The most junior of its ministers, Julian Hill, assistant to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, has issued a press release announcing: “Funding to support Australian Palestinian communities.”Note for a start that deadly word “communities”.It really means “tribes”.This government sees this country as a patch of land shared by various “communities”, rather than just the Australian one.This is the multicultural dystopia that’s left Australia more racially and ethnically divided than ever in my lifetime, and getting worse.
Hill now says that “to focus on social cohesion”, the government will spend $5 million to “support young Muslim and Palestinian Australians and their family, friends and community impacted by the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.Er, why?So they don’t get sad about this foreign conflict? How’s that our responsibility?Or is Hill in fact worried they’ll get angry and do something to our “cohesion” to make us pay?If the latter, why did we allow such dangerously volatile people into this country? Why did this government just give 3000 Palestinians from Gaza tourism visas to settle here, too?But Junior Hill will fix it! He says $2.4 million of this new money will support Muslim youths “through culturally-informed youth services and pathways to positive community participation”. Not negative “community participation” such as …. fill in the blank yourself.“Empowering young Australian Muslims locally is critical to building connections and tackling division, prejudice and hate,” he says.
Hang on. This seems confused – or dishonest. Is Hill saying young Muslims will be hated if we don’t give them this money? That’s an unlikely cause-and-effect.Or is he scared these youths will hate us if they don’t get our cash? That at least sounds more logical.Then, sure, I’d agree we’d all be better off if young Muslims were as well integrated into this country as Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, for instance, who don’t seem to need such grants to save our “social cohesion”.But that’s when Junior Hill goes completely off the grid with his multicultural compass.These millions he’s offering aren’t going to, say, the Scouts and Girl Guides, to recruit more Muslim youths. It’s not going to Auskick, swimming clubs or any other sporting codes to help young Muslims mix with other young Australians and feel joined to us all.The opposite. Hill says almost half the money is only for three Muslim organisations which may bid for it: United Muslims Australia, which preaches Islam; Himilo, which is for Sudanese Australians in Melbourne; and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.The remaining $2.6 million will be lavished on “Australian Palestinian-led community organisations” to “support the social inclusion and participation of Palestinian Australians and their family, friends and community”. But inclusion into which community, exactly? The Australian or Palestinian Muslim one?The latter, it seems. This time the money must be shared between four groups, not one of them dedicated to assimilating Palestinians into Australia’s mainstream.
One is the Palestinian Community of Western Australia, which aims to keep “connection to culture and tradition of Palestinian-Australians”, and advertised a protest against the Albanese Government “on behalf of the Political Intifada”. Just six days after Hamas terrorists started the war on Israel by slaughtering 1200 Jews, this PCWA even sneered that Hamas “tore down apartheid walls” and inflicted “humiliation” on Israel.Also is line for funding is the Palestine Australia Relief and Action Foundation, which declares “we live and work on stolen land”, plus the sweetly named Glimmer of Hope, which says it is “dedicated to providing cultural services to the Palestinian community of South Australia”, which includes yearly mourning of the “continued Palestinian catastrophe” at the hands of Israel. All that’s on top of the $25 million that Junior Hill reminds us the government has already spent “to support Palestinian, Muslim and Arab communities in Australia affected by the Hamas-Israel conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. Does this funding look likely to make Australia less divided? Less likely to be driven by ethnic and religious tensions? To me, it seems more like “paying the Danegeld” – paying tribute money to buy peace from imported tribes. And paying it to help them keep their culture rather than adopt our own.That doesn’t seem a wise plan. Only to a blind multiculturalist would it still somehow makes sense.
