Australians lamenting the high cost of educating asylum seekers’ children

I have a pile of stories I want to post, just the run of the mill news about refugee problems around the world—you know the boring stuff.  I look on those stories now as a refreshing vacation of sorts from the daily diet of refugee/immigrant terrorist stories of late.   Here is one in my stack.

Children of the ever-growing tide of boat people arriving in Australia will cost the taxpayers $55 million over four years, here at the Herald Sun.

The Aussies say more kids are on board these boats, but from what I’ve seen most asylum seekers are young virile Muslim men.

But before I give you some of the story, something just occurred to me—at least in Australia they are having discussions on this topic. That’s just how it is in Canada too where it seems there is a daily dose of political back and forth IN THE MEDIA on the details of the problems and costs  those country’s face with their ever-expanding refugee and asylum systems.

In the US we aren’t even having a public discussion on the topic! 

When is the last time you saw an article in a major national publication outlining the cost of educating asylum-seeking children? 

How many of you even have a rough idea of how many asylum seekers are granted asylum (like the Tsarnaevs) in the US each year?

I follow the press from Canada and Australia and can assure you these discussions are happening at least weekly if not more frequently.  Here in the US the media must have decided such topics are verboten! Verboten!  Verboten!

Back to the news from Australia:

EDUCATING asylum seeker children will cost more than $55 million over four years amid a record number of minors arriving on boats.

The Opposition has accused the government of cutting university funding while spending millions on meeting the educational needs of asylum seeker children with more than 3000 arriving so far this financial year.

How refreshing is this—they even have an opposition immigration leader!

Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the the costs of educating children had to be met but he blamed the bill on a blow out in boat arrivals.

“While Julia Gillard is actually cutting funding to schools and universities, she is providing an education revolution for asylum seekers arriving on illegal boats,” he said.

“Labor’s budget blowout on asylum seekers of more than $10 billion, includes the federal government paying for the full education costs of students who have arrived by boat.

“Given the record number of children coming on boats, it is not surprising that these costs are so high.”

[....]

Meanwhile, the government revealed the arrival of two new asylum boats carrying 150 people yesterday.

More than 2300 people have arrived so far this month.

Here are some statistics for US asylum seekers granted asylum in 2011.

Of all the individuals granted asylum in 2011, 54 percent (13,484) were granted asylum affirmatively, while 46 percent (11,504) were granted asylum defensively.

An additional 9,550 individuals outside of the United States were approved for asylum status as immediate family members of principal applicants. [The Tsarnaev boys would have been in that number, whatever it was back in about 2002---ed]

So that amounts to close to 35,000 in one year.  Gee, wonder what that costs us to educate the kids?  And, those are just the ones granted asylum, what about those who are still in the pipeline waiting for approval or who have never identified themselves or been caught yet.

By the way ‘granted asylum affirmatively’ means they got here and asked for asylum, and ‘defensively’ means they got here illegally, got caught and are in removal proceedings and asking for asylum.

Update for comparison:  News from burning Stockholm reports that Sweden approved 44,000 asylum seekers in 2012!  Most are from Muslim countries. Yikes, no wonder they are suffering!   Imagine what those kids are costing the welfare nation.

In 2012 alone, Sweden accepted 44,000 asylum seekers, up by nearly 50 percent from a year earlier.

(Another) boatload of Muslims apprehended in Indonesia. Could the OIC be paying for the migration?

Levy:   Hijra is immigration designed to subvert and subdue non-Muslim societies and pave the way for eventual, total Islamization.

It occurred to me the other day, when we learned that a 26-year-old Rohingya Muslim who had been reportedly on the run for 11 years “scraped together $12,000″ to hire a trafficker to get him to Australia, to wonder where the heck does an indigent “refugee” get $12,000?   Most American 26-year-olds couldn’t “scrape” that amount of money together (except maybe as a drug dealer!).

Brave Monks oppose OIC in Burma. Do they know something we don’t know (or we won’t say!)?  Photo at Voice of America

Then I saw this story about one more illegal alien boatload of “refugees” being apprehended and it included Rohingya, Somalis and Iranians.  What might they have in common—they share the Religion of Peace!

What else might they have in common?  Perhaps a benefactor to gather them together, load them up and send them to Australia where they know they might get a “welcome” from a government (and a home with granny) in the process of destroying its demography and its sovereignty.

