Dutton vs Fraser

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Peter Dutton blames Bill Shorten for whipping up hysteria over Lebanese-Muslim comments

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has turned the heat on those who have criticised him for his comments on terrorism problems in the Lebanese-Australian community, asserting that everything he has said is factual and that Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has been deceptive.

Last week, Mr Dutton said that the Fraser government had made mistakes in letting some migrants into Australia from the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s, referring to advice that 22 of 33 terrorism offenders were second and third-generation Lebanese-Muslim Australians.

Bill Shorten is "sneaky and tricky" according to Peter Dutton who believes he's been misrepresented by the Labor leader.

He said that refugee groups are now reviewed and if "particular cohorts, particular nationalities, particular people" are not integrating then others are considered instead.

Mr Shorten called the Immigration Minister's comments "loud, lazy, disrespectful, wholesale labelling of entire communities for the actions of a tiny minority" and the Greens said they were racist.

But Mr Dutton is standing firm, saying he has spoken the truth and that the Opposition Leader has "sought to completely misrepresent what I said".
"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," he told Sydney radio station 2GB.

"If we do that, we can hold up the vast majority of people within the Lebanese community who work as hard as you and I do, who have contributed to society, who are captains of industry, people that have worked hard, provided their kids with an education."

Mr Dutton said these people were being "besmirched" by the small minority who have been involved in terrorist and criminal behaviour.

"The facts here are indisputable, which is why I feel comfortable where I am. I'm on safe ground because I've relied on the facts. If people don't understand the history, then they will make the same mistakes into the future."

Fairfax Media understands Mr Dutton's figures referred to terrorism-related convictions since 2001, including from the high-profile Operation Pendennis arrests in 2005.

Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan said the Immigration Minister was guilty of exploiting bigotry for political gain.

"Let us not beat around the bush here: what Mr Dutton said was racist, what he implied was racist and the lack of outrage in Parliament reflects on the racism underscoring much of how we talk about minorities in Australia," he said.

Terrorism expert Greg Barton said there were lessons to be learned from the problematic Lebanese Civil War intake but that Mr Dutton's comments were "unfortunate".

"He's speaking to an issue where we need to try and understand what is going on but the way it was expressed and handled was unfortunate because, rather than having an open and frank discussion, instantly everyone's back is up and people are feeling aggrieved," Professor Barton told Fairfax Media.

"We're talking about an exceedingly small number of people in the Lebanese community. It is true that community is over-represented, particularly in the current issue with terrorism recruitment, but the flip side is it's a small section of that community."

Jacinta Carroll, head of counter-terrorism policy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Mr Dutton's figures are correct but "don't tell us much that is helpful".

"Fortunately in Australia to date the numbers of supporters of Islamist extremism and terrorism are very low; so low, in fact, they're categorised as cases and clusters rather than being statistically useful," she wrote in an opinion piece for Fairfax Media.

"The figure of 22 represents less than 0.01 per cent of the about 180,000 Australians of Lebanese background, according to the ABS."

Fraser-era cabinet papers released in 2007 showed officials were worried about relaxed eligibility requirements for the intake, saying some of the migrants lacked qualities considered important for integration, with some unskilled, illiterate and of poor character.

A submission by Mr Dutton to the national security committee of cabinet, obtained by the ABC in February, said these relaxed migration requirements "led to the transportation to Australia of a Sunni community which included elements who already held extremist beliefs, or who were more highly receptive to extremist messages."

The submission also observed inadequate resettlement services, which have since been improved, and "social alienation, lack of opportunity and uncertain identity" as negative factors.

Lebanese-Australian communities experience higher unemployment, lower incomes and poorer education levels and are over-represented in the justice system.

Recently, law enforcement officials and security experts have observed a strong connection between extremist activity and notorious organised crime networks, particularly those in Western Sydney, which maintain links to communities in Lebanon.

Mostly spurred by concerns about criminal behaviour within the Sudanese community, a parliamentary committee will consider migrant settlement in Australia and youth gang activity next year. The inquiry will consider English language skills and whether visa rules adequately consider migrants' prospects for successful resettlement.

Now Labor and The Greens and people like Redneck here, can lie all they like about this... but facts are facts and Dutton is right.

[Rorschach]

Malcolm Fraser’s Lebanese concession became a disaster
The Australian
November 24, 2016
Gerard Henderson

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has copped considerable criticism for his comment on Sky News’ The Bolt Report last Monday that one-time Coalition prime minister “Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes” in bringing some refugees into Australia in the 1970s. Yet the authority for this claim is none other than Fraser himself. Here is the story.

