Tony Burke: Election campaign gets nasty as Home Affairs Minister threatened in chilling video

A nasty campaign targeting Tony Burke in his Sydney electorate of Watson has escalated after it was revealed he had been threatened in a video message.

Labor campaign spokesman Jason Clare said that the video contained the chilling taunt, “Come back here without the police”.

The revelation comes a day after the Home Affairs and Immigration Minister was forced to leave an Islamic prayer event on the advice of the Australian Federal Police.

Mr Burke has also reportedly been the subject of an unauthorised flyer, labelling him a “racist immigration minister”.

“That’s not how democracy’s done in Australia,” Mr Clare said on Sky News.

“You know, this shouldn’t be the way that elections happen. You should be able to go about your day, talk to people, encourage them to vote for it. If they don’t want to vote for you, then there’s somebody else.”

Asked if he thought Muslim Vote candidates should be doing more to condemn the actions, Mr Clare said he wasn’t suggesting they were behind it.

“What I’m saying is that, you know, in an election we’re going to make sure that people treat each other with a little bit of respect and we’re seeing examples where that isn’t the case.”

Mr Clare said he didn’t think Mr Burke had been scared by the threat but was following the advice of police.

Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson has condemned “ratbag protesters” after the campaigns of both leaders were disrupted on the first day by protesters who had to be bundled away by security.

“I don’t think we want to move to a style of politics we see in some other countries, where our political leaders are cocooned in a security bubble and can’t interact with Australians,” he said.

“These rat bag protesters who are turning up at events might think they’re being clever, but all they’re going to do is make our politicians more removed from the public, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.”