... get priority access to our welfare scheme.The wording in the first paragraph is quite clear. The forum was designed to cater for Lebanese Australians to gain access to “our welfare scheme”.
Our scheme. Not their scheme. They are Lebanese Australians. We are real Australians. The message and implication is quite clear. The Telegraph is busy continuing with an agenda of demonising Lebanese Australians evacuated from what was the warzone.
The forum included advice on how to get ...
... to the top of the public housing queue.Wow. How terrible. The sort of advice you could get by visiting your State MP’s office.
And what was the biggest deal about all this? The 3rd paragraph of the article states:
The extent of the support disproves claims from community leaders including Keysar Trad that Australia's response to the Middle East crisis was "racist".
Of course, had Keysar made the same allegations against McIlveen and the editors at the Telegraph, his allegations would have had some substance.
What the Telegraph doesn’t say is that the forum didn’t tell Lebanese Australians how to rort the system, though this is no doubt the impression McIlveen wishes to leave readers.
And they certainly did get that impression of the published feedback is anything to go by.
Once again, McIlveen has managed to engage in thinly disguised racism toward non-Anglo Australians. This time, his hysteria has also resulted in highly defamatory imputations against the Premier and staff of State and Federal Government Departments and Agencies.
The story includes a photo of 3 women at a table of brochures and pamphlets. As expected, 2 of them are wearing hijabs. The photo caption reads:
Generous support ... members of the Lebanese community check their entitlements last night.Can someone please tell someone at the DT that most Lebanese Aussies are in fact Christians?
I often wonder whether the Telegraph get legal advice before they published their articles. One day they might find themselves in a spot of bother.
It would be interesting to know what Lebanese Aussie reporters employed by the DT think of this hysteria-mongering. The last time Piers Akerman wrote his nonsensical attack on Lebanese-Australian dual citizens and their pleas for evacuation, Lillian Saleh responded with a thinly-veiled critique of Akerman’s position.
(I say it was thinly veiled because she didn’t mention Akerman by name.)
It will be interesting to see if Saleh or one of her colleagues responds to what appears to be McIlveen’s latest racially-motivated monstrosity.
Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf
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