The Bolt Report November 29 2015

The Truth about Tony Abbott............

Loss of Tony Abbott as prime minister is a time of sorrow

Andrew Bolt
The Daily Telegraph
September 28 2015

NOW Tony Abbott is gone I can finally tell the truth about him. Folks, you made a big mistake with this bloke.

No, no. The mistake wasn’t that you voted for him.

In fact, you got one of the finest human beings to be Prime Minister.

In many ways he seemed too moral for the job, yet he achieved more in two years than the last two Labor prime ministers achieved in six.

Compare. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard left us with record deficits after blowing billions on trash — on overpriced school halls, “free” insulation that killed people, green schemes that collapsed, “stimulus” checks to the dead.

They meanwhile opened our borders to 50,000 illegal immigrants and drowned 1200. They hyped the global warming scare and forced us to pay a job-killing carbon tax just to pretend they were saving us.

But Abbott? I won’t go through the whole list: how he stopped the boats, curbed spending, scrapped the useless carbon and mining taxes, led the world’s defiance of deadly Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and made us safer from terrorism.

He even signed three free trade deals to secure jobs for our kids — including one with China that the last three governments couldn’t clinch.

And he did all this in the face of astonishing heckling and even vilification from our media class, and despite often feral opposition in the Senate.

But your mistake was not to care about all that. Deeds didn’t count with you. Image was all.

And so you told the pollsters you didn’t like Abbott. You believed the vicious crap written about him, until his MPs finally panicked and dumped him.

Your mistake was that you couldn’t look behind the flim flam — the way Abbott looked, the way he spoke, the way he walked, the way he ate an onion — to see what he’d actually done for you and for your country.

You even laughed at some of his finest qualities and emblems of his public service. Journalists ridiculed his work as a lifesaver by mocking his costume and body hair. They dismissed his fire fighting service as just a photo-op. Wrote off his patriotism as bigotry.

When he defended women, he was called insincere. When he warned that our finances were in strife or that terrorism menaced us, they called him a scaremonger.

And you believed them. You let people treat like absolute dirt a man who had a record of volunteerism no prime minister has equalled — working in Aboriginal communities, lifesaving, firefighting, helping people in natural disasters, and raising money for women’s shelters and a hospice for dying children.

And none of it was done just to puff his CV for an election pamphlet.

The only reason I know Abbott helped people secure their homes after one Sydney storm is that my wife’s uncle asked the head of the team getting the tree off his house if that really was Abbott over there, helping to cut it away.

Shush, said the captain. He doesn’t like people knowing.

Now, I must declare straight up — I call Tony Abbott a friend.

So you’ll call me biased. You’ll laugh that I can write this massive praise of him when almost everyone else is horse-laughing. And you’ll say that’s why I see more qualities in Abbott than are actually there.

BLOG WITH ANDREW BOLT

But you’ll just be making another mistake.

See, I don’t think Abbott is a great man because he’s my friend. He’s my friend because he’s a great man. Greater than the people who tore him down.

He’s my friend especially because he’s not those things that so many journalists wrote — including some who must have known what they wrote were lies.

Truth is that Abbott is not a thug, bully, racist, fool, liar, woman-hater, homophobe or bigot. He’s not cruel or lacking compassion.

If he were any of those things he would not be my friend. Those are deal breakers for me. Those I love best are people of honour, warmth and kindness.

Tony Abbott is one such man, and that he has been betrayed and deposed doesn’t just break my heart. It makes me fear for this country. I can only hope that Australians will one day wake up to what they’ve tossed away.

Sorry to sound so melodramatic, but here are some glimpses of the man I know — ones that put the lie to the trash that even big-name correspondents peddled about him.

A woman hater? Ask his daughters or female chief of staff. Ask the many women on his staff, so loyal that he had one of the lowest turnovers of modern prime ministers.

A crash-through insensitive bully with no people skills? Ask my children how gentle he was when he called around. Ask one of my 2GB listeners, Pat, who rang in to say how moved he was that Abbott, on the way to a crucial Question Time on the day the carbon tax was repealed, still had the time to ring Pat’s dying brother.

Or consider this: just minutes after Malcolm Turnbull told Abbott he was challenging for his job, Abbott still honoured a promise to meet girl guides, rather than hit the phones to save himself.

