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Australia Lawmaker Calls Opposition Leader Racist over Opposition to Gaza Refugees

Palestinians react as they wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis as conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in the northern Gaza Strip August 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians react as they wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis as conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in the northern Gaza Strip August 14, 2024. (Reuters)
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Australia Lawmaker Calls Opposition Leader Racist over Opposition to Gaza Refugees

Palestinians react as they wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis as conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in the northern Gaza Strip August 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians react as they wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis as conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in the northern Gaza Strip August 14, 2024. (Reuters)

The leader of Australia's main opposition party was told to "stop being racist" by another parliamentarian during a heated discussion on Thursday in which he said that Australia should not take in any refugees from Gaza.

Independent parliamentarian Zali Steggall made the remarks during a speech criticizing center-right Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton for his call this week to bar refugees from Gaza due to the risk they could be Hamas sympathizers.

Interrupted several times by shouts from the opposition benches, Steggall asked to be heard in silence before shouting "stop being racist" towards Dutton.

"These are families that you are seeking to paint that somehow they are all terrorists, that they should all be mistrusted and they are not worthy of humanitarian aid," she said before pausing as Dutton interjected.

"We heard you in silence, you can hear me in silence, stop being racist," she then said.

A representative for Steggall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tensions flared in parliament again shortly afterwards when Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young interrupted a media conference by opposition National Party parliamentarian David Littleproud in which he was defending Dutton's position on Gaza refugees to say: "why don't you say something about the children being slaughtered."

The heated discussions in parliament mirrors how disagreements over Israel's war in Gaza are spilling into society, where the ruling Labor party is caught between those calling for unreserved support for Israel while many others, including Australian Muslims, want a harder line against Israel.

Australia has repeatedly called for a ceasefire but stopped short of recognizing a Palestinian state like Spain, Ireland and Norway.

Dutton reiterated his position again on Thursday, saying the government had brought people to Australia from a war zone without proper checks.

"I'm sure the vast majority of these people are just innocent people fleeing a war zone but our country's best interest is served when we know who is coming here and when we have a proper process to exclude those who are sympathizers of a listed terrorist organization," he said, in a reference to Hamas.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday all visa applicants were screened by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.

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South Korea’s Yoon Seeks Dialogue, Path to Unification with Isolated Pyongyang

South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol speaks during the celebration of the 79th National Liberation Day at Sejong Center of the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea, 15 August 2024. (EPA)
South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol speaks during the celebration of the 79th National Liberation Day at Sejong Center of the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea, 15 August 2024. (EPA)
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South Korea’s Yoon Seeks Dialogue, Path to Unification with Isolated Pyongyang

South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol speaks during the celebration of the 79th National Liberation Day at Sejong Center of the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea, 15 August 2024. (EPA)
South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol speaks during the celebration of the 79th National Liberation Day at Sejong Center of the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea, 15 August 2024. (EPA)

South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol offered on Thursday to establish a working-level consultative body with North Korea to discuss ways to ease tension and resume economic cooperation, as he laid out his vision on unification of the neighbors.

In a National Liberation Day speech marking the 79th anniversary of independence from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule after World War Two, Yoon said he was ready to begin political and economic cooperation if North Korea "takes just one step" toward denuclearization.

Yoon used the speech as a chance to unveil a blueprint for unification and make a fresh outreach to Pyongyang, following his government's recent offer to provide relief supplies for flood damage in the isolated North which he said had been rejected.

But a unified Korea appears a distant prospect to most people on both sides of the border. Relations between the neighbors have been at their lowest in decades as the North races to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities and takes steps to cut ties with the South, redefining it as a separate, hostile enemy state.

At the start of the year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called South Korea a "primary foe" and said unification was no longer possible.

Yoon said launching the "inter-Korean working group" could help relieve tensions and handle any issues ranging from economic cooperation to people-to-people exchanges to reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

"We will begin political and economic cooperation the moment North Korea takes just one step toward denuclearisation," he said at a ceremony in Seoul.

"Dialogue and cooperation can bring about substantive progress in inter-Korean relations."

The speech came amid a dispute with opposition lawmakers over Yoon's appointment of what they view as a pro-Japan, revisionist former professor to oversee a national independence museum, another sign of political polarisation and divided opinions over Yoon's efforts to ramp up security ties with Tokyo.

Major independence movement groups which had for decades co-hosted the annual National Liberation Day events with the government held a separate ceremony for the first time in protest over the professor, joined by opposition lawmakers.

Yoon's office has said there are "misunderstandings" about the appointment, and was seeking ways to resolve them.

Yoon, in the speech, also raised the idea of a plan to launch an international conference on North Korea's human rights and a fund to promote global awareness on the issue, support activist groups, and expand North Korean residents' access to outside information.

"It is important to help awaken the people of North Korea to the value of freedom," he said, calling for freedoms in the South to be extended to "the frozen kingdom of the North."

"If more North Koreans come to recognize that unification through freedom is the only way to improve their lives and are convinced that a unified Republic of Korea will embrace them, they will become strong, friendly forces for a freedom-based unification."