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Australian PM condemned call for white-only immigration policy

SHAFAQNA- An Australian politician was widely criticized after demanding “a final solution”, while calling for a return to the White Australia policy that favored “European Christians”. However, the prime minister, Turnbull noted that Australia was continuing to maintain its multicultural identity in the  world.

According to npr, Australia‘s prime minister has condemned a fringe party lawmaker who called for a return to racially based immigration policies and invoked the term “final solution” in a speech before Parliament.

Anning, in his first speech to Parliament, called for a return to the country’s historic “White Australia” policy that explicitly favored immigration by Europeans over Asians and Pacific islanders. Those policies were dismantled over decades and the last vestiges disappeared in the 1970s.

Fraser Anning  is the only member of the federal Senate from the far-right Katter’s Australian Party.

In the speech, Anning lamented the demise of “our predominately European identity” and called for a “drastic” cut to immigration and a return to racially discriminatory preferences.

“Diversity should be managed to remain compatible with social cohesion and national identity,” he said. “We as a nation are entitled to insist that those who are allowed to come here predominantly reflect the historic European-Christian composition of Australian society.”

The White Australia Policy while calling for a ban on Muslim migration

Australia’s soon-to-be first female, Muslim senator says Fraser Anning has spat in the face of millions in his first speech to parliament.

The “hate and racism” in the former One Nation senator’s speech calling for cuts to Muslim immigration won’t stop Mehreen Faruqi, who will be sworn in next week.

“I’m a Muslim migrant, I’m about to be a senator and there’s not a damn thing Fraser Anning can do about it,” Ms Faruqi wrote in Junkee.

I could stand on Bondi Beach, serving sausage sangers in an Akubra, draped in an Australian flag with a southern cross tattoo and, for some, I still wouldn’t be Australian enough.”

She has served as a Greens MP in the NSW Legislative Council since 2013.

As Senator Anning made his notorious remarks in the Senate, Ms Faruqi was giving a farewell speech in the NSW parliament.

Ms Faruqi described Senator Anning’s call for a plebiscite on Muslim immigration and use of the words ‘final solution’, a Nazi reference.

“It’s easy for him to stand there, in a historically conservative chamber full of white, privileged men and praise the White Australia Policy while calling for a ban on Muslim migration,” she said, amp reported.

In Parliament, Muslim Sen. Anne Aly delivered an emotional response, saying “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of having to stand up against hate, against vilification, time and time again”.

Anning said all terrorists these days are Muslims

Anning is a former member of One Nation and won his seat in Parliament after the removal of One Nation Sen.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Anning labeled Muslims criminals and “welfare-bludgers” and spoke of “black African Muslim gangs terrorizing Melbourne.”

“While all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims, so why would anyone want to bring more of them here?” he asked.

“The final solution to the immigration problem, of course, is a popular vote,” Anning said, invoking the infamous term used by leaders of Nazi Germany to refer to the Holocaust.

Racism is Condemned in any form

The speech has sparked outrage across the political spectrum.

“We reject, we condemn racism in any form, and the remarks by Sen. Anning are justly condemned and rejected by us all,” Turnbull told Australia’s parliament.

Many compared the speech to one given in 1996 by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in which she declared Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten called the speech “a low point for our parliament”.

The leader of Katter’s Australia party, struck a starkly different note, declaring the speech had his “1,000% support”.

In a bizarre press conference where he upbraided journalists as “racists” for referring to his father’s Lebanese heritage, Katter backed Anning’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration, and declared current non-discriminatory immigration policies were “bringing in the persecutors”.

Katter, who surprised many people in politics by doubling down on Anning’s comments, said he was “sick and tired of the lily pad left” and migration programs that brought people “from overseas, from countries with no democracy, no rule of law, no egalitarian traditions, no Judeo-Christian background”.

“You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that we as a race of people, we Australians, are being buried by a mass migration program to line the pockets of the rich and powerful in Sydney – who take our pay and undermine our pay and conditions”, he added.

Australia was the most successful multicultural society in the world

The prime minister, Turnbull told parliament that Australia was the most successful multicultural society in the world, and was “a migration nation”.

He noted that Australia was continuing to maintain its multicultural identity “in a world where there is so much disharmony, where, in many places in the world, where people of different faiths and different races have lived side-by-side reasonably harmoniously for hundreds of years and now seem unable to do so”.

“Despite all of that, here in Australia, in the midst of our diversity, we live in great harmony,” Turnbull said.

Immigration remains a hot-button issue

Immigration remains a hot-button issue in Australia amid concerns about jobs and overcrowding in major cities, Aljazeera reported.

According to nytimes in recent years, Australia has become a focus of migration for Muslims escaping war and economic deprivation in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa. The country has maintained a contentious policy of offshore detention, on remote islands in the South Pacific, for migrants who try to reach Australia by boat.

Coming only days after Australia’s population reached the 25 million level, an event which also fanned the immigration debate, Anning’s speech laid bare the polarized division in Australian society on the issue of race and immigration, which has been a constant theme for several decades.

According to the 2016 Census, 28% of Australians were born overseas, the highest percentage of any country. A majority of that percentage were born in Asia. Forty-nine percent of the population are either first or second generation migrants, the census said. Muslims, constitute only 2.6% of the national population, atimes told.

Australia, considered one of the world’s most immigrant-friendly nations, is currently experiencing soaring population growth as more skilled migrants head to its resource-rich territories. In the country’s 2016-2017 fiscal year, net overseas migration reflected an annual gain of 262,500 persons, 27.3 percent more than in the 2015-2016 period, according to government data.

Demand triggered by newcomers is believed to boost the economy: Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe recently attributed the country’s high average growth to population expansion. But it’s also seen driving property prices and congestion higher, and that’s led many to call for lower migration rates.

Around 54 percent of Australians believe the annual number of migrants is “too high,” according to a 2018 poll from think tank the Lowy Institute released in June. It’s the first time that a majority of citizens have opposed current immigration rates, the organization said, cnbc reported.

 

Read more from Shafaqna:

Immigration Minister denies changes to Australian citizenship is a crackdown on Muslims

Australian Politician Proposes 10-Year Ban on Muslim Immigration

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