Could the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (based in Saudi Arabia) be funding al Hijra—the Islamic Doctrine of Immigration?  Just wondering!

Here is the story from Global Post late last week:

Indonesia’s navy detained 82 asylum seekers including scores of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar when their boat ran aground as they headed to Australia, an immigration official said Friday.

The 51 Rohingya, 24 Iranians and seven Somalis had been heading from Sulawesi island, in the east of the country, to East Nusa Tenggara, one of the closest Indonesian provinces to Australia, he said.

An increasing number of Rohingya, described by the UN as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, have been arriving in Indonesia as they flee Buddhist-Muslim violence which erupted in their home state of Rakhine last year.

“They were heading to Australia, as usual,” immigration official Muhammad Bakri told AFP.

The boat left from southwest Sulawesi but their boat ran aground nearby and they were picked up by a naval patrol, he said.

The migrants, including several children, were taken to the nearby city of Makassar where they were being registered and questioned by immigration officials.

Bakri said the Rohingya would be kept apart from other asylum seekers following an outbreak of violence at an immigration detention centre last week in which Rohingya killed eight Buddhists from Myanmar.

We told you about the killing of Buddhists here in four previous posts.

P.S.  I’ll be letting you know if US refugee contractors at this year’s State Department hearing aid the Hijra and ask for more Rohingya and Somalis to resettle in your cities as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and others did last year, here.

Australian elderly asked to take-in an asylum seeker!

This is not a joke!

The Australian government, completely consumed these days by the arrival of boat people (mostly young Muslim men arriving illegally on Australian shores or being apprehended at sea while approaching Australia) is now asking retired people to take them into their homes as household (or farm) help and as “companions.”

Remember the young Rohingya ‘asylum seeker’ we heard about here the other day.  The 26-year-old had been on the run for 11 years and had managed to “scrape together $12,000″ to hire a people smuggler.  Now, imagine him moving in with granny in order to help her run the vacuum and take out the trash!  Companionship? Maybe she could pick up a few words of his particular Bangladeshi dialect.

Australian granny to open her home to a refugee applicant, says she isn’t naive.  Photo: The Sunday Times

Here is the story from The Australian:

ASYLUM seekers will be used as live-in companions for retirees and to “help out” on farms across WA under a new homestay scheme starting next month and backed by the Immigration Department.

Live-Every West Australian with a spare room is being urged to sign up for the Homestay Helping Hand program, with hosts paid $50 a week for each asylum seeker in exchange for providing board and food.

Asylum seekers, in return, are urged to “help out around the home or farm”, “pick up the shopping”, or “provide company for someone who’s lonely”.

The scheme will be run by the Australian Homestay Network, which finds accommodation for asylum seekers after they are processed on Christmas Island and released by the Immigration Department on bridging visas while their refugee claims are assessed.

Executive chairman David Bycroft said placements would start within a month and it was a “chance for Australians to put their hand up and be part of the solution instead of complaining about the problem”.

Give people a chance, says 70-year-old volunteer:

“Some of my friends think I’m quite naive and I guess I have a little bit of trepidation because some people are quite anti-refugees and think that anyone who is sympathetic is a bit naive. I don’t agree with that. We should give people a chance.

Readers, there is a certain logic to this.  Rather than dumping all of the expense on the average Australian taxpayer, let the do-gooders open their homes and wallets.  I’ve advocated a form of this concept in the past myself.

Every “refugee” family coming to the US should be sponsored by a private organization whose job it would be to use charitable (privately-raised) funds to take care of their needs for at least a year and help them assimilate into our culture.  This would eliminate the federal contractor middlemen and brokers.  We would very quickly learn how many of the do-gooder class are really charitable when it comes to their own personal funds being expended for the grand social experiment.

Endnote:  A cool feature at wordpress tells me that hundreds of readers are arriving here at our blog from Australia—thanks for visiting!

If you are on twitter, follow me —  Ann C @refugeewatcher!

New Zealand an asylum magnet now; Amnesty International takes opportunity to tighten screws

Sri Lankan young male migrants aboard boat flying the flag of New Zealand: Let us in! Photo / Perth Sunday Times

The news from New Zealand this week is that a boatload of illegal aliens was found off the coast of Australia and its Sri Lankan “asylum seekers” on board held up a sign saying they wanted to go to New Zealand.  Now the new controversial agreement between the two countries will be tested (see our February post).

