Australian government responds to Islamophobia envoy’s report
Government’s response to 54 recommendations made by Aftab Malik includes new education taskforce, federal police social cohesion team
CANBERRA, Australia (MNTV) – Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Pauline Hanson of “undermining social cohesion” after his Islamophobia envoy warned the One Nation leader’s words could have violent consequences, reports The Guardian.
The government formally responded on Saturday to the 54 recommendations made by the special envoy to combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, in his report handed down 10 months ago.
The Albanese government said it had accepted and begun to act on 35 of those recommendations, but the prime minister rejected calls from Malik to give religious groups stronger legal protection and review counter-terror laws for discriminatory effects against Muslims.
The government’s response warned Islamophobia was threatening Australia’s national unity as well as threatening the Muslim community, referencing the 2019 shooting of 51 Muslim worshippers by an Australian man in New Zealand.
“It has found new life in those who seek to blame all Muslims for acts of terrorism that are an offence against their faith,” the report reads.
“The inescapable lesson of the atrocity at Christchurch, the mass murder of Muslims by an Australian gunman, is that what begins with hateful ideas can end in unimaginable violence.”
Malik echoed the warning, when asked in Sydney on Saturday about Hanson’s claims in a podcast that Islam was “based on terrorism”.
“These damaging, dehumanising words, not only do they isolate and marginalise Muslims, it lends itself to threatening behaviour, harm, … and ultimately, we’ve seen Christchurch,” Malik said.
Albanese did not comment specifically on Hanson’s remarks when invited to by Malik but said the One Nation leader “has been undermining social cohesion for 30 years”.
Albanese also responded to Hanson’s remarks lamenting the end of the White Australia policy of discriminatory immigration, in a podcast with far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson.
“The movement away from the White Australia Policy wasn’t just the Labor government of Gough Whitlam,” Albanese said. “It was actually a bipartisan position. That began in the 1960s, and that was a good thing.”
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, condemned the remarks. “I never thought when I entered parliament that in my political lifetime anyone who’d been elected to parliament would be calling for White Australia.”
“I thought we were in a country where everybody just accepted that we had moved on and we were better because we’d moved on. Part of saying you love Australia is to love Australia for who we are, not some perverted concept of a country where we would turn on each other.”
Albanese said Islamophobic incidents had risen and he hoped the government’s response to Malik’s report would support Australia’s social cohesion. He said some of Malik’s recommendations would be adopted while others would be subject to “further consideration”.
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