Too loyal? Well, true, yet when I once asked why he wouldn’t buy off his critics by sacking Joe Hockey as Treasurer, Abbott told me he knew Hockey actually had the talent to be great, and would be if given another chance.

A homophobe? Abbott actually had a deep friendship with one of my friends, too, the out-and-proud gay commentator Christopher Pearson, and even helped carry the coffin of this much-missed man.

In fact, when one Fairfax writer this year accused Abbott — on entirely fictitious evidence — of having had a “possibly homophobic” moment, a gay adviser on Abbott’s staff texted me in rage: “If PM was so homophobic he wouldn’t be sharing the C1 car with me.”

Every Prime Minister thinks they don’t get the press they deserve. But I bet Abbott’s friends would agree that none could have been so different in the flesh from what you read in the papers — and so much better. Shame on the journalists responsible for this great slander.

Yes, I know Abbott made mistakes, and I was hard on the worst. I know he was too stubborn. And I know he was clumsy in selling himself.

I admit I even quarrelled with him privately when he too-nobly refused to whack Labor leader Bill Shorten over some detail of national security.

No, the country before politics, he declared. I could have shaken the silly bugger, who played politics like it was cricket when everyone else was cage fighting.

God, he wouldn’t even do the populist thing and just promise to build our next submarines in Adelaide, and to hell with the cost or national interest.

But that was Abbott, and for me character always counts in the end.

That’s why I say: this country has despised and rejected a great servant. It is a time of sorrow.

------------------------------------

THEIR Malcolm: How long can Malcolm Turnbull stick with his new 'conservative" message, before he reverts to type?

Malcolm Turnbull’s rise is a defeat for conservatives that looks a lot like victory


Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
September 24 2015.


THE media Left is gloating. They’ve won and knuckle-dragging conservatives like me and

Alan Jones have lost. Our man, Tony Abbott, is gone as prime minister. Their man, Malcolm Turnbull, rules.

“Ha, ha, ha,” they point out.

Or as the ABC, the taxpayer-funded voice of the Left, put it on Monday, suck it up, Jones and Bolt.

“Once again, it’s remarkable that Abbott was felled despite their support,” crowed Media Watch host Paul Barry. “And it shows how little power they actually have.”

He’s right. Alan and I are shocked we couldn’t get every single Australian to back Abbott, when the only thing against us was the $1 billion-a-year ABC, the anti-Abbott smear factory of Fairfax and the rest of the army of media orcs: SBS, Guardian, Daily Mail, The Monthly, The Project, FM hosts, half the News Corp empire and the Canberra bureaus of every TV station.

Humiliating, I know, but Alan and I proved in the end surprisingly powerless against the others, too — the academics, the race industry, the professional victims, the climate cranks, the multicultural commissars, the free speech police and all the other arbiters of Good Taste.

So boo hoo hoo, we cry. We helped get Abbott elected, but couldn’t save him. But at the ABC it’s party, party. Abbott used to be treated like filth there, but it’s all hugs and kisses now for Turnbull, the ABC’s favourite Liberal.

This, swear to God, is an actual transcript from Monday’s 7.30:

Host Leigh Sales (giggling): I’m sorry I’m laughing, but you’re not at the dispatch box and you’re not at the bar, so I’ve got to squeeze in one more question before we run out of time.

Turnbull (beaming): One more question. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Sales (looking flirtatious): I’m sorry. I’m sorry to be rude like that too.

Turnbull: You’re not being rude at all. It’s quite understandable.

Sales: The — no, no, I did cut you directly off.

Turnbull: That’s fine.

So, yes, I should feel like Samson after a haircut. But here’s the funny thing. We’ve actually won. Me and Alan. We’ve house-trained Turnbull.

Remember what Turnbull used to be like? He headed the Australian Republican Movement and even donated to Labor’s campaign against the Howard government. He trashed opponents of same-sex marriage. He backed Labor’s carbon tax.

But we knocked him into shape, Alan and I. Now behold our neo-Turnbull. This new model refuses to back Labor’s carbon tax and promises to let the public, not the politicians, decide on same-sex marriage.

Turnbull yesterday seemed even to be reading our script on unions and Labor, attacking Labor leader Bill Shorten as just “a cork in the slipstream of the CFMEU”, the most lawless of unions.

