"The response from various spokespeople of the Islamic faith was one of vigorous head-shaking, more in sorrow than anger. Nail Aykan, executive director of the Islamic Council of Victoria had to "look twice, thinking 'is this real?'" Then came the dismissive judgment: "The quote that you can never underestimate the predictability of stupidity, it came to my mind. But this is a new low."

The writer shows ignorance: Former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Haset Sali said he agreed with Senator Hanson that the burka should be banned in Australia, and that it is a Bedouin hangover that has been blamed on Islam; that the Koran makes it very clear that there is no need for anyone to wear it if they are to be a good Muslim; that AG Brandis (who showed his utter ignorance by stating that it is a religious garment) was just grandstanding. (See today's The Australian).

Sali said the above on ABC's Sunshine Coast Facebook -- of all places -- but the story was not picked up on the biased ABC's website.

Dear Armchair critic,

I read your post with great interest.

Perhaps you need to get out more and take a look
at today's Australia. This is the 21st Century
not the 1950s. Today we have people who have
come and settled in Australia from a wide range
of nationalities, races, religions, and cultures.
Today we have an unmistakably new heterogeneous
face compared to what existed decades ago.

At present our country is one of the most ethnically
diverse societies in the world. And whether you like
it or not that's what Australia is. Today - we have a
variety of names - but that does not make us any less
Australian than you Sir. All I can say to you is -
Take a cup of tea, an aspirin, and have a good lie
down. This nation may have been built on a cup of tea,
a Bex, and a good lie down, but it was brought into
the 2ist Century by the blood sweat and tears of many
other Australians - whose names were not Smith or Jones.

So blow it out of your proverbial rear mate!

No Foxy the country was built by the Anglo Celtics.
A Dutch engineer here on a visit who had just been on a trip to many
parts of Australia, said in response to someone who said we are all
very lazy;
"No, Australians must be very hard workers, how else could they have
built a country like this in just two hundred years ?"

What has been done in the last comparatively few years is just the icing on the cake.

I’d just like to support Binoy Kampmark’s assessment of the Hanson phenomenon as it relates to her Senate stunt with a burqa last week.

Hanson always scores well with the slogan crowd, so I’ll just add mine: Brandis good, Hanson bad.

For a fuller reasoning on why this is so, here’s a piece I wrote about the incident, on my blog last week:

https://8degreesoflatitude.com/2017/08/18/paulines-peek-a-boo/

Hey Foxy,
Yeah, well you are not the child of ANZAC's but you get a free holiday every year despite insulting the memory of what they fought for.
They sure as hell weren't fighting beside Muslims, they were fighting against them.

Think whatever you want, I've seen your ugly southern cities.
15 mins off the plane and into a Sydney train full of Chinese and Pakistani's and barely an Aussie to be seen amongst them.
Your southern cities are run down and ill mantained dumps.

I don't think the people in Sydney are aware of rendering yet, your houses are ugly too.

And you southern city folk think that you can set the agenda based on the fact you've already ruined your own cities, and then you all want to come up here and push the price of housing up because you don't want to live down there anymore.

You use the issue of what you've done ruining your own cities as justification to ruin the rest of the country...
And that everyone else is racist because they wont just bend over and take it without complaining.

Like I said we're not overrun up here, and we're not held ransom by overseas gategrashers.. yet.
I'm sure you'll get your way eventually though.

If I was able to blow your comment out my rear end btw, I most certainly would.

Foxy,

"Today we have an unmistakably new heterogeneous
face compared to what existed decades ago'

and an imported ideology, Islam, that we do not need and one which will eventually destroy our country if we do not stop it.

Hanson pulled a stunt, a stunt that momentarily had fear on the faces of some Parliamentarians and which caused George Brandis to shew his utter ignorance of Islam.