Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has joined the chorus of condemnation of the pro-Hamas rally in Sydney, calling for the visas of non-citizen protesters to be revoked.
On Oct. 10, around 1,000 pro-Palestine protesters marched through Sydney’s central business district and gathered in front of Sydney Opera House, chanting anti-Jewish slurs including “gas the Jews” and “[expletive] Israel.”
The rally comes following the Hamas massacre in Israel, which had killed more than 1,200 people including an Australian citizen according to the Israeli military.
Mr. Dutton said the scenes at the Opera House “will go down in our country’s history” and the protesters should be apologetic to the Jewish community.
“I don’t think we should underestimate how significantly they’ve been interpreted overseas,” he told Sydney’s radio 2GB on Thursday.
He noted that if there were people there who were on visas, they “should be identified and they should have their visas cancelled.”
“They should be deported,” he said.
“People with that hate in their mind and their heart don’t have any place in our society. If they were non-citizen, and the police should be doing this work now, their visas should be before the minister and on character grounds, they should have their visas cancelled.”
However, Mr. Dutton said it wasn’t clear whether that work is being done by the federal Labor government, which he said had given more attention to advocating for The Voice to Parliament.
“This is the frustration and the inherent bias within some of the ministers within the Labor party that you couldn’t be assured that that process is being considered.”
“I know the PM is concerned about how the country would be viewed internationally if The Voice goes down, but I don’t want people anywhere in the world to think that those seen at the Sydney Opera House represent who we are as people.”
‘Persecuted For Religious Belief’
Mr. Dutton added that the protest had fuelled fear in the broader community, with parents scared for their kids going to Jewish schools.Comparing Hamas to ISIS, the opposition leader added, “It hurts me so much to think that those people in our community could be persecuted just because of their religious belief or because of this hatred towards them.”
The opposition leader also criticised the hierarchy of the New South Wales (NSW) police, saying they “deserve as much condemnation as the minister does and to allow that protest to go ahead.”
“I thought it a shocking mistake, it shouldn’t have been tolerated. It was an expression of hate speech and the terrorist killing, the beheading of babies, to be celebrating that sort of conduct ... It’s just basic human decency.”
Following the protest, NSW Premier Chris Minns has apologised to the state’s Jewish community and vowed to stop further pro-Hamas protests from taking place.
“I really want to make it clear to the Jewish community that I want to apologise to them specifically, on behalf of the government and myself as the premier of NSW,” he said on Oct. 11.
Mr. Dutton commended the Premier for his apology but noted that if “the mood of the government is to condone this” then “that’s the direction they’ll get down the line.”