Soon after becoming prime minister in November 1975, Fraser was approached by some of the leaders of the Maronite (Christian) Lebanese community in Australia. They were concerned at the plight of fellow Maronites in the Lebanon civil war.

Fraser agreed to the proposal that Australia should accept those Lebanese fleeing the civil war. They were not refugees in the strict definition of the term, since they were not fleeing persecution. Rather, they were caught up in an armed conflict. And so was established what was termed “the Lebanon concession”, meaning that a concession to Australia’s existing policy of refugee intake would be implemented to take account of the special circumstances applying in Lebanon.

In the event, it turned out that few Maronites wanted to take advantage of the Lebanon concession. However, many Muslims did — particularly Sunnis from the rural north and Shi’ites from the rural south. This despite the fact the civil war was taking place primarily around the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Under the relaxed selection criteria to enter Australia under the Lebanon concession, a person only had to state that they were fleeing the civil war and that they had a relative living in Australia.

Few, if any, applicants were rejected.

Immigration Department staff sent to the region to administer the program had no way of checking whether the applicants had a relative in Australia. Moreover, many Lebanese had a definition of “family” that even extended to village members whom they had not met in years.

It turned out that 90 per cent of Lebanese who entered Australia under the Lebanon concession were Muslim. During 1976-77, there was a net migration of 12,000 Lebanese to Australia. Historian James Jupp pointed out in The Australian People that between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of Muslims among the Lebanese population doubled from 14 per cent to 31 per cent.

I first wrote about this matter in late 2006 — that is, before the release of the cabinet papers for 1976. Because I had no way of checking my facts, I phoned Fraser and asked him about the Lebanese concession. He replied along the following lines: “Gerard, I have no memory of any of this but it’s the kind of thing I would have done.” In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, the former prime minister admitted to having a “notoriously fallible” memory.

The cabinet papers in the National Archives of Australia reveal that the Lebanon concession was an unmitigated ­disaster. In September 1976 cabinet considered a report that concluded that Immigration ­Department officials were “completely overstretched” and had lost control of the program.

The report expressed concern about “the possibility that the conflicts, tensions and divisions within Lebanon will be transferred to Australia”.

By November 1976 the situation had deteriorated further. ­Immigration minister Michael MacKellar told cabinet that a high percentage of applicants under the Lebanon concession were illiterate and were being admitted to Australia without “any regard to their economic viability, personal qualities or capacity for successful settlement”.

On November 30, 1976, the Fraser government abandoned the Lebanon concession. It was replaced by the normal criteria for Lebanese immigration applicants that applied previously; namely, “economic viability, personal quality and ability to integrate”, which applied equally to Muslims and Christians.

As Dutton made clear in parliament on Tuesday, his reference to the fact two-thirds of those charged with terrorism-related ­offences in Australia are “from second and third-generation Lebanese Muslim backgrounds” was related to Muslim Lebanese-Australians whose parents and grandparents entered Australia under the Lebanon concession, or as a beneficiary of family reunion schemes for Lebanon concession “refugees”.

When Australia is taking refugees from civil war zones, Dutton’s comment is timely and responsible. After all, the person who first realised the Lebanon concession was a mistake was Fraser himself — four decades ago.

[IQS.RLOW]

Cut paste bold...yawn.

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LOL, just posted links to the above info at Ozpol, seems the usual suspects are in denial about it... well you can lead a horse to water but some are just too dumb to drink. (Bam has completely lost the plot). They have no credibility just reguritating Shorten's lies.

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More information and another opinion that some will just ignore...

Facts are lost in fight over Peter Dutton and migration
The Australian
November 25, 2016
David Crowe

The weakness in Australian political debate was on display again this week in the ugly dispute over migration. There were faults on all sides in the outrage over Peter Dutton’s remarks about terror suspects, the “mistakes” made in migration and the challenges in the Lebanese Muslim community. But when the accusations fly about inflammatory language, the Immigration Minister is hardly the prime suspect.

Some of Dutton’s own colleagues think he was too blunt in talking about a problem in one particular migrant community, even if everyone knows the problem is there. Certainly he could have used more careful language in pointing to the obvious danger of foreign fighters being recruited from the Lebanese Muslim community.

He might have acknowledged that some gullible Australians from whitebread backgrounds are also eager to take up arms with terrorists.

Yet the ferocious response to Dutton’s remarks has been out of proportion to his comments. The instinctive reaction is: “How dare you say that?” This tells voters their politicians would prefer to dance around a problem rather than look at it honestly. The fury in the debate is also based on distortion. Labor, in particular, has moulded the original comments into something they were not in order to prevent them being debated rationally at all.

