition immediately questioned the real intentions behind the reopening. “This is just further grandstanding from the government,” the Australian Human Rights Law Centre said in a statement to The Washington Post. “These people will need medical specialists and facilities that do not exist on Christmas Island, and the government is well aware of that.”
Authorities on Christmas Island appeared to agree on Wednesday that they were not prepared for a sudden reopening of the camp. Calling the decision a “knee-jerk reaction,” council chief executive David Price told ABC Australia: “We’ve got a hospital (but) it doesn’t do operations. People are medevaced out quite regularly here for medical reasons as it’s only a small regional hospital.”
Buildings at an Australian government immigration detention centre are seen behind a fence on Christmas Island.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Graham Thom, the Refugee Coordinator at Amnesty International Australia, cautioned that transfers from Nauru and Manus Island to Christmas Island could in fact represent a step backward. “It means putting people back into detention who can currently walk free in daylight hours, which may have a detrimental impact on their mental health.”
The opposition also cast doubts on the governmental claim that migrant numbers would rise as a result of Tuesday’s vote. The bill is limited in scope and only applies to migrants already on Nauru or Manus Island. Morrison’s critics blame him for making up a threat scenario that is not based on facts, to deliberately stir concerns ahead of elections that will take place at some point before the end of May.
After losing a by-election in October, Morrison’s conservative Liberal Party lost its narrow majority in the lower house of Parliament last year, which paved the way for Tuesday’s historic defeat.
Wednesday’s countermove by Morrison bears some of the hallmarks of President Donald Trump’s political maneuvers ahead of the midterm elections last November, when he rallied his supporters behind the idea of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Days before the polling date, more than 5,000 active U.S. service members were ordered to the border on a mission Democrats described as pointless and political. Spreading unsubstantiated claims that “unknown Middle Easterners” were in a caravan of migrants moving toward the U.S. border and describing the developments as an “invasion,” Trump was widely criticized for exaggerating or even inventing a threat that did not exist.
Both Trump and Morrison, said Amnesty International coordinator Thom, were “creating sense of emergency and political crisis, that in this case really doesn’t exist.”
“The horrible rhetoric we’re hearing does echo Trump’s rhetoric of murderers and pedophiles. It’s playing into people’s fears,” said Thom.
Similar concerns were shared by Australia’s Labor opposition party on Wednesday in regards to the Morrison government’s Christmas Island announcement.
“(This is) a pattern of deceit and desperation from a man who is desperate to cling to office – a man who has nothing left, nothing left but deceit, fear and smear,” said Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong.
Christmas Island authorities are worried about a repeat of the scenes until 2018, when the immigration detention center on the island became a flash point of the country’s hard line immigration policies. Former detainees described extended lockdowns and a lack of medical and mental health care in the facilities prior the closure, even though Australian authorities denied those allegations.
In November 2015, the death of an Iranian Kurdish asylum seeker who attempted to escape the island but fell off a cliff sparked riots in the center, following years of protests there over conditions at the center and Australia’s immigration policies.
Despite criticism from international rights groups and the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, the government has stood by its hard-line policy of directing asylum seekers who arrive by sea to the offshore camps. Thousands have been held on Manus Island and Nauru since the policy took effect in 2013, and about 1,000 remain on both islands, according to government estimates.
Lawyers for 606 asylum seekers in an Australian offshore detention center on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island sought a court injunction to prevent the facility’s scheduled closure, as fears mounted of violent confrontations with locals who oppose the asylum seekers living among them.
More recently, the Liberal Party has made some concessions to critics, by striking resettlement deals and evacuating children who may be at risk of committing suicide or have suffered mental distress.
But the Australian opposition maintained that the concessions are a facade: Morrison and his supporters have gone to great lengths to uphold the image of Australia’s hard line immigration policies. Adult asylum seekers – believed to be in need of urgent treatment by medical organizations – were repeatedly refused transfers, which prompted Tuesday’s bill that will ease such evacuations.
Whereas decisions on medical transfers had been made by civil servants, doctors can now themselves initiate the process. The Home Affairs Minister can still stop evacuations on the grounds of national security.
But for some of the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island who will be able to leave, the journey from one island detention camp may now end in just another island detention center. Ironically, the best bet for them may at this stage is to hope to be resettled to the United States before that happens – under a deal struck by former president Barack Obama and so far upheld by Trump.
When I was working on citizenship files, Australia’s performance standard was the gold standard compared to Canada’s less than bronze (80 percent of processed within 80 days).
The official Canadian performance standard, as reported in departmental reports, is a meaningless one: the total number of immigrants who have become citizens irrespective of how long a time they have been in Canada (the total “stock”) versus a more meaningful measure of how many have become citizens within a certain period of time (e.g., 5-9 years since arrival):
Australian citizenship applications are not being processed in a timely way by the Department of Home Affairs, according to the auditor-general.
An Australian National Audit Office review has found just 15 per cent of applications for citizenship “by conferral” – which makes up the bulk of applications – were processed within 80 days in 2017/18.
That compares to the department’s former target to process 80 per cent of applications within 80 days, which it dropped in 2017.
The department does, however, measure the time taken to obtain citizenship from lodging an application to attending a ceremony.
Australian citizenship applications are not being processed in a timely manner.
The auditor-general found that time “increased significantly” between March 2017 and September 2018, despite a dip in the “relative complexity” of applications being lodged.
The review suggests increased screening of applicants has played a major role in extended processing times.
Nevertheless, it found staff were not being using efficiently.
“The department has a suite of initiatives in train that are designed to enhance efficiency but has been slow in implementing them,” the review stated.
The Department of Home Affairs disputes the audit office’s claim. In a statement to the auditor-general, it highlighted that the proportion of citizenship applications knocked back has doubled from 3.4 per cent in 2014/15 to 6.8 per cent in the first few months of 2018/19.
That comes as new security measures have been introduced.
“The enhanced integrity measures adopted by the department over the last three years to protect Australia’s national security and community safety are delivering results,” the department said.
“We will always prioritise these efforts over speed.”
The department has agreed to the auditor-general’s recommendation to revise how it funds its citizenship activities, based on the latest activity levels.
But the department has knocked back a recommendation to publicly report its key performance indicators, saying they could give people unrealistic expectations.
The inquiry came after the commonwealth ombudsman, Refugee Council of Australia and others raised concerns about the duration of the citizenship application process.
Multicultural Meanderings 