Tactical Paranoia: Peter Dutton’s Palestinian Problem – OpEd

The philosophy of the dunce and the politics of the demagogue often keep each other company. And Peter Dutton has both unenviable qualities in spades. The Australian opposition leader, who sensed weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has returned to what he is most comfortable doing: scaring the living daylights out of the Australian public.

The method of doing this is always unimaginably dull and almost always inaccurate. Select your marginal group in society. Elevate it to a menace, fill it with a gaseous, nasty fantasy. Condemn said group for various fictitious and misattributed faults. When all is done, demonize its members and label all alleged supporters or collaborators as foolish at best, unpatriotic at worst.

The group that has been irritating Dutton and his frontbench of security hysteria of late is Palestinians, particularly those fleeing the horrific war in Gaza and seeking refuge in Australia. Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, only 2,922 visas have been issued to persons holding Palestinian Authority travel documents, of which about 350 are visitor visas. A much larger total of 7,111 visa applications have been rejected by the federal government. So far, only 1,300 have come to Australia, on temporary visitor visas that do not allow holders to receive government benefits or engage in meaningful employment. The Albanian government is considering whether to create a new category of visa that would remove such barriers.

Dutton has little to work with such figures. Undaunted, he has spent the best part of a week playing the role of the tactically paranoid. “If people come out of that war zone and we are unsure of their identity or loyalty,” he told Sky News on August 14, then it was “not sensible” to let them in.

Education Minister Jason Clare, who represents a constituency in Western Sydney with a significant Muslim population, mockingly invited Dutton to visit. “There are people from Gaza here now, they live in my constituency, I’ve met them, wonderful people.” Their “houses were blown up, their schools were blown up, their hospitals were blown up, their children were blown up.”

Shadow Home Secretary James Paterson has also expressed concern that the government has simply not convinced us and the Australian people “that the security and identity checks they are carrying out are thorough and robust enough to protect the Australian people”. While Australia had an “important role to play” in meeting “a very serious need”, the safety and security of the Australian people came first.

What would be a satisfactory measure for Paterson? A blanket refusal to grant visas to all Hamas supporters would be a start. “We’ve been in this debate for a few days now, and they still haven’t said clearly whether or not they will allow someone who is a Hamas supporter into our country.” All applications from Palestinians fleeing Gaza would be referred to the domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, and would involve “rigorous personal interviews and biometric testing.”

In comments made to The Australian Financial ReviewPaterson revealed the true purpose of this leap into the demagogue thicket. “Governments are constantly making choices about who they prioritize to bring to Australia. If the Albanian government chooses this group over others, it will be a revealing choice.”

There is a tinge of stifling unreality to these objections. First, they are dismissive of the views of Mike Burgess, the current Director-General of ASIO, who stated on 11 August that “there are security checks” or “criteria by which people are referred to my office for assessment and when that happens we deal with it effectively.”

Burgess, showing uncharacteristic nuance, drew a distinction between providing financial or material aid to the organization, something that might pique the interest of a screening officer, and that of “rhetorical support.” “If it’s just rhetorical support, and they don’t have an ideology or support for a violent extremist ideology, then that’s fine.”

The logic of preventing individuals from coming to Australia simply because of a supportive link to Hamas shows a stupid principle at work. It falsely implies that the individual is a potential terrorist, and eschews any broader understanding. Immature and out of touch, such a perspective ignores the bloody political realities of the conflict. The implication here is that the only acceptable Palestinian is an apolitical one who silently acknowledges the primacy of Israeli power, humbly asserting claims to self-determination.

The coalition opposing visas for Palestinians who support Hamas is also improbable in another respect. While claiming to be defenders of that most insidious of terms, “social cohesion,” Dutton and his stormtroopers seek to destroy it. Manufacturing insecurity, like the credo of the mafia, becomes the pretext for combating it.

Boiled down to its essence, the view of Dutton and his colleagues, plucked from the cabinet of Israel’s security narrative, is that any support for Palestinian autonomy and independence, manifested by any political or military arm, should be suspect. You had to be, as Paterson put it, “a peaceful advocate of Palestinian self-determination” and an opponent of “the use of violent means.” Be silent, remain submissive, and wait for the goodwill of the oppressor.