EDITORIAL: Labor must answer legitimate Gaza visa questions

The situation unfolding in the Middle East is a tragedy.

The Hamas-Israel conflict sparked by the murder by Hamas militants of 700 Israelis on October 7 has claimed far too many lives, many of those innocent non-combatants.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, more than 40,000 people have died in Gaza in the 10 months since the conflict began. A further 92,000 are reported to have been injured in the fighting which have reduced much of the strip to a rubble-strewn hellscape.

It is a heavy and tragic toll.

Amid this devastation, Australia, with our boundless plains to share, has a role to play in offering safety to those found to be genuine refugees.

But those offers of safety and a new life in Australia must be made with extreme caution. Our nation’s first duty must always be to protect the safety and way of life of our own citizens first.

The Albanese Government wants you to believe that any questions about how and why visas have been offered to close to 3000 Gazans since October come from a place of racism.

It’s simply not true.

These are legitimate questions.

The fact is that like-minded countries are exhibiting far greater caution when issuing visas to Palestinians fleeing their homelands.

The US has approved just 17 visas to Gazans in the same period. The UK has approved 168 and New Zealand 158.

It is reasonable to ask why the disparity is so great.

It’s also reasonable to ask why the majority of the visas offered to Gazans by Australia have been tourist visas, rather than humanitarian visas.

As the Coalition’s home affairs spokesman James Paterson has pointed out, those fleeing Palestine are not here to see the Opera House and Uluru and then return home. They want to stay for good, far from the violence of their homeland.

That’s understandable. And many of them undoubtedly have valuable contributions to make to Australian society, just as refugees from all over the world have done before them.

Part of the trouble is that visitor visas attract far less stringent checks than those conducted for more appropriate visas.

And, as much as the #freepalestine crowd might not like to admit it, that exposes Australia to a serious national security risk.

We have already seen the impact of the conflict in Gaza on Australia. Earlier this month, ASIO raised Australia’s official terror threat level from “possible” to probable”. At the time, the spy agency’s boss Mike Burgess named the war as a “significant driver” of the decision to do so.

While there’s no doubt that many of the Gazans to arrive on Australian soil are genuine refugees, some may harbour more sinister intentions. Our Government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from those who would wish to do us harm.

Saying so is not racist. It’s just good sense.