This is where theories of “post-truth” politics meet the reality of daily media coverage. It helps to consider what Dutton actually said when Andrew Bolt asked him on Sky News last week about crime in the Sudanese ­community.

“The other interesting aspect — and we see this in the foreign fighters — we end up looking at people from second and third generations,” Dutton told Bolt.

“So the original people that have arrived here, that have sought refuge for example, have done well, they’ve worked hard, they’ve educated their children, and it’s the second or third generation that’s going off to fight and so we need to have a proper look at what has gone wrong.

“And clearly something has gone wrong. When you have this level of concentrated violence and gang type activity, it is a particular issue — but I think we need to put it into perspective in terms of what the rest of the community is doing by way of contribution.”

You can see Dutton’s mistake. “I think we need to put it into perspective,” he said. Perspective? Nobody offers that these days — and certainly not Bill Shorten. The Opposition Leader has hammered the minister for these remarks in the sure knowledge that people are responding to what they are told Dutton said, rather than what he actually said.

Dutton’s actual remarks praised the contribution of the ­migrant community while warning of a specific danger with foreign fighters. He reminded the nation of a problem that is staring it in the face. The response from his enemies was to spread panic over half his statement while ­ignoring the rest.

“The reality is that Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people in, in the 1970s — we’re seeing that today and we need to be honest in having that discussion,” Dutton told Bolt. “There was a mistake made, and if it can be demonstrated that we have a significant proportion of a particular community, we’re talking about the Sudanese community in this instance, then we need to work out what’s gone wrong.”

At no point did Dutton say it was wrong to bring in an entire migrant community. He said there were mistakes with some of the people who migrated to Australia. The facts back him up. Cabinet documents from 1976, released in 2007, show the Fraser government realised it had to ­restore the rules for Lebanese Muslims after allowing a temporary exemption from normal screening.

Challenged on those remarks in parliament, Dutton rejected Labor claims he was referring to the Vietnamese and said the country needed to speak frankly about problems in the Lebanese Muslim community. He admitted to concerns about “elements” and said he did not want their crimes to besmirch the “vast majority” of the community. Again, it helps to read his actual comments.

“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 told parliament.

“I hold up those people who have come from all walks of life — the Vietnamese who came in; people who have come in from Asia and from war-torn Europe; people who have come in from Lebanon and otherwise. Many people who have built this country over many decades deserve to be praised, but I am going to call out those people who are doing the wrong thing. If we pretend otherwise, my judgment is that we only compound these problems.”

He said in the next breath that the “vast majority” of migrants made an “absolute go” of life in Australia. He did not denigrate all second and third-generation ­migrants. He did not denigrate all Lebanese Muslim Australians. Some media coverage yesterday claimed Dutton was only now praising the majority of ­migrants because of the backlash against his remarks. In fact, he praised the vast majority from the start.

Now consider the response. Commentators accuse Dutton of “impugning a dead man” because he said the Fraser government made mistakes. Shorten rebukes him for using the phrase “second and third-generation ­migrants” when the term is routinely used by migration organisations and academics. Greens senator Nick McKim says it is a “step too far” to link second and third-generation Australians to terrorists.

Then there was the video response from Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan, who said the government displayed a “toxic, assimilationist, nationalist” agenda. The rhetoric was over the top. “What Mr Dutton said was racist, what he implied was racist and the lack of outrage in parliament reflects on the racism underscoring much of how we talk about minorities in Australia,” Dandan said.

Yet the problem is not an invention. A quick search will turn up academic studies on ethnicity and crime. Immigration Department studies show the challenges with migrant groups, not just Lebanese Muslims, with poor skills and no English. The concern is often aired by those who know these communities. Things change when Dutton speaks. A problem is, everything in national debate now depends on who says something, not what they say.

Asked if there is a problem, should a minister deny it? The fact that 22 out of 33 terror suspects are from a specific community is surely an issue that needs confronting. Yet all the attention goes to the fact the minister dares to mention it. Behind all the thunder this week is an astonishing timidity in facing the facts.

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As Dutton made clear in parliament on Tuesday, his reference to the fact two-thirds of those charged with terrorism-related ­offences in Australia are “from second and third-generation Lebanese Muslim backgrounds” was related to Muslim Lebanese-Australians whose parents and grandparents entered Australia under the Lebanon concession, or as a beneficiary of family reunion schemes for Lebanon concession “refugees”.

