Australia should give priority to Christians wanting to flee persecution in Muslim countries the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, the Reverend Fred Nile, says. Mr Nile, a member of the NSW upper house, has called for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration to Australia.
There had been no serious study of the potential effects on Australia of the more than 300,000 Muslims who are already here, he said. The CDP leader wants a study to look at the examples of the Netherlands and France, where the Muslim minority has become large enough to “flex its muscle”.
“The same thing is happening in our city of Sydney … they (Muslims) concentrate and virtually by population numbers they dominate that actual community,” he told Southern Cross Broadcasting today.
The NSW Greens called on the major parties to publicly reject Mr Nile’s call for an immigration moratorium and cancel any preference deals with his party. “Rev Nile’s statement makes NSW look ugly and racist,” Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said. “All public figures should distance themselves from such an unacceptable policy.”
Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 2007
Australian Muslims announced on Monday, March 12, plans to form a political party to fight the spiraling Islamophobia in the country, opening the membership door for people of different faiths. “The political parties are focusing too much unfair attention on Muslims,” Kaysar Trad, spokesman of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia (IFAA), told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We have to do whatever we can to make politicians focus on real issues rather than diversions on Muslims.”