Anthony Albanese admitted there were ‘good people’ who attended the anti-immigration rallies on the weekend, but he insisted Australians needed to remain ‘vigilant’ to the rise of far-right sentiment.
The Prime Minister was grilled on Monday about his views on the rallies that took place on Sunday in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as some regional cities, to protest the country’s record levels of immigration.
Afternoon Briefing host Patricia Karvelas asked Albanese if he thought there were ‘good people with legitimate concerns at these anti-immigration rallies’.
‘Of course, there’s always good people will turn up to demonstrate their views about particular issues,’ the PM responded.
‘But what we have here is neo-Nazis being given a platform. That’s what we saw on the weekend. And the tone of course of much of the rallies was – unfortunate is the best way that you could put it, but hateful in some of the extreme examples.
‘And the idea that an open neo-Nazi was able to give a speech from the steps of the Victorian Parliament is something that isn’t the Australian way.’
Karvelas continued to grill Albanese on his views about the sentiment behind the rallies, asking whether he believed it was based on a sense of ‘economic grievance’.
But the PM sought to talk down the size of the rallies, claiming ‘they weren’t big numbers in the scheme of things, in a nation of 27 million people, let’s be clear here’.
The Prime Minister was grilled on Monday about his views on the rallies that took place on Sunday in Sydney , Melbourne , Brisbane , Perth , Adelaide and Hobart, as well as some regional cities, to protest the country’s record levels of immigration
Afternoon Briefing host Patricia Karvelas asked Albanese if he thought there were ‘good people with legitimate concerns at these anti-immigration rallies’
He argued that only a ‘tiny proportion’ of Australians were concerned about levels of immigration, insisiting that it had ‘brought a great deal of benefit to our nation’.
‘With the exception of First Nations people, we are all either migrants or the descendants of migrants,’ he added.
‘This is an interview between someone called Karvelas and someone called Albanese, not Smith and Jones, or let alone First Nations names.’
He encouraged Australians to be ‘vigilant’ against growing resentment towards immigration and insisted his government was getting the numbers ‘down’.
The rallies have been widely condemned because of the presence of neo-Nazis.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the protests had been ‘hijacked by violent neo-Nazis spouting hate and racism’.
‘Extremism has no place in Australia,’ she said.
However, politicians including One Nation senator Pauline Hanson and Queensland MP Bob Katter joined marchers.
The ACT Senator, who described himself as a ‘first-generation migrant’, said that some of the slogans and flashes of violence at the protests in every major capital city on Sunday were ‘totally unacceptable’
It comes as Independent Senator David Pocock claimed that the rallies were an expression of a fear that Labor has ‘no plan’ to deal with immigration.
‘One of my frustrations has been that there is a real lack of appetite from the parliament to actually have a debate about this in a sensible way, and then come up with a plan when it comes to migration and population that actually wards off some of the feelings of “well, there is no plan”,’ Pocock told ABC TV on Monday morning.
‘I think there should be room for a sensible conversation amongst leaders so that, when people do raise these things, we can actually say, “yes, we have a plan that takes into account infrastructure, skills, and all these things”. But currently, there really isn’t one.’
