Liberal National MP George Christensen has said he will attend a Reclaim Australia rally in Mackay on Saturday, one of a number of rallies planned around the country. Reclaim Australia is an odious and obsessive cult, focused on an imaginary “Islamisation” of Australia. The group urges discrimination against Muslims, spruiks bizarre theories of a secret “halal tax”, and has members who are — as a dissident member noted on ABC radio yesterday — “anti-Semitic and misogynist”.
Christensen is no stranger to controversy himself, and since he is a backbencher and likely to remain so, his determination to attend the rally may not be a huge problem for Tony Abbott per se. But it does show up the utter chaos of Abbott’s opportunistic positions on free speech and radicalisation.
On the one hand, this is a government that affirms the “right to be a bigot”. On the other, it treats radical and bigoted speech as a virus that promotes radicalisation and must be socially managed. Free speech is sacrosanct — except when it occurs unscripted on the ABC and exposes government ministers to scrutiny, at which point they are barred from appearing on it.
To ban ministers from appearing on the ABC is bad enough; to refuse to impose discipline on an MP for speaking on the platform of a noxious xenophobic group shows the hypocrisy in full.
There’s a long tradition of political parties guarding their boundaries by limiting where and with whom their members speak. If Tony Abbott and Warren Truss do not enforce this now then they are guilty not of liberalism, but of cowardice. They will have de facto painted Reclaim Australia as more “Australian” than the ABC.
Furthermore they will have established what many of us have long suspected: in the views of the Abbott government, “radicalisation” is something brown people do, and their speech can be treated as violence to be controlled. Meanwhile, free speech is a white thing, which must be protected.
We think free speech, including odious speech, from all speakers must be permitted — but it does not need to be endorsed, and this is yet another test of Tony Abbott’s character. Or what remains of it.
If “front benchers” may not appear on the ABC where, on TV, can they go, apart from the odious Blotspot?
I don’t know whether the 7 or 9 CurrantBun/LastWeek progs do, politics these days, or whether they even still excist?
The problem with societies is how to balance obsessive cults – as the evidence for islamisation of societies is stated in the New YorkTimes to-day following the release of Wikileaks Saudi Arabia’s cables. So fringe groups have some basis for their fears whether it applies to Australia is a judgement call –
Well said, Crikey!
I went to the rally in cairns in April and they were a pretty pathetic bunch. I liked the man on stage railing against halal food and this awful religion in the strongest Scots accent I have ever heard.
I suggested that he go back to where he came from.
The NSW police deputy commissioner Nick Kaldas has said white supremacist groups which this mob seem to be are an increasing threat to social cohesion. What I think is being missed here is the increasingly racist tone of the Liberal party after JW Howard became leader. He began this quietly, then caved in to Hanson. We now see in many front benchers a racist slant to their statements and of course the odious Bernardi chipping in. However the whole parliamentary Liberal party seems tainted. I have long thought that had the Tampa been filled with white refugees there would have been no problem. Abbott and co are making it an art form.