Thread by @Vic_Rollison

Rather than congratulating Morrison’s PR skills for finding nice words to respond to NZ terrorist attack, how about journos look deeper than a puddle and analyse how Morrison’s Liberals have over years contributed to hateful culture which led to the tragedy? A thread👇🏻

It is as if every time the PM speaks, his past behaviour is wiped clean. There is no context given, each statement stands alone and has no prior history. This is such amateurish journalism.

Here is some context that might be useful to include in analysis of Morrison’s statements about attacks:
👉🏻Morrison encouraged Liberal shadow cabinet to stoke fears of Muslim immigration. He is denying it now, but he didn’t deny it at the time.

👉🏻Morrison was Immigration Minister when Abbott’s ‘stop the boats’ policy was enacted, which at its heart was a dog whistle message warning Australia was being swamped by asylum seekers. ‘Asylum seeker’ and ‘Muslim’ is basically interchangeable in this dog whistle strategy.

👉🏻It is not like journalists don’t know Morrison does this - we’ve been told since the Medivac bill that Morrison is smart to use anti-asylum seeker sentiment (that he helped create) to make the issue an election winner for Liberals. Hate wins votes we’re told!

👉🏻Dutton and Cormann led the charge in claiming refugees (mostly Muslim) would be stealing Australian’s places in hospitals and housing because Labor supported Medevac bill. This is hatred of refugees as code for fear and hatred of Muslims.

👉🏻Morrison and Victorian Liberals have stoked hatred of African immigrants (also often code for Muslim immigrants) in concert with News Corp. This culminated in a white supremacist rally at St Kilda where Nazis cheered Fraser Anning and Blair Cottrell for their hate leadership.

👉🏻When Bourke St attack happened, Morrison held a press conference at the site, trying to make political hay by calling on Muslim leaders to solve the terrorism problem in their community. He tried to make it a Muslim problem, blaming everyone of Muslim faith