Failing the character test

The right to permanent residency carries an obligation to respect Australian values

It’s taken 16 months for officials to decide that Maha Almassri does not meet the character test for an Australian visa.

At 5am last Thursday, Gaza Gran as the Daily Telegraph called her, was detained at a Bankstown home and taken to the Villawood Detention Centre.

Outraged Palestinian activists, friends and family grabbed their keffiyehs and Palestinian flags and staged a spontaneous protest outside the electorate office of the Minister for Home Affairs. The Daily Telegraph reported that a crowd of around 50 people chanted “Tony Burke, you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide” and “Death, death to the IDF”.

If the object of the demonstration was to harden public sentiment towards a tougher immigration policy, they should congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Their disagreeable performance amplified Jillian Segal’s call for visa applicants should be screened for extremist views.

“Migration policies must guard against the importation of hate,” the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism wrote in a timely report last week. “Non-citizens involved in antisemitism should face visa cancellation and removal from Australia.”

Australians have been more than generous in welcoming refugees since the late 1940s when Ben Chifley’s Labor government signed a resettlement agreement with the International Refugee Organisation.

Yet in recent decades, we have become too nervous to spell out the most