With the war in Gaza set to be a key election issue in several pockets of Australia, Jason Clare, the Labor MP for the western Sydney electorate of Blaxland, has invoked Peter Dutton’s 2016 comments on the Lebanese Muslim community to accuse him of demonising Blaxland constituents.
Asked on ABC News Breakfast how important the government’s response to the war in Gaza was to his constituents, Clare said the issue was “personal” for his community.
“It’s not a war on the other side of the world. This is very close to home. For a lot of people that I’ve got the privilege to represent, those dead bodies they see on TV have names. Often they’re family and their friends,” he said.
“But I got to tell you, they also know where Peter Dutton stands on this, how much he demonises my local community. They remember he said it was a mistake to let people from Lebanon ever migrate to Australia.”
Clare was referring to comments Dutton made in a 2016 Sky News interview as immigration minister, that the Liberal government under former prime minister Malcolm Fraser had made immigration policy “mistakes” in the 1970s.
Pressed to reveal what mistake he was referring to during question time, Dutton said: “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.”
While Dutton later said he had apologised for the comments, questions remain over who the apology was issued to.
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