And his new ministers stuck to our messages, too. His Communications Minister, who once called for the ABC to be privatised, said yesterday the Abbott government had been right to slash the ABC’s budget.

The Islamic State was still our great threat, assured the new Defence Minister. We’re spending too much, repeated the new Treasurer. And the penny is dropping with some on the Left. Where’s Malcolm? Where’s their Malcolm?

Take warmist Bernie Fraser, former chairman of the Government’s Climate Change Authority. Turnbull “is just sticking with the status quo” on global warming, Fraser groaned this week. “His courage deserted him.”

But Alan and I aren’t kidding ourselves. Yes, we’ve tamed the Turnbull and painted new spots on him. But we know that underneath that painted fur remains a leopard of the Left, fighting his natural instincts.

Take yesterday. Asked by a journalist if he’d change the policies that stopped the boats, Turnbull couldn’t say no — the clear answer that deters people smugglers best, but jars at Point Piper dinners parties.

“I have the same concerns about the situation of people on Nauru and Manus as you do,” he pleaded. (Code: It’s really me, Malcolm, under these Right-wing spots.) “(But) we are not going to make policy changes — particularly the type you’re talking about — on the run.”

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton had to clean up afterwards, insisting Turnbull was “resolute” and illegal immigrants would not land.

Alan and I also remember how easily Kevin Rudd shook off his own training. Rudd promised us before the 2007 election he, too, would be a John Howard-lite and that “this sort of reckless spending must stop”.

Yet after the election was won, the real Rudd re-emerged, even lavishing “stimulus” cheques on the dead.

Perhaps we’ll see the same backsliding with Turnbull, but until then, Alan and I will bask in our success.

Behold our neo-Turnbull. Let the Left weep.

The Bolt Report September 202015

Bolt Report + Andrew Bolt YOU won’t defend what you don’t value. That’s why so many of the Left now want to sell out Europe and even Australia.

Leftists give away our heritage over Third World migrant wave

Andrew Bolt

Herald Sun

September 14 2015.

YOU won’t defend what you don’t value. That’s why so many of the Left now want to sell out Europe and even Australia.

Hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants from the Third World are this year streaming into Europe, and in ever-increasing numbers.

They’ve heard the fences have been trampled flat, and are now marching through Europe’s poorer southern countries to demand entry to the richest, especially Germany.

They are demanding to have what people from another culture have created — and are demanding it simply because they want it, too.

After all, their own cultures have failed to produce any such riches, and without reform won’t.

Actually, when I say these people are poor, I mean only relatively. Many are actually rich enough to have seen the West’s wealth on their iPhones, and to have paid thousands of dollars to fly, drive or sail to the gates of Europe.

Now, normal people do not let strangers barge into their homes to take what they fancy, yet the Left in Europe has done just what the Left in Australia did when 50,000 illegal immigrants sailed here under Labor.

It has said yes, let them come and take it.

And Australian journalists, in an astonishing frenzy of sanctimony, demanded we take thousands of them, too, to come help themselves.

None of this makes sense, although the sanitised news reporting may explain some of this delirium.

For instance, the media have focused on a drowned toddler and on desperate families with children to whom you would give your heart, and some cash. But almost completely absent from media reports are the unmistakeable symptoms of the culture clash Europe is now admitting.

I have seen virtually no news report here about the violent riots in three German cities last week between Kurdish and Turkish immigrants, nor about the brawl in a German hostel by around 100 Syrian migrants outraged by the tearing of a Koran by an Afghan.

There has been a virtual blackout on last week’s riot on the Greek island of Lesbos by hundreds of Afghan men. There was a similar blackout on the scores of migrants chanting “f--- you” at Budapest when denied a train.

No TV news bulletin showed migrants in Hungary hurling stones, or the well-built migrant at an aid centre turning aggressively to a camera to mime the slashing of a throat. Few reports noted the warning by Spain’s government of infiltration of these columns of migrants by Islamic State terrorists.

Nothing that might make you fear the consequences of this great river of people is given much coverage. Even news in April that Muslims on a boat to Italy murdered Christian passengers was played down.

TV reports last week also said little about the massive trail of rubbish left along the road by this migrant army — rubbish suggesting an uncomfortable truth, that renters do not respect a home as owners do.