When Australia is taking refugees from civil war zones, Dutton’s comment is timely and responsible. After all, the person who first realised the Lebanon concession was a mistake was Fraser himself — four decades ago.

I don't think too many people would disagree with Dutton. Generally he's a hopeless manager and has blown the offshore budget by about 500%, but criticising a former Liberal PM takes a bit of courage. He could have blamed Al Grassby like some people do.

Whenever you hear the description of a person who has committed a crime and is "of middle eastern appearance" - a Lebanese immediately springs to mind. They might be a minority according to some experts, but they are in your face with their anti social and criminal behaviour. They're not just thugs - they hate Australia and don't care how many lives they destroy. They spit out their contempt for us in every way possible - from fraud to illegal weapons, drugs and thuggery etc.

[Rorschach]

As Dutton made clear in parliament on Tuesday, his reference to the fact two-thirds of those charged with terrorism-related ­offences in Australia are “from second and third-generation Lebanese Muslim backgrounds” was related to Muslim Lebanese-Australians whose parents and grandparents entered Australia under the Lebanon concession, or as a beneficiary of family reunion schemes for Lebanon concession “refugees”.

When Australia is taking refugees from civil war zones, Dutton’s comment is timely and responsible. After all, the person who first realised the Lebanon concession was a mistake was Fraser himself — four decades ago.

I don't think too many people would disagree with Dutton. Generally he's a hopeless manager and has blown the offshore budget by about 500%, but criticising a former Liberal PM takes a bit of courage. He could have blamed Al Grasby like some people do.

Whenever you hear the description of a person who has committed a crime and is "of middle eastern appearance" - a Lebanese immediately springs to mind. They might be a minority according to some experts, but they are in your face with their anti social and criminal behaviour. They're not just thugs - they hate Australia and don't care how many lives they destroy. They spit out their contempt for us in every way possible - from fraud to illegal weapons, drugs and thuggery etc.

Why would he mention Grassby? Fraser was in a Coalition Government not a Labor one. Grassby was pre Fraser pre the Lebanese Civil war and the Lebanese Concession.
People blame Grassby for Multiculti, even though it was Fraser not Whitlam that brought it in.
Muslim Lebs are worse than Christian Lebs, but both are racists.

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Why would he mention Grassby? Fraser was in a Coalition Government not a Labor one. Grassby was pre Fraser pre the Lebanese Civil war and the Lebanese Concession.
People blame Grassby for Multiculti, even though it was Fraser not Whitlam that brought it in.

There are many Coalition supporters in the past who have blamed Labor and Grassby for multiculturalism even though Fraser put it into law. I was giving Dutton credence for not bringing that old furphy out.

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Why would he mention Grassby? Fraser was in a Coalition Government not a Labor one. Grassby was pre Fraser pre the Lebanese Civil war and the Lebanese Concession.
People blame Grassby for Multiculti, even though it was Fraser not Whitlam that brought it in.

There are many Coalition supporters in the past who have blamed Labor and Grassby for multiculturalism even though Fraser put it into law. I was giving Dutton credence for not bringing that old furphy out.

Both major parties support Multiculti... Dutton was talking about Immigration not Multiculti...
Grassby and Whitlam are not clean skins when it comes to multiculti... especially Grassby.

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As we can see The Greens and Labor are being totally dishonest and rabid about what Dutton actually said, but hey... that is what LW Progs do...

This week Immigration Minister Peter Dutton spoke harsh truths about the Islamic extremists who have emerged from our Lebanese Muslim community, and the reaction from the green-Left and progressive media was classically post-truth.

The message Bill Shorten accused Dutton of promulgating was the polar opposite of what the minister enunciated. Dutton said the majority of Lebanese Muslims who have “done the right thing by this country” should not be “defined by those people who have done the wrong thing” but the Opposition Leader accused him of the “wholesale labelling of entire communities for the actions of a tiny minority”.

Shorten’s critique was fallacious but most media did not pin him. Before long the Guardian Australia was calling Dutton’s comments “incendiary” and Fairfax Media was running “Dutton race row” headlines and calls for his resignation.

As for the well-established facts about Lebanese Muslims arrested in terror operations and broader, extensively analysed problems of welfare dependency, crime and poor integration, the more outraged the media outlets, the less interested they were in such matters. Greens senator Nick McKim captured the zeitgeist. “Undoubtedly the advice he’s got is accurate but just because something is fact doesn’t mean that it’s reasonable or productive to talk about it,” he told Sky News.

Do these politicians and journalists presume the public (to use Jack Nicholson’s famous line) can’t handle the truth?