SYDNEY: Australia should throw open its doors to immigrants to make the country more competitive, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday, in contrast to his backing for the new government’s tough policy on asylum seekers.
Murdoch said the diversity created by immigration, and the ties it brings with other nations, particularly in Asia, would help give Australia a leg-up as it seeks trade relationships.
“Australia is on its way to becoming what may be the world’s most diverse nation,” Murdoch, head of News Corp, said in a speech to the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney. “This is an incredible political advantage.”
Murdoch contrasted Australia with the United States, which he said was being “racked by self-defeating debate over immigration policy.”
The steady flow of refugee boats is a hot political issue in Australia, polarising voters, while stoking tension with neighbors like Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The new conservative Liberal-led coalition government came to power partly on the back of a tough campaign against asylum seekers, following a relaxation of border policies by the former Labor government that resulted in a rise in the number of boats. But its hard-line border security policies have been criticized by the United Nations.
News Corp’s media outlets in Australia were staunch supporters of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with his best-selling Daily Telegraph tabloid urging readers to “Kick This Mob Out” over a photo of former Labor leader Kevin Rudd. Murdoch’s support for immigration did come with a caveat. Newcomers, he said, should abide by Australia’s values, institutions and way of life.
“There is still a strand among some parts of Australian society who seem to value every culture except our own,” he said. Revelations about phone-hacking engulfed News Corp. during the summer of 2011, forcing Murdoch to close the 168-year-old News of the World.
Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s former British newspaper chief, and others went on trial in London this week accused of conspiring to illegally access voice-mail messages on mobile phones. News of the World ex-chief correspondent Neville Thurlbeck, former assistant news editor James Weatherup, and ex-news editor Greg Miskiw pleaded guilty to conspiracy to intercept communications at earlier hearings.
Murdoch backs Australian immigration
Murdoch backs Australian immigration
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
- Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