Nor is much context given for the rising unease by working-class Europeans at this massive influx of people from the Third World, 72 per cent of them men and overwhelmingly Muslim. That context: European nations from Spain to Sweden are already suffering from the great cultural clash of our time, between Islam and the Christian West.

All have struggled to assimilate large Muslim minorities, and all have battled increasing jihadism.

They have learned that mass immigration from the Middle East is now more like colonisation, as our own Lakemba shows.

No surprise. Why assimilate, when satellite TV beams in programs from home, the internet binds a world-wide ummah, subsidised mosques are around the corner, shopkeepers speak Arabic and cheap travel keeps old ties strong?

All this has been played down by our media class. What should be seen as a threat to be resisted to maintain our Western societies is presented instead as a duty to accept.

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, praised by the Left for seeming to welcome an expected 500,000 illegal immigrants this year, admits Germany will be changed, and possibly not for the best.

“What we are experiencing now is something that will occupy and change our country in coming years,” she said.

“We want the change to be positive, and we believe we can accomplish that.”

Or maybe Germany won’t, but then it will be too late.

So how to explain this refusal to defend the West from an invasion of people whose culture often seems at war with all the West represents?

The answer is most obvious with Germany — shame for the past.

Merkel knows using the German army to force unwanted minorities onto trains for shipment will be too shocking a reminder of her country’s Nazi history.

This guilt still drives Germany’s intelligentsia, with Nobel-winning writer Herta Müller groaning: “We have the responsibility given the past.”

But shades of a similar shame runs through the West’s media and political elites, who have long held Europe in contempt for its racist and colonialist legacy, and howled down any suggestion of its civilising influence on the world.

That’s not so in the prouder and more religious nations of Eastern Europe, now the most adamant about not accepting these immigrants.

But the intelligentsia of Western Europe has for decades vilified even their rich Christian heritage, the foundation of their freedoms, as little more than a shameful relic of an oppressive faith ministered by paedophile priests.

And so Christian churches in countries such as Holland are converted into offices and shops, while proud mosques rise in immigrant suburbs.

In Australia it has been the same — or worse.

For nearly 30 years, Midnight Oil’s lyrics have been the soundtrack of our increasing self-loathing:

The time has come

A fact’s a fact

It belongs to them

We’re gonna give it back

Decades of such preaching in schools and universities have succeeded. They have produced a political and media class that trashes the very idea of Western civilisation — those bits it can still understand.

This is a class that resents its own wealth and despises its past, inventing genocides that never occurred.

It is a class that sees Australia as riddled not just with racists but planet-killers, eating evil coal and living on “stolen” land for which some ritual apology must be made at public events to “traditional owners”.

It is a class that sneers at patriotism (Sydney’s Waverley Council once even banned the Australian flag at the Bondi Pavilion, calling it inflammatory) and mocks talk of “Team Australia”.

It is a class which celebrates hyphenated identities — Lebanese-Australian, Chinese-Australian — and attacks Australia Day as “Invasion Day”.

At bottom, this is a class which attacks the traditions that produced our prosperity, and which believes we little deserve what we grubbily have.

No, share our wealth with those more worthy. Invite the Third World to come take what we sinners only stole.

 The Bolt Report

The first obligation of the Australian Government is to protect Australians from Muslim Terrorism.

Andrew Bolt: Our safety must be the priority, not Christian charity

Andrew Bolt
THerald Sun
September 10, 2015 

LET’S be honest — please — before this frenzy of “compassion” for Syrians makes Australians even less safe.

Already our Jewish schools need armed guards for fear of local jihadists. Already ASIO is investigating 400 terrorist threats.

Yet the Abbott Government said yesterday it would take in an extra 12,000 Syrian refugees.

Know two things about this response to the invasion of Europe by illegal immigrants from the Third World — now more than 4000 people every day and half of them claiming to be Syrians.

First, our intake will not stop this invasion. No, the word has spread to as far as Nigeria and Bangladesh that Europe’s fences are down. Iraqi airlines have even had to put on an extra three flights a day to 

Istanbul to deposit more Iraqis on the edge of Europe and its riches.

Look at the “refugees” you see crashing through Europe’s weak borders, or check the statistics of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Is it normal for 72 per cent of “refugees” from war to be men — and predominantly young, fit men you might expect to defend their country rather than flee it?

And consider: how many relatives will they later send for? So, no, Europe’s crisis will continue until it, too, turns back the boats.

