Blaming Muslims equals more votes

I cannot see any reason why John Howard would criticise Muslims about their English. Many Muslim community leaders described Howard’s latest comments against Muslims as his routine criticism, which he hands out when he requires support from his constituency.

The leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown, commenting on Howard’s recent comments said, “[the] Prime Minister's attitude to Muslim immigrants contrasts with former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser”.

The former prime minister, and one of our most admirable, welcomed Vietnamese migrants and refugees in the late 1970s. Even now most of the Vietnamese and Chinese don’t have much competency in English. Senator Brown called John Howard the most xenophobic Australian leader.

Why is Prime Minister Howard so worried about the English of Australian Muslims only? Why are Islam and Muslims the focal concern for him and why does he frequently come out and blame Muslims?

Well, the answer might be to look at the last ten years of Howard’s Government: it is easy to understand how issues have been created, exploited and cultivated in order to gain support from ordinary Australians.

In politics, to gain the support of the majority on any critical issue, the politician often targets, as a political tool, those who are already in the limelight.

When John Howard criticised Muslims about their English language and Australian values, many observers predicted that John Howard was attempting to gain support and very soon the government would seek support for the introduction of an English test and other tough, new conditions for immigrants.

The parliamentary secretary for immigration, Andrew Robb, has now released a discussion paper on citizenship. According to his paper everyone who would like to apply for Australian citizenship will need to pass an English test and also be required to sign a commitment to Australia, its democracy, laws and to defending the liberties important to the Australian way of life.

Let’s see how Australians respond to these proposed changes.