I gasped in disbelief when I heard our Prime Minster invoke his beloved mother, when blocking the return of family members of ISIS fighters to Australia this week.  He said: “My mother would have said, ‘If you make your bed, you lie in it’." And he doubled down the next day, saying of the 11 women and 23 children: “I have nothing but contempt for these people.”

I spent seven years of my life working for the Australian Labor Party and have mostly observed Anthony Albanese to be a forthright and compassionate man.

This kind of dog-whistling cruelty is not acceptable from him or from any Australian Prime Minster.

P&I founder John Menadue, who spent a cherished part of his career working with Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser to rid us of the last vestiges of the White Australia Policy, called out the PM’s behaviour immediately. Even my local daily, The Canberra Times, found Albanese’s statement distasteful.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Ben Saul explain today that blocking the return is in direct conflict with Australian and international law, writing: “Making these most vulnerable women and children the further victims of violence does not make Australia safer or more secure. It demonstrates a lack of compassion, responsibility and obligation to both security and human rights.”

All this comes after a dreadful few weeks for Muslim Australians, with many feeling unloved and unwelcome in their home country. Barely had they drawn breath after the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, than Pauline Hanson opened her mouth: “How can you tell me there are good Muslims?”

Even more shameful is the slurry of parliamentarians who danced around the issue and failed to condemn her words unequivocally.

Meanwhile, in my hometown of Canberra, hate-symbol laws are being tested. A small city pub, called Dissent, was closed and declared a crime scene after a complaint over satirical, anti-fascist posters. Three police officers attended, and were later joined by two others from no less than the Major Crimes Unit. The posters were removed. They were headed ‘The Turd Reich’ and included headshots of Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu in Nazi uniforms. Charges have not been laid, but the “investigation is ongoing”, police said. The maximum penalty for displaying a prohibited symbol is five years in jail.

It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

But onward and upward. This week, Andrew Fraser takes up the baton for an Australia Human Rights Act. This is an issue P&I, and many leading Australians, have campaigned on before to no avail. It seems to us that the time to revive this debate is now and more will follow. But in the meantime, I’m off to the Dissent pub for a schooner.

Until next time.