But, second: in making this gesture, we risk making Australia even less safe.

Amazingly, even the people loudly demanding we take in more Syrian Muslims implicitly concede that danger. Sydney Islamic leader Ahmed Kilani warned that favouring Christian refugees over Muslim risked more terrorism here.

“The Government keeps saying it is worried about people being radicalised. What do you think young Muslims are going to think when they see who can come in and who can’t?”

Maher Mughrabi, foreign editor of The Age, said the ominous same.

“Arab communities of this country are already bitterly divided by this (Syrian) conflict and the Government’s response to it.

“If Muslims here feel that the blood of their brothers and sisters in Syria does not cry out as loudly as that of other communities, I worry about the long-term consequences.”

Is that a warning or a threat?

Or take Australia’s Anglican Primate, Archbishop Philip Freier. He wants 10,000 more Syrian refugees, but advises against bombing the Islamic State for fear that Muslims here could launch an “asymetrical response” — a terrorist attack. This is madness. Once such people assured us there were too few jihadists to worry about. Now they warn there are too many to offend.

Oh, and we should import potentially more.

True, Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday winked that he will take only Syrian refugees from “very persecuted minorities” — code for Christians. Yet even Abbott dared not say so openly. In fact, he flinched at the first hostile question at his press conference, saying he was also thinking of “Muslim minorities”.

But if the polls are right, Labor will next year form government and take over this immigration program and its foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, insists the “basis of our policy should not discriminate on religion or ethnicity or gender”.

Has Labor learned nothing from the Fraser government’s blunder in responding with “compassion” to Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s?

Then, too, government ministers privately urged prime minister Malcolm Fraser to accept only Christian refugees, given how Lebanese Christians had thrived here. Fraser ignored them and nearly 20,000 Lebanese Muslims, many from poor and tribal areas, soon came instead.

Greece.

The consequences are with us today. True, most made good citizens, but gun crime today is rife in Sydney suburbs with large Lebanese populations. Crime rates are high.

More seriously, of the 21 Australians jailed for terrorism offences, at least four were born in Lebanon and seven were born to Lebanese families.

History may already be repeating itself with our Afghan refugees.

Melbourne jihadist Numan Haider, who stabbed two police, was an Afghan refugee. Bikie gangs recruit heavily from Afghans.

Let’s not make the same mistakes all over again.

Australia’s political class has for years been too dishonest to admit that when you import people, you import their culture.

But our politicians must ask pragmatic questions when deciding which of the millions of the world’s refugees to help.

Who will make best use of our help by fitting in? And who will best repay our charity by enriching Australia, not hurting it? You can’t make such guesses without considering culture and religion — factors that 

influence the behaviour of the refugees’ future children, too.

I know, this makes a politician seem mean and “racist”, but what is their highest duty? To merely seem good, or to protect Australians from future harm?

Refugee Facts you should Know:

Here are nine facts few journalist will report.

THE people flooding into Germany are not “refugees”. Once they arrived in Greece — or Turkey before that — they were safe. Moving north to rich Germany is an economic decision.

MOST of the “refugees” are not fleeing death. United Nations’ figures suggest half are not Syrians. Real refugees do not leave their families back home, yet 72 per cent of these are men.

AYLAN Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian photographed lying dead on a Turkish beach, was not fleeing Syria. His father had lived for three years in Turkey, working on construction sites. His Canadian sister supported him and says her brother wanted to go to Europe fix his teeth.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is not showing great “compassion” by welcoming an expected 800,000 illegal immigrants this year. She simply knows German soldiers cannot turn away trains of unwanted people. (Remember the war!) But she claims this intake will be “one off” and demands other countries take some immigrants off her hands. Germany has already had hundreds of anti-immigrant protests, some violent. Soon it must get tough.

THIS is not a benign invasion. Hundreds of Afghans on Lesbos last weekend rioted when they couldn’t get to the mainland. More rioted earlier on Kos. More than 100 Syrian immigrants rioted three weeks ago at hostel in the German town of Suhl when an Afghan man ripped a Koran. Eleven migrants and four police were hurt.

WE ARE doing more than our “fair share”. Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel and the United Arab Emirates are among many countries refusing to take Syrian refugees. Poland, Slovakia and Hungary will accept only Christians.

THIS is not our responsibility. Australia didn’t bomb in Syria.