The Refugee Council of New Zealand says the policy will make New Zealand a magnet.  Kinda like Malta (or America for that matter) is a magnet (when a country doesn’t immediately send them back, it becomes a magnet).    Here is the story from The New Zealand Herald:

The arrival in Australia of a fishing boat, overcrowded with suspected asylum seekers appearing to have been headed for New Zealand, is the result of a deal formed between the two countries, says a refugee expert.

New Zealand has become “a magnet” for asylum seekers since an agreement was formed between the two countries earlier this year, said Refugee Council of New Zealand spokesman Gary Poole, who was critical of the agreement.

The boat believed to have travelled from Sri Lanka with 66 passengers holding a sign saying “We want to go to New Zealand” was spotted off the coast of Geraldton, about 400km north of Perth in Western Australia yesterday.

In February, Prime Minister John Key and his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard announced a deal in which New Zealand would accept 150 Australian-approved refugees each year.

It was at no extra cost to New Zealand, because the 150 will come out of New Zealand’s existing annual 750 refugee quota and would give access to Australian intelligence and other resources to disrupt and intercept people-smuggling, Mr Key said at the time.

However, Mr Poole said the arrival of the boat in Australia reflected Mr Key’s “bad decision” to enter the agreement, which he said was attracting more asylum seekers to this part of the world. [This Poole fellow sounds pretty sensible for someone in the refugee business---ed]

“This is precisely what we predicted. Unfortunately what our Government has done is they’ve actually fed into the whole problem in Australia.”

No boat has ever made it to New Zealand and it was unlikely to because of “treacherous” conditions in the Tasman Sea.

“But what it’s done, it’s now acting as a magnet, the particular policy, because he’s now accepting 150 out of their camps. We’ve become part of Australia’s problem,” said Mr Poole.

New Zealand only takes 750 “refugees” a year, and has said that 150 they will take from Australia is included in the 750.  Did you notice that the Rohingya in my previous post have their sites set on New Zealand?  The word spreads fast among the asylum-seeker enablers and coaches (the NGOs!).

Frankly, there is no end to this—once a Western country becomes “welcoming” the word is out and one day the illegal migrants trying to escape the hell-holes of their own countries (often Muslim ones!) will sink Western civilization.

Amnesty International New Zealand, taking advantage of the situation with the boatload of migrants from Sri Lanka, says New Zealand must take more!

Up until now New Zealand has capped its generosity at 750 refugees, but that won’t last for long because we also see this week that Amnesty International is tightening the screws on them.

Here is the report from News 3 New Zealand.  LOL!  How do you like that barbed wire photo to illustrate the story? Let the bullying for more refugees begin:

Amnesty International says New Zealand needs to up the number of asylum seekers it takes in each year, following the arrival of a boatload of Sri Lankans in Western Australia.

[....]

New Zealand’s annual refugee quota is 750, which from next year includes up to 150 who arrive in Australia by boat. Mr Bayldon (Amnesty New Zealand) says this is “tiny” compared to Australia’s 20,000, and New Zealand should be taking in more.

For new readers:  We don’t have a category on New Zealand (yet), but you can find a catalog of Australia’s problems with illegal immigration, here, in our Australia category (95 posts).

Rohingya Muslims: Australia’s next big problem (and our’s too!)

They say they are trying to get to Australia, the US or Canada, even New Zealand—where they believe they will be “welcomed.”   (Sounds like they have already learned the refugee industry lingo!)

Tell me, when you read this story, does this ring true—how does a poor and downtrodden 26-year-old man (who has been on the run for 11 years already) “scrape together $12,000″ to hire a people smuggler?   Something is fishy here—who is paying the advance guard?  Could it be the Saudi Arabia-based OIC? (See yesterday’s post).  

Buddhist monks stand up to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation last October. Want to keep it out of Burma! Reuters photo

Here is the story from The Australian:

TWO years ago the Indonesian office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had fewer than 50 Rohingya asylum-seekers on its books. Today there are more than 800, and nearly all are trying to get to Australia.

“Some of my friends have gone to Australia already and after two or three years they get citizenship,” Feazel Ali tells The Australian. “Finally they can live in peace.”

Ali left Myanmar in 1994 and lived in Malaysia for 13 years before he, his wife and five children took a boat to Sumatra two months ago, hoping somehow to get a passage to Australia.

