Is Australia really under threat?

[magentaflame]

By terrorism of course. Well it seems not.

Australia, your misplaced fear is giving terrorists exactly what they want - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Perceptions miss the mark

Take it from this Pom journalist who has reported on the Eurozone crisis, the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump — whether it's terrorism, crime or the state of the economy, you Aussies have less to worry about than most other Western nations.

Despite recent terror-inspired stabbings and deaths, the threat of "homegrown" extremism has been overstated. As even your government has conceded, "only a very small proportion of the population supports the use of violence to try to achieve ideological, religious or political goals." Yes, about 100 Australian Muslims are believed to be fighting for Islamic State in Syria, which is 100 too many, but that's a tiny fraction of the Australian Muslim community of 600,000-odd. (Incidentally, the proportion of your population that is Muslim is nine times smaller than many of you seem to think it is.)

The threat posed by bearded, dark-skinned foreigners has been equally overstated. Why do Muslim refugees, arriving by the boatload from war-torn Syria and Iraq, keep so many of you up at night? The truth is the security threat posed by such men, women and, yes, don't forget children, is truly miniscule.

Don't take my word for it: Duncan Lewis, the head of your national security agency, the ASIO, has said he has "absolutely no evidence to suggest there's a connection between refugees and terrorism."

Or as your deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, so memorably put it, there is as much a link between refugees and terrorism as there is "between testicles and terrorism."

The model is working

The truth is that Australia should be the envy of the Western world. Yes, your country has an ugly — and in many ways, unresolved — history of racism and discrimination, both towards non-white immigrants and Aboriginal peoples. Yes, your government has failed, in the words of Human Rights Watch, to "respect international standards for asylum seekers and refugees". Yes, you have a growing number of nativist politicians vying to be Australia's Donald Trump, from Pauline Hanson to Jacqui Lambie.

Yet integration, by and large, is working in Australia, despite it having one of the highest foreign-born populations (28 per cent) in the West. In an era in which conservative leaders from Britain to France to Germany have been falling over one another to declare multiculturalism outdated or even dead, your current conservative government deserves praise for issuing a recent official statement declaring your country "the most successful multicultural society in the world". "Australia," wrote Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the foreword, "is an immigration nation ...embracing its diversity."

It is your remarkable and admirable diversity which the terrorists seek to disrupt and undermine; groups such as Islamic State do not hide the fact that their goal is to sow fear and division. Their little helpers in the West — the Trumps, the Le Pens, the Hansons, with their "Muslim bans" and obsession with "sharia" law — are, wittingly or unwittingly, bolstering their message.




So why did we turn the boats back? Apparently terrorism

Why do we have refugees on Manus, Christmas and Nauru Islands? Apparently terrorism.

When I was in melbourne doing my course I learnt a lot about the muslim community. Wasn't what I expected. I felt sorry for Hassan who's relatives were dead because of ISIS or because they were fighting ISIS........ then he himself is looked at with suspicion as a potential terrorist. I find that sad.

[LarsMac]

Like the guy said, your only real problem is if you allow yourselves to fall into that thinking that "those people" are a threat to you.

Look at what is going on in the US, now. We have begun to tumble over the cliff like Lemmings, and I fear there is no stopping us from tearing ourselves apart, now.

Don't follow our lead. It seems that we haven't a clue what we are doing.

[magentaflame]

It's funny you should say that. I've seen what the Brits have written on this forum and "Lemmings" is a good word for it. Something doesn't work in Britain, next minute our Pollies are introducing the same policies/strategies here.........Go figure

[Clodhopper]

magentaflame;1510953 wrote: It's funny you should say that. I've seen what the Brits have written on this forum and "Lemmings" is a good word for it. Something doesn't work in Britain, next minute our Pollies are introducing the same policies/strategies here.........Go figure


I think the traffic is quite 2 way between Aus and UK politics: There are usually a few of your people end up working in the party political machines as strategists using Aussie techniques and going back with policy ideas on what might grab votes. At least, that's my impression down the years.

edit: Actually, there's a fair bit of quiet top civil servant level traffic that goes on between the UK, Canada Australia and New Zealand on a fairly permanent basis as we are all parliamentary democracies with the Queen as the head of State. We are also 4 of the 5 eyes (the US being the 5th and way the most important) that work very closely on Intelligence matters. The links between our countries aren't just a matter of history, they are very real and practical.