I blame our politicians for endangering Australians’ lives

ANDREW BOLT

I ACCUSE Australia’s political class of a crime. Of wilfully ­endangering the safety of ­Australians.

They — with much media help — have put Australians in danger through years of reckless immigration and refugee policies.

And it’s come to what we saw on Saturday — anti-terrorism police in Melbourne ­arresting five more young men from Muslim families, two for allegedly plotting attacks on police on Anzac Day.

These men were allegedly associates of Numan Haider, an Afghan refugee and Islamic State supporter who last year stabbed two Victorian policemen before being shot dead.

Police have been typically coy about identifying exactly which “community” the five were from, refusing in two press conferences on Saturday to even mention the words “Islam” or “Muslim”.

But their use of the word “community” made clear they meant something other than the Australian one.

The fact is we have imported people from “communities” so at odds with our own that a minority of members has declared war on our institutions, our police and even — allegedly — Anzac Day, the most potent symbol of our nationhood.

I do stress the word “minority”. Most Muslims here want peace.

But the hard facts remain. Of the 21 Australians jailed for terrorism offences so far this century, all were Muslim. Most were born overseas. Most of the rest are children of immigrants from Muslim countries.

Add the following: some 150 Australian Muslims have enlisted with barbaric terrorist groups of the Middle East, ­notably Islamic State.

Another 100 Australians thought likely to join them have had their passports confiscated, and some 200 have been pulled off planes.

Meanwhile ASIO is investigating 400 other cases involving Islamist threats.

This is an astonishing harvest of danger from a Muslim community here of fewer than 500,000 people.

Compare: we have more than 400,000 Buddhists, yet not one Buddhist has been convicted here of terrorism ­offences or shot a hostage in a Sydney cafe in the name of their faith.

There is undeniably something different about Islam, or at least the way many interpret it.

Then there’s the other danger: at least five prominent Australian journalists and cartoonists have been subject to serious death threats by Islamists, requiring two to move home.

If you wonder why so few journalists speak frankly about these issues, there’s a clue.

But with the dangers now so obvious, it’s time to call out those who so blindly exposed us to them.

There is Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal prime minister who ignored official warnings in 1976 that many refugees he was taking in from the Lebanese civil war were unskilled, illiterate and “of questionable character’’, meaning ‘’the conflicts, tensions and divisions within Lebanon will be transferred to Australia’’. Too true.

There’s Paul Keating, who, before becoming another high-immigration prime minister, overturned the Hawke government’s decision to deny permanent residency to Grand Mufti Taj Din al-Hilali, a hate preacher who went on to call the September 11 terror attacks “God’s work against oppressors”.

There’s Kevin Rudd, who as prime minister scrapped our tough border laws, opening the doors to 50,000 illegal boat people.

There is Rudd again, who, when warned by Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey that among the many peaceful boat people could be a terrorist or two, damned Tuckey to media applause for “divisive and disgusting remarks”.

There’s current Labor leader Bill Shorten, who still opposes the Abbott Government’s successful border policies and last year suggested we repeat Fraser’s mistake in response to wars in Iraq and Syria: “Perhaps it’s time to discuss do we take more refugees from these countries.”

And there’s even Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Yes, Abbott has stopped the boats, but even he still pandered to radical Muslim “representatives” he should have shunned, for instance consulting the Islamic Friendship Association’s Keysar Trad, described by the NSW Supreme Court as a “dangerous and disgraceful individual” who “incites people to commit acts of violence”.

A tiny handful of politicians have warned of the folly of bringing in uneducated people from cultures so alien to our own that it is utterly predictable many will struggle to fit in.

When the then immigration minister Kevin Andrews in 2007 warned that many Somali and Sudanese refugees had trouble fitting in and their intake would be cut, he was vilified.

Former Queensland premier Anna Bligh accused him of “a pure form of racism”. The Australian Democrats said he’d proved the Howard government was “not fit to ­govern”.

Victoria Police’s then chief commissioner Christine Nixon outrageously claimed “those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics”, when those statistics actually showed they were four times more likely to be arrested.

This dangerous denial continues.

When the Abbott Government last year warned that the terrorism risk had increased, Labor Senator Sue Lines claimed it was just a political stunt “to distract everyone from the Budget”.

Labor frontbencher Kim Carr agreed, feeding the dangerous victimology of many Islamist hotheads such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, who claim Australia has declared “war” on Muslims.