“Australians have pity for refugees, but actually anywhere that wants to accept us, I wouldn’t mind,” he says.

“I want to work. I want my children to have a high school education.”

Like many other asylum-seekers, he clings to the illusion that Australians would welcome his family, if only they knew his people’s plight. The reality is, as refugee officials say privately, no government wants the Rohingya, who are commonly described as among the most persecuted people in the world.   [The media doesn't tell you that it isn't because they are poor, it's because they have a history of violence and connections to Islamic terror groups, aside from the fact that many believe they are simply illegal aliens who went Burma from Bangladesh initially.---ed]

Most of the dark-skinned Shia Muslim asylum-seekers who have reached Indonesiaare in immigration detention at Belawan, North Sumatra, or under UNHCR care in the community in nearby Medan.

Elsewhere in Indonesia they barely attracted notice until March 5, when men in the Belawan centre turned on 11 Burmese Buddhist fishermen and murdered eight of them.

The victims had been arrested for fishing illegally off Aceh last July and were vastly outnumbered by more than 100 Rohingyas.  [This is not helping the Rohingya image being crafted by the NGOs!---ed]

Festering camps:

Refused citizenship in their western Burma homeland, Rohingyas have long posed a huge refugee challenge to Bangladesh and Thailand, where more than 400,000 people live in festering border camps.

[.....]

At least 130 Rohingyas have been detained in the past eight days trying to get to Australia – 95 of them in two boats that were also carrying Bangladeshis, Iranians and Iraqis.

Refugee officials say almost all the Rohingyas interviewed in Indonesia are trying to get to Australia, though most would be happy with a visa for Canada, the US or New Zealand – other countries they believe would be welcoming.

Mark my words!  Rohingya will be the next Somalis coming to a town near you!

For more, visit our Rohingya Reports category where we have been archiving stories on the growing Rohingya problem for the last five years.  We have 140 previous posts on the festering issue and the media campaign to soften-up the West to “welcome” Rohingya.

Australia (again!) Sudanese refugee gets 14 years for murdering fellow refugee

…and it’s all a big waste when these refugees spend their days in Australia getting drunk, says Judge.

Here is the story from NineNews :

Justice Betty King: African refugees wasting their lives drinking and committing crimes. Herald Sun photo.

Justice Betty King says there have been numerous examples of African refugees coming before the courts for offences linked to excessive consumption of alcohol.

She says many young Africans appear to be spending their days drinking because they have nothing to do and are seemingly dispossessed.

Justice King said Boronika Gam Hothnyang, 25, not only wasted the life of William Awu when she stabbed him to death but also wasted her own life.

Both Hothnyang and Mr Awu, 26, had fled war-torn Sudan hoping for a better life in Australia.

Hothnyang stabbed Mr Awu, who was her friend, once in the chest as he sat passed out in a chair at her Dandenong home. [LOL! Australia has very strict gun laws, but knives are readily available---ed]

Justice King described the crime as inexplicable, but noted Mr Awu, a talented drawer, had earlier sketched Hothnyang in a caricature in which she was overweight.

The judge said the murder was a tragic waste of life that was all too common.

“It is a disturbing matter to note that you and the persons with whom you were gathered, including the deceased, are not the first, second, third or even fourth of similar groups of Sudanese or other African refugees that have come before the courts on serious charges which can be directly linked to the consumption of large quantities of alcohol,” Justice King said.

“All of this is such a sad reflection on our society that we have groups of seemingly dispossessed men and women who have been brought here as refugees with little or nothing to do except drink their days away.”

As is to be expected, NO mention of where they get the money to get drunk while they are doing nothing—-the Australian taxpayer.   And, for their welcoming deed  in this woman’s case, the murderer has three kids that will surely now be taken care of by—you guessed it!—the Australian taxpayer as she does time in the slammer.

For more on the problems Australia is having with refugees, asylum seekers and illegal aliens visit our Australia category with its 93 previous posts.

Boatloads arrive in Australia too; Iranians top the list at the moment

I just old you about Malta and Italy where boatloads of Africans are arriving looking for the good life, and as regular readers know, Australia too is being swamped.  In fact, to read Australian media accounts it seems illegal immigration (aka seeking asylum in politically-correct lingo) is the biggest political issue the government there faces.

