Anthony Albanese just keeps stumbling along in his new role as opposition leader. After a humiliating back down in his standoff with union bovver-boy John Setka, now one of his frontbenchers has gone and picked a fight with the White House.
Kristina Keneally is one of Labor’s quota queens who keep on being parachuted into plum jobs despite their demonstrated ineptitude. Keneally’s latest folly has been to unsuccessfully try and ban conservative journalist Raheem Kassam from entering Australia. Keneally lost, but the Trump clan has taken notice.
Anthony Albanese has rebuffed attacks on his party by Donald Trump’s eldest son, saying he makes no apologies for trying to block a far-right writer from entering Australia.
Don Trump Jr has accused Labor and its home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally of trying to stifle conservative views by speaking out against former Breitbart editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam visiting Australia.
This “far-right” nonsense has got to stop, especially from supposedly “responsible” media like The Australian. Not only is it grossly insulting to basically liken everyone the left doesn’t approve of to a mass-murdering regime, but the article quoted is supposed to be hard news reporting. “Far-right” is an opinion. I don’t know about the kiddies working for the The Australian these days, but when I went to school, one of the first things they drummed into us was: Opinion and reporting should never mix.
But Albanese has not only backed Keneally’s ham-fisted attempt at censorship, he’s also demonstrated the overweening arrogance of the left-wing political-media class.
Mr Albanese said Australians “understand” it is up to the nation’s politicians to determine what is free speech and what is hate speech in Australia, not the Trump family…“The Australian people understand that it’s up to us to determine as respectful debate.
We “understand” no such thing, Albo. It’s the height of arrogance for politicians to treat Australian citizens – their employers – as children, too stupid to decide for themselves what they can and can’t choose to hear or read. Worse, Albanese shows the typical contempt of the left for free speech: because there is no such dichotomy between “free speech” and “hate speech”. There is only free speech – whether you, or I, or the bloke down the pub likes it or not. One person’s “hate speech” is another’s “common sense”.
Something Trump Jr understands, even if Labor cannot.
Mr Trump Jr earlier took to Twitter to blast Senator Keneally, tweeting that that calls to keep Mr Kassam out of Australia were part of a global push to “silence conservative views.”
“We have Big Tech constantly trying to silence conservatives and now one of the major political parties in Australia is trying to silence @RaheemKassam because of his conservative views. The insanity needs to stop!” the US President’s son tweeted.
Senator Keneally…told Mr Trump Jr via Twitter that the conservative Morrison government was responsible for banning far-right figures in the past.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/donald-trump-jr-blasts-kristina-keneally-over-farright-activist/news-story/
This is disingenuous in the extreme. Yes, the Morrison government has shamefully refused in the past to intervene when bureaucrats have refused conservative – not “far-right” – figures. But, in every case, immigration bureaucracy was acting at the behest of left-wing activists. The Morrison government’s sin was not to overrule them. But gutless passivity, pathetic and unacceptable as that is, is not the same as active censorship, which authoritarians like Keneally and Albanese want the power to impose.