Disturbingly, much of the media has gone alone with this great denial.  SBS notoriously refused to screen video it shot just days before the September 11 ­attacks which showed our Mufti Hilali praising suicide bombers as “heroes”.

And “human rights” lawyer and writer Julian Burnside this year claimed “the Islamophobia stirred up by Abbott and Bolt is a bigger threat to us than terrorism”.

This denial must stop.

Our refugee intake must be stricter, taking fewer people from cultures likely to clash with our own.

And we must be slower to shut down debates with screams of “racist”.

If you fear racists, then fear the ugly fallout if police one day fail to stop an Anzac Day plot by people that more prudent politicians would have kept out.

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Reality a distant land for the Left’s Luddites

IN the alternate universe of ­lunatic Labor-Green-ABC politics, failure is hailed as success.

Nowhere has this been better demonstrated recently than in Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ decision to tear up contracts for the $6.8 billion East West Link.

A handful of inner-urban residents who have abandoned the Labor Party for the Greens may cheer the insane decision to not build an integral part of an essential infrastructure ­development and relinquish billions in federal funding.

But those who might have benefited from the 7000 jobs now lost, those who will remain parked on choked roads and those who understand the true cost of seeing Australia’s reputation for safe and reliable ­development will not be ­celebrating.

Andrews is a political throwback to a time of tribal cloth-cap Labor politics, as is Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, and the ABC commentariat.  All are fixated by a narrow leftist populism that excludes the national interest.

By contrast, NSW Premier Mike Baird, now leading the fastest-growing state economy in the nation, demonstrates the rewards to be garnered by those bold enough to back themselves and genuine transformational politics over self-interest.

Pondering the rise of risk adverse economy-destroying Labor politicians like Andrews, Shorten, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill and his novice Queensland colleague Annastacia Palaszczuk, it is impossible to ignore the deadening influence of the monolithic taxpayer-funded ABC’s sprawling multi-platform broadcast monster on its ­national audience.

Without a single conservative presence hosting any major radio or television program and with a nationwide reach which includes regional areas in which there is no competition, the ABC’s ideological influence is seriously dangerous.

It has never been a secret that the ABC has always championed the Left, its ­attacks on the Labor Party only ever coming from further Left or Green voices.

Thus Prime Minister Kevin Rudd initially ticked all the ABC’s boxes until Julia Gillard with her added leftist feminist cred ousted him, with the ­approval of the ABC’s luvvies.

(Feminism, along with the bewildering varieties of minority sexual variants signified by the GLBT + whatever-letter-you-wish acronym, remains a driving force at the ABC. Hence its commentators’ outburst of barracking for the damaged Democrat contender Hillary Clinton in her current White House tilt.)

Despite Rudd and Gillard having supplanted their philosophical mentor and prime ministerial predecessor Gough Whitlam as the worst prime ministers in the nation’s history, they can still enjoy the largely uncritical support of the ABC and its followers.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his team, mandated to ­repair the economic damage wrought by the dangerous duo in their scant six-year wrecking spree, are conversely ­treated as a comic act.

Were it not tragedy, the true comedy is being enacted in the spectral world of the UN where Rudd is working behind the scenes to lobby for election to the UN secretary-general’s job as Korean Ban Ki-moon retires.

The ear-wax-eating failure has not denied his interest in the UN secretary-general’s position but an intermediary has told Fairfax media that, on a rotational basis, the job should go to an eastern European.

The world may yet be spared the Pink Batts solution to everything and, as a reader of The Australian commented on Friday: “An applicant with a CV blighted by too many ‘d’ words: debt, deficit, deaths, dysfunction, division, deceit, disunity, delusion and policy debacles, has to be ‘d’ for ­denied.”

The residual detestation of Rudd’s legacy that exists in Australia might influence a vote in the real world but at the UN, where a misogynistic ­nation such as Iran can be ­appointed to the commission on women’s rights even as a ­recent UN report chastised the Iranian government for ­imprisoning women’s rights activists, relegating women to outsider status in politics, and introducing “laws that permit gender discrimination and promote violence against women,” it would barely raise an eyebrow.

The report cites: “The ­revised Islamic Penal Code … values women’s testimony in a court of law as half that of a man’s, and a woman’s life half that of a man’s”.

Women are also subject to a significant number of executions for crimes such as adultery and surviving rape.

The UN’s hypocritical position on women’s rights might be expected to strike a chord with the ABC’s directors of news but is unlikely to be raised if there is an opportunity to confect an embarrassing moment for a member of the Coalition government.