So why do I bring you news from Canada, Malta (Europe), and Australia?  Because frankly I believe this migration of the third world to the first is the biggest threat Western Civilization faces, yes Islamic supremacism is right up there, but would not be so challenging if it weren’t for the tide of migrants swamping the West—many are Muslims, but many are poor and uneducated in need of jobs we don’t have and social services we can’t afford.

Sri Lankans aboard the ship of fortune.  AFP PHOTO / AMAN ROCHMAN

I have a lot of news on Australia today.  Here is the first story about who is going there.  From the Herald Sun:

THREE south Asian countries are surfacing on people smugglers’ manifolds this year as the changing face of asylum seekers is revealed in new figures.

More Vietnamese and Burmese people are braving the perilous sea journey to Australia than ever before and nearly 250 people have arrived from Bangladesh this year – the first time the country has appeared in official statistics. [Remember they are talking about 2013 numbers and the year is still young---ed]

The change comes as Iranians become the leading group of asylum seeker arrivals and the massive numbers of Sri Lankan seen last year shrink dramatically.

It’s the first time since the statistics were kept that Iranians have held the position, with arrivals from war-torn Afghanistan the largest group in each year from 2011 back to 2008.

Iranians have made up nearly double the numbers from Afghanistan, who are the second largest group, at 563 arrivals.About 430 people have told authorities they are stateless, making up the third biggest group.

Three hundred and twenty people were Pakistani and 147 from Iraq.

But the fifth largest cohort this year – the 244 people who have arrived from Bangladesh – have not before appeared on official counts.

It comes as more people from Vietnam and Burma risk the dangerous sea journey to claim asylum, at 133 and 93 people respectively.  [I'm surprised to see the Vietnamese numbers---ed]

Bangladeshis are probably Rohingya Muslims:

Head West young man (or is that East!) Rohingya boarding boats at their first opportunity

He [refugee advocate] said the displaced Rohingya moved into Malaysia then Indonesia, where they got boats.

But they were also pushed into neighbouring Bangladesh, he said.”My suspicion is that it (Bangladeshi arrivals) has been as a consequence of the Rohingya people getting out and some Bangladeshi are able to find a way to get from Bangladesh to Australia now,” he said.   [Many believe the Rohingya are ethnically Bengali in the first place.---ed]

That ship of fortune! 

The above Herald Sun article provides a link to a story from last year in which we learn what the Gillard government is offering some asylum seekers.  All aboard!

WASHING machines, microwave ovens, DVDs and plasma TVs are among a 60-item welcome gift pack for asylum seekers offered rent-free homes in the community.

To fulfil a promise to move an influx of families out of detention, the Gillard Government is now fitting out each home with up to $10,000 worth of furnishings and electronics.

They are given food hampers upon arrival at rented homes where they wait for their claims to be processed.

Is it any wonder then that a new political party is rising in Australia, here.

Ahhhh! Australia housing asylum seekers on college campuses, students didn’t know….

….until a female student was allegedly assaulted when a Sri Lankan young man entered her dorm room in the middle of the night.

There are lots of news stories from Sydney about the incident that at first was not blamed on one of the illegal alien boat people Australia is swamped with.

Here is an early account from ABC Australia on the 26th of February:

Macquarie University where asylum seekers were being housed while their asylum claims were being processed. Photo credit: ABC

There are claims security guards at a university accommodation campus failed to call police after a 20-year-old female was allegedly sexually assaulted last week.

Triple j’s Hack can also reveal that students are concerned the alleged perpetrator was an asylum seeker who was living at the accommodation, but that is yet to be proven.

The alleged attack happened at a Macquarie University student accommodation centre in Sydney.

[.....]

It is only since this incident that hundreds of residents at the village learned there were 80 asylum seekers living among them.

This was an arrangement struck between the Red Cross and Campus Living Villages, the company running the Macquarie Student Village.

Students at the village say they believe most of the asylum seekers are Sri Lankan men.

No-one connected to this incident has confirmed the alleged perpetrator was one of the asylum seekers but the alleged victim and lots of campus residents are suspicious.

Yup!  An asylum seeker was arrested and demands soon followed that the program of granting “bridging visas” be halted.

From the Newcastle Herald on February 27th:

Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has called for an immediate freeze on the provision of bridging visas for asylum seekers, after it was revealed a man released into the community on a bridging visa had been charged with indecent assault.