EUROPE is paying the price for its weakness — and that of the US. They refused to intervene when jihadist and other groups started to attack Syria’s Assad regime, triggering the refugee exodus. Now Europe won’t defend its borders.

EUROPE has struggled to assimilate large Muslim populations in France, Sweden, Germany and elsewhere. Illegal immigration of 4000 people a day — mainly Muslim and young — represents an existential threat.

What Moderate Muslim Leaders SAY they want to do:

Islams Plan 

Andrew Bolt Australia's ONLY Conservative Political TV Commentator and his guests discuss the past week in Australian Politics.

Bolt Report 30815

Andrew Bolt Australia's ONLY Conservative Political TV Commentator and his guests discuss the past week in Australian Politics.

The Bolt Report 17814

Andrew Bolt,10814, & Why Australia has Embedded Muslim Insurgents residents

Why Australia now has embedded Muslim Insurgents residents


MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS

Interview with Alan Jones, 2UE

ALAN JONES: This boat people issue doesn't go away. The Prime Minister yesterday, in launching his policy, made the simple point that the Government will decide who comes into Australia and on what terms. It's as simple as that, and it is simple. How many times have I made the point that if you're going to determine who comes into your home and on what terms, surely we as a nation have that entitlement in relation to our national home.

But now we have the spectacle after last week and an Indonesian fishing boat sinking and 350 so-called asylum seekers dying, we've got the spectacle of three Indonesian warships searching for a fishing boat ! allegedly hijacked by Iraqi asylum seekers and believed to be heading to Australia.

Now, the search was under way since last Thursday, the day after it was reportedly seized by 170 asylum seekers. But now it has been found drifting off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa and the boat people have been taken by smaller boats to the village of Sangyang which is an hour's sail away. It's said that the boat was hijacked by a group of Iraqi refugees who want to go to Australia. So the debate goes on.

As one editorial wrote at the weekend, "When Australians awoke last week to the image of three little girls staring from almost every newspaper front page, many felt a surge of sorrow and a huge pang of guilt. Suddenly, protecting our borders from asylum seekers seemed flint-hearted. What nation could be so stony as to turn away the sweet innocence? Surely not the land of a fair go."

But it went on. "A mourning Muslim community was quick to blame the Government. After ! all, it was argued the girls would never have been on board that leaking rust bucket had it not been for our law designed to ensure those who seek refugee status really are refugees."

It said, "The Muslim community, so deeply touched by tragedy, could easily be forgiven for reacting in anger." And then it said, "The truth is somewhat different." It said, "It should be remembered that those who choose Australia as a destination do so not because they've suddenly become imbued with Aussie fervour, it's because the people-smuggling industry sees us as an easy target. The softer we get, the more they will come."

And it's on again. We woke yesterday to headlines which cried, "Mutiny on the Ocean - Vessels Head for Australia." And then of course in the middle of all this last week, we've got Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly, the alleged spiritual leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims, accusing John Howard and government policy of having "opened the gates to death" to the asy! lum seekers who drowned off Indonesia.

And that has led to a flood of comments, emails and faxes from you to me about the Sheik, such that it's time we spoke to the Immigration Minister about what this bloke is saying, who he is and how long he can go on saying it. And Philip Ruddock is on the line.

Minister, good morning.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Morning, Alan.

ALAN JONES: What about this mutiny on the ocean? What is the update, and what do you know on that?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, no more than the reports. I mean, obviously while we're in touch with the Indonesian authorities, they don't brief us on all of these developments. But I'm pleased that we haven't seen a further loss of life because I think the events of last week were tragic and one wouldn't want to see those sorts of things happening again.

And as far as I'm concerned, if we were to relax our approach and encourage more people to think that they should come this way, we would only ! be exposing more children to a possible death in the same way that these children have died.

ALAN JONES: There is talk today that two Indonesian police officers have been arrested over the fishing boat that sank on October 19 with only 44 of its passengers surviving. Can you confirm that?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I can't, but it's a matter for the Indonesian authorities to, of course, progress. They've been obviously very concerned about many of the claims that have been made - I would be - and they've sought to deal with it.

And our view all along was that it was a matter for the Indonesians to handle. It's within their boundaries, they're a sovereign nation and they've got responsibility in relation to any complaints that are made about their law enforcement officers.

