This was the News Corp mouthpiece for that far-right pressure group the Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA), Miranda Devine,
in full rant (though sticking closely to IPA's wish list) and under multiple mastheads on 18 April
2018:
Malcolm Turnbull has a
rare opportunity to put a stop to the Left’s long march when the Race
Discrimination Commissioner’s term expires in August
Race Discrimination
Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane’s term expires in August and the Turnbull
government cannot afford to miss this opportunity to stake out its ground in
the culture wars.
Conservatives are sick
of Coalition governments that appease the Left, curl into a ball and try not
to cause outrage while Labor-Green governments remake the culture in their own
image.
The country always takes
two steps to the Left with a Labor government and not much better than one step
to the Right or even staying in place with the Coalition, which puts us on a very
bad trajectory indeed…..
So government gets
bigger and more intrusive, the ABC continues unimpeded, destructive quangos
such as the Australian Human Rights Commission proliferate and the cancer of
identity politics takes hold. Little by little, our remarkable nation is
transformed, and division takes root. The self-reliance and entrepreneurial
spirit of Australians is sapped and the bonds of mateship are eroded.
But it doesn’t have to
be that way.
The only way to arrest
this dispiriting drift to the left is for Coalition governments to stop
pretending there are no culture wars and get into the trenches and fight.
With a one-seat
majority, a prime minister with fashionably progressive views and an election
in the next year, we can’t expect bold actions by the Turnbull government that
were beyond the Howard and Abbott governments. Such as closing down the Human
Rights Commission.
But Malcolm Turnbull
cannot afford to keep making mistakes like he did at the ABC when he appointed
as chairman a man who is such a leftie he said he couldn’t see any bias.
The symbolic value
cannot be over-estimated of replacing Soutphommasane with a commissioner who
doesn’t want to use race to divide us.
That’s all this pesky
36-year-old French-born son of Laotian refugees has done since he was appointed
to a five-year term by Kevin Rudd in 2013, a month before the Abbott government
was elected. Despite the fact Australia gave Soutphommasane’s family a home, a
free education at Hursltone Agricultural High and the University of Sydney, and
a Commonwealth scholarship to Oxford University, he preaches that this is a
racist country.
Despite the fact this is
the most successful immigrant country in the world, which has mostly
harmoniously absorbed as many as 200,000 new people each year from around the
world, Soutphommasane tells us that the culture is toxic.
The former freelance
journalist has bought the identity politics agenda, hook, line and sinker. He
saw the great honours bestowed on him, such as membership of the board of the
National Australia Day Council and the $340,000 gig at the Australian Human
Rights Commission, as proof, not that this was a country that offered equality
of opportunity to all comers, regardless of the colour of their skin. No, he
saw it as more evidence of anti-white racism that needed to be set straight
with social engineering.
He will never be
forgiven for soliciting racial complaints against a cartoon by the late and
much missed Bill Leak, whose persecution under Section 18C of the Racial
Discrimination Act only really ended with his untimely death last year of a
heart attack at 61.
Soutphommasane’s latest
obsession is to impose ethnic diversity quotas on corporate Australia. He
declared last year that there were too many white people running Australian
companies.
In his five years he has
just libelled Australia, created race-based social divisions and helped fuel a
backlash against immigration.
So it’s not good enough
for the government to appoint, as is mooted, an innocuous replacement who just
avoids the headlines. Restitution is needed. If we must have a racial
commissioner, then let it be a clear-eyed patriot who loves this country. Warren
Mundine is the best person for the job. Well-respected, brimming with common
sense and optimism, he has a proven track record as a businessman, and as an
Aboriginal and political leader. He would unite us around what’s best about
Australia.
This was a restrained Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane in rebuttal the following day:
