The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has accused Peter Dutton of deliberately stirring up division on visa-holders from Gaza, as the opposition rejected an independent MP’s description of him as “racist” and called the label “disgraceful”.
In an interview for the Australian Politics podcast, Chalmers said he remains worried about community division and suggested Dutton’s comments – that all visa-holders from Gaza posed a national security risk – were not designed to improve it.
“I’m worried that the opposition leader went to a reception for our Olympic athletes and took the opportunity there to be as divisive, characteristically divisive, as he could be,” Chalmers said.
The treasurer argued Australia has an opportunity to choose a different course for political debate than the one which has led to politically motivated violence in other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
“We can choose whether we reject it or whether we embrace it, and whether we become a sort of an island of decency in a sea of political violence and political division,” he said. “And every time that we’ve chosen the high road as a country, I feel like it’s paid dividends for us, and here’s a chance for us to do that now.”
On Friday, Dutton insisted he is not racist after independent MP Zali Steggall defended calling the opposition leader so in parliament and also accused him of fuelling division with his political attacks over visa-holders from Gaza.
Dutton rejected Steggall’s assertion – which the speaker forced the member for Warringah to withdraw after she levelled it on Thursday – and said she was the one who was divisive.
“I’m not a racist, and I’m not going to be standing here as a punching bag for people like Zali Steggall,” Dutton told Nine’s Today Show on Friday. “I actually think, ironically, that them calling out people unnecessarily and unrealistically and unjustly as racists, they’re actually fuelling tensions.”
Steggall doubled down on criticising the way Dutton had spoken about people from Gaza who have been granted visas – overwhelmingly because they have family in Australia – since the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
On Friday, Steggall again rejected suggestions that her language had been inflammatory.
“It is not inflammatory to call out behaviour that is divisive,” Steggall told Sky News. “Peter Dutton is dangerous.”
Dutton has suggested that all Gaza arrivals since 7 October pose a threat and no further visas should be issued to anyone from the besieged Palestinian territory.
“I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment. It’s not prudent to do so and I think it puts our national security at risk,” he told Sky News on Wednesday.
He pointed to the process for applicants arriving from Syria and Afghanistan during previous conflicts, in which they were interviewed and subjected to biometric testing in third countries first.
On Sunday, the Asio director general, Mike Burgess, told ABC’s Insiders that biometric testing was only useful if somebody was already in a database.
“If they’re not in a database then the biometric testing gives you nothing other than a biometric tag that you can use at a later stage,” Burgess said. “The critical point is that there are security checks.”