Mr Morrison said that a review was needed into the guidelines for how boat arrivals were released into the community.

He said that such a review must detail a “requirement” to notify police and neighbouring residents about people on bridging visas or community detention in their area and the establishment of “behaviour protocols … with clear negative sanctions for breaches of such protocols”.

Mr Morrison also called on Labor to suspend the further release of boat arrivals into the community on bridging visas and community detention, “in all other than exceptional circumstances”, while the review was under way.

He said the freeze should not be lifted until Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor and his department could give the community a “clear guarantee” that there were safeguards in place.

His comments come in the wake of the arrest of a 21-year-old Sri Lankan asylum seeker, charged with indecently assaulting a student at Macquarie University last week.

Then here is the latest—this is fast—from The Australian on February 28th (LOL! tomorrow):  Contract dumped!

A PRIVATE company that billeted dozens of asylum-seekers in student accommodation at two Sydney universities has terminated its contract with the Red Cross in the wake of an alleged sexual assault on a female student.

Campus Living Villages, a wholly owned subsidiary of infrastructure giant Transfield Holdings, had been providing temporary accommodation for the refugees on campus at Macquarie University and the University of Western Sydney.

This is crazy, I wonder whose bright idea it was to put young illegal alien men on college campuses?

And, by the way, I have other news about Sri Lankan boat people in an update from Canada—some are Tamil Tigers—tomorrow.

An afterthought:  This is our 92nd post on Australia’s immigration/refugee problems, check it out here.

Australia again! Immigration the Trojan Horse for Jihadists

Since we talked about Australia yesterday, and about a new political party which seeks a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, here, below are a couple of more bits of news from Down Under.

First see Ezra Levant and the Arab Underground  interview with Jonathan Halevi showing clips of Australian “radical Muslims” (Islamists) talking about spreading Islam through immigration.  (Hat tip: The Muslim Issue)

Then, see this report, about how much the taxpayers of Australia are paying to give “refugee” status to the illegal alien Muslims arriving on their shores.

The Australian immigration budget has increased by $1.3 billion over four years, as the government prepares to expand the humanitarian visa program to 20,000 each year.

A Senate estimates hearing on Monday was told the Immigration Department’s budget for humanitarian arrivals will rise by $150 million this year alone, accounting for about $24,000 for each person resettled in Australia under the expanded humanitarian program.

You can bet the Islamists are laughing their heads off at dumb infidels!   They are getting paid to invade!

Time to nag!  Don’t forget—read about Al-Hijra, the Islamic Doctrine of Immigration!

“Rise up Australia” political party launched

I guess these folks in Australia didn’t have their indoctrination trip to Turkey yet!

By the way, for any of you hankering to move to Australia, don’t rush.  They have been having a massive influx of Muslim “refugees” and “asylum seekers” in recent years inspiring much political turmoil (see our category on Australia, here, with 89 previous posts).

However, Aussies, including this Sri Lankan man leading the new party, don’t seem to have been as intimidated by the PC Speech Police as have most Americans!  (nor have the journalists reporting the story!).

Here is the story from World News Australia:

A Sri Lankan migrant has launched a political party that runs on an anti-multiculturalism platform.

Rise Up Australia already boasts about 1,500 members and plans to run 65 candidates in the upcoming federal election.

“Rise Up Australia Party, which is committed to keeping Australia for Australians, is utterly and completely opposed to multiculturalism,” says Rise Up Australia’s founder Daniel Nalliah.

The Sri Lankan-born pastor draws on his own migrant past in defence of assimilation.

His message has the backing of international figures. “If you come here, then follow Pastor Danny’s example and enjoy it and celebrate it and do not seek to destroy it,” says Christopher Monckton from the UK Independence Party.

The leader of the new party has come under fire in the past for anti-Islamic comments, but he wasn’t backing away from making controversial statements again today.

“True Muslims are radicals, unfortunately. If they practice the Koran, they’re radicals,” he said.

If elected, Rise Up wants to restrict the number of Muslims calling Australia ‘home’.

The party has 1,500 supporters across the country, and is putting forward 52 candidates in the Lower House and a dozen in the Senate in the upcoming federal election.

Many of the supporters are concerned about what they claim is the “Islamification of Australia”.

“If we’re not careful, we’re going to lose this country,” said a supporter. “I don’t want to see Sharia Law in Australia,” said another.