EDITORIAL: Gaza visa debacle is back to bite Prime Minister

Perhaps this is why spies are trained to generally keep their traps shut.

Every time ASIO boss Mike Burgess opens his, he creates more problems for the Government.

This time, he has moved to clarify his position on the visa vetting process for Palestinians fleeing war-torn Gaza.

In an interview with ABC, he said his previous comments — in which he suggested mere “rhetorical support” for the strip’s terrorist administrators Hamas might not automatically disqualify an applicant for an Australian visa — had been “misrepresented”.

Mr Burgess said he had “watched with interest over the last couple of weeks how people have chosen to distort” those comments.

“I said that if you support a Palestinian homeland that may not discount you (from entering Australia) because that by itself is not a problem,” he said.

“But I also said if you have a violent extremist ideology, or you provide material or financial support to a terrorist organisation, that will be a problem.

“If you think terrorism is OK, if you think the destruction of the state of Israel is OK, if you think Hamas and what they did on the 7th of October is OK, I can tell you that is not OK, and from an ASIO security assessment point of view, you will not pass muster.”

A sensible position.

But in making these fresh comments, Mr Burgess has reignited for the Government an issue they’d hoped had flickered out.

Close to 3000 Australian visas have been offered to those fleeing Gaza from October 7 to mid-August, though only about 1300 have actually touched down on Australian soil.

In the same period, the US approved just 17 visas to Gaza, the UK 168 and New Zealand 158.

By pushing the debate back into the public eye, Mr Burgess has gifted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton an opportunity to reheat his criticism that by being too liberal with visas, the Government has compromised national security.

On Tuesday he continued that criticism, saying more stringent checks needed to be applied to those entering Australia from Gaza.

“Now, maybe 100 per cent of those people are law-abiding, wonderful citizens who just want to make Australia home, but we don’t know whether that’s the case or not,” he said.

Clearly, it’s an issue that isn’t going away, as much as the Government might like it to.

A poll published in The Guardian late last month showed that 44 per cent of respondents agreed with Mr Dutton’s call to pause visas granted to Palestinians, while 30 per cent opposed it and 26 per cent said they were undecided.

Part of the problem is that Anthony Albanese himself has been less than clear on his position.

The onus must fall on the Prime Minister to convince Australians that no terrorist sympathisers will be allowed to slip through into our country.