ALAN JONES: There's talk of 3,000 more boat people expected to head for Australia in the next few weeks and the Indonesian Government saying there are 4,000 illegal immigrants waiting to sail! to Australia. Is that consistent with your intelligence?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Not quite. I mean, the sorts of numbers that we've known to be in the hands of smugglers - that is, we've identified particular smugglers who might be planning to bring boats to Australia - don't suggest the numbers are immediately as high as that. But the reports of up to 4,000 in Indonesia and possibly another 4,000 in Malaysia are very real.

ALAN JONES: Is there a need to re-examine the quotas on refugees who are found to be genuine? We allow in about 12,000 a year.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I mean, Mr Beazley's not arguing that we should and the reason he's not is that there is a very heavy cost. And it's one of the draw factors, of course. I mean, for us it's $30 million per thousand on the forward estimates. So I mean, you can decide that you're going to spend that money on additional refugees being resettled in Australia, but I look at what's happening at the moment in Pakistan, f! or instance, and I think to myself, well, what would $30 million do in terms of looking after millions of people who are in dire straits.

And I think that certainly the approach being taken by the international community at this stage is that an evacuation of modest numbers of people from Pakistan is not going to deal with the very much larger crisis that Pakistan faces. And I think it has to be seen in that context.

And there's no amount of people that we could take that would limit, I think, the groups of people with money to travel and still vulnerable to the blandishments of smugglers.

ALAN JONES: Okay. Well, down to the thing that has concerned my listeners - and I have been inundated and I suppose you have as well. But they're asking me how much longer that Australians have to cop the kind of stuff that this Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly went on with last week arguing that you and the Prime Minister and government policy had "opened the gates of death! ."

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well look, I wasn't very impressed with the comments, as you can imagine, and I'd seen the Sheik several hours before he made them and didn't make them to my face.

I said - look, one of the things in your introduction I'd just pick up. I think it's unfair to say that all Muslims take the view that the government policy in this area is wrong. Many Muslims I know very strongly support the approach that we take because they believe we're a…

ALAN JONES: But this bloke calls himself the spiritual leader.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Yeah well, he does that but his position is not as sound as that and he's been - essentially, I think there are very significant splits within the Islamic community.

ALAN JONES: Well, Alan Ramsey who's been around Canberra longer than you have - and that's saying something…

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I saw Alan…

ALAN JONES: Well, he wrote at the weekend - and I just want to take you through some of this beca! use my listeners want some answers - that 11 years ago, as Opposition spokesman on immigration, you pursued questions never answered as to why the Hawke Labor Government granted this bloke, Al Hilaly, permanent residency in 1990, that eight years earlier, he said, the Sheik had arrived in Sydney from Egypt under the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils on a three-month visa and his family never left.

Now there were several convictions, intellectual convictions against this bloke and many want to know how he still remains in the light of saying the things he said.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I mean, Alan Ramsey's story went through it and I think there were some other stories at the same time, that related what happened. I mean, this…

ALAN JONES: He was accused of inciting racial hatred.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Yes, and Chris Herford, who was the former Minister, determined that in character terms he should not remain in Australia.

ALAN JONES: That's r! ight.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: And he issued a deportation order.

ALAN JONES: That's in 1986.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: And that was overturned because there were representations made by essentially the Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney to the Members of Parliament - I think Leo McLeay was one and Paul Keating was another.

ALAN JONES: Alan Ramsey said that Hilaly had been supported by strong New South Wales and federal ALP lobbying and survived.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, as I understand it, there was very strong lobbying, and I spoke to Robert Ray at the time. He made the decisions that he would be able to continue to remain here on a temporary basis. They were renewed, as I understand it, for a number of years, and Ray I think was a bit nervous that there may be a change in an election. It didn't happen. There was a Labor Government was returned and Hilaly was given permanent residency.

And once he was granted permanent residency, provided he remained i! n Australia, he was eligible for citizenship.

ALAN JONES: Let's go back a bit, just go back a bit, because…

PHILIP RUDDOCK: …while Gerry Hand was Minister…

ALAN JONES: Let's go back a bit though before we get to Gerry Hand because you're going fairly quickly but my listeners would want us to go a bit more slowly.

In October 1998, you demanded his visa be withdrawn after, as Ramsey rightly reports, a series of virulent anti-Semitic comments were attributed to a speech he made at the University of Sydney. I should repeat that Ramsey at the weekend said the comments were published in a Jewish newspaper and contained a reference to Jews as the underlying cause of all wars and that Jews who "used sex and abominable acts of buggery to control the world."

And this bloke, in spite of overtures that such a person shouldn't be kept in this country, has been kept here.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: And the reason he's been kept here is that the decisions the L! abor Government took at that time gave him permanent residency and then citizenship, and once you achieve citizenship, it cannot be revoked. And you know, when we came into office…

ALAN JONES: So the deportation order of Herford was revoked by Herford's successor?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: That's right.

ALAN JONES: To placate an ethnic community in the run-up to the July '87 election?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: There were very significant pressures put on at that time, and former Prime Minister Keating, I believe, was the person who pushed for the Minister at that time to take those decisions.

ALAN JONES: Ramsey wrote on Saturday that privately the Sheik had travelled to Canberra for a meeting with McLeay and Keating and when Robert Ray learnt of it - the Minister - he deferred the Sheik's application for a year on the grounds of collusion. And Ramsey said that Keating wouldn't speak to Robert Ray for months.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I know none of that. But ! I know that Ray was not keen to make the decision, but I know the decision was made and I know when I came Minister in 1996 it was a fait accompli.

I mean, citizenship is something that cannot be revoked unless it was initially obtained by fraud, and there is no suggestion here the information that you are speaking of was not known to the Government at the time.

ALAN JONES: Right. But Ramsey does say in September 1990, when Hand then approved Hilaly's permanent residence, you, Philip Ruddock, sought under Freedom of Information "all briefings and advisings" in the "grant of resident status to Hilaly and his family." And you were quoted as saying the Minister must be able to justify the decision, and yet you've never had those questions answered.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: No. I mean, you might - the question I would expect from you is why I haven't asked for those papers now and what would I do with it. And essentially I've come to the view that if I can't do anythin! g about the decision, it's going to be pretty silly of me just seeking to look at the papers.

I mean, I know of the concerns. There were security concerns and they were mentioned in that article as well as the vilification of a segment of our community. And I make the point every time I speak in front of Hilaly about the importance of our culturally diverse society and what that means. And I make the point very strongly that, you know, when you've settled in Australia, while we acknowledge that people have different cultural backgrounds, we have an expectation that they'll observe our laws.

And one of the things that disappoints me in relation to immigration laws is that some people seem to think - and Hilaly is arguing this - are entitled to ignore our laws if they relate to immigration. And I don't think you have a society that believes in the rule of law where you say, well, there are some laws that I'll obey and some that I won't.

ALAN JONES: But when ! a bloke says that the Prime Minister of a country has opened the gates to death because asylum seekers have drowned, isn't this an incitement to mobilise his people against those who support the Government?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, I mean it is very clear that remarks of that sort, if they were being made - and the sort of remarks that he's made elsewhere - would be matters that we would take into account under the character provisions if we were dealing with a migration application de nevo. They are matters…

ALAN JONES: He's already a permanent citizen.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: He's a permanent resident and citizen.

ALAN JONES: And citizen. But in January last year, is it right that he was sentenced to a year in jail with hard labour after being convicted of smuggling antiquities from Egypt to Australia?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I believe there was a conviction which he has appealed and that appeal is still being dealt with.

ALAN JONES: And the Sheik's so! n and four other people were also jailed.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I don't know about that, but I do know that those proceedings were taking place in Egypt and he was the subject of a conviction and that matter has been appealed and that appeal is still being dealt with.

ALAN JONES: It's not fair to the Muslim community, surely, to be represented in the public place by people who speak like this, is it?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I think the Islamic community have been very concerned about this matter themselves and he's been at times relieved of some of his responsibilities. And as I understand it, he is no longer the Mufti - which was the terms used - for the Supreme Spiritual Leader in Australia. He is just one of a number of imams.

ALAN JONES: Good on you. Thank you for your time because many of my listeners wrote and asked me to ask you those questions. I've done that and you've answered them. I thank you for that.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Thanks, Alan.
ALAN JONES: Philip Ruddock, the Immigration Minister. There you are, we're inundated with letters and faxes and emails here about all of that. I hope that clarifies it for you. He is an Australian citizen.

29 October 2001

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