The handful of professional journalists within the organisation who strive for impartiality are drowned out by those who see their principal role as representing the welfare lobby, the people smuggling lobby, the environment lobby and the global warming lobby.

Even now, less than a week out from the centenary of the Gallipoli landing Anzac Day celebration, one of the ABC’s most prominent commentators and senior editors, Jonathon Green, the foundation editor of the broadcaster’s online magazine The Drum, and, according to his ABC profile, presenter of Sunday Extra and fill-in host of RN Drive, can find a prominent platform for his view there is a “lasting intergeneration truth” that Gallipoli “then as now, was as much a place of deadly, noble sacrifice, as it was a crock of shit”.

A perverse cry from someone on the wrong side of history — only at your ABC.

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Colourful description of Australia's popular immigration policy

One of Britain's most controversial commentators has sparked a furore by suggesting Europe follow Australia's approach to asylum seekers by "threatening them with violence until they bugger off".

In an article comparing North African asylum seekers to "cockroaches", The Sun columnist Katie Hopkins praises Australians for being like British people but with "balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships".

Hopkins argues that European countries should adopt the Abbott government's turn-back-the-boats policy - an approach she calls an "Aussie version of sharia stoning".

The column - characterised by The Independent as "a piece so hateful that it might give Hitler pause" - was published days before a ship carrying 700 hopeful migrants sank in the Mediterranean.

Immigration has been one of the key issues in the lead-up to Britain's general election in May.

The leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which is expected to lift its vote significantly, has called for Britain to adopt an Australian-style visa system to reduce the number of unskilled workers coming from Europe.

"It's time to get Australian," Hopkins wrote in The Sun, commenting on the surge of boats attempting to reach Europe from North Africa.

"Australians are like British people but with balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships. "Their approach to migrant boats is the sort of approach we need in the Med.

"They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine [XXXX] in an Aussie version of sharia stoning.

"And their approach is working. Migrant boats have halved in number since Prime Minister Tony Abbott got tough."

Hopkins summarises her solution to the increasing number of boats attempting to reach Europe from North Africa as: "Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats."

Tough action is needed because some British towns have become "festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money".

"Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches," she writes.  "They might look a bit like 'Bob Geldof's Ethiopia circa 1984', but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb."

British comedian Russell Brand tweeted to Hopkins: "[T]o write about immigrants so hatefully you cannot love yourself. Come back to humanity, you must be shattered."

Hopkins has previously stoked controversy by calling dementia patients "bed blockers" who take up scarce hospital beds and saying that she would not let her children play with classmates with names such as Tyler and Chardonnay.

Last month UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: "What we want to do is change our relationship with the European Union, take back control of our borders and put in place a positive immigration policy.

"By that I mean we want an Australian-style points system to decide who comes to live, work and settle in this country."

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Australians Reach ‘Tax Freedom Day’ Two Weeks Earlier Than Americans

 Australian taxpayers celebrated "Tax Freedom Day" on April 11, two weeks earlier than their American counterparts,  according to the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).

“Tax Freedom Day” marks the date on which Australians finally finished working to pay their taxes for the year.

"Tax Freedom Day is an important day on the economics calendar as it signifies when we start keeping for ourselves the money we earn," CIS senior fellow Robert Carling said.

According to CIS, Australians worked 100 days to pay their taxes in 2015, or 14 fewer days than Americans have to work to support their government this year.

The United States won’t reach Tax Freedom Day until April 24, according to estimates made by the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.

Over the last five years, Americans have had to work an increasing number of days to pay their taxes. Tax Freedom Day for the U.S. fell on April 21 in 2014, April 18 in 2013, April 17 in 2012, April 12 in 2011, and April 9 in 2010 - 15 days earlier than 2015.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimates that U.S. government revenues will constitute 17.7 percent of a projected $17.98 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015, still short of what is needed to cover government outlays equivalent to 20.9 percent of GDP.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that Australia’s outlays constituted 19 percent of its GDP last year.

Though relative spending levels in the two countries are similar, revenue in Australia comes much closer to matching outlays. The “down under” country’s national debt is approximately $676 billion AUD, which is equivalent to about 30 percent of its total GDP, or just under $30,000 per individual Australian.

The U.S. national debt is more than $18 trillion, which exceeds annual GDP and amounts to nearly $57,000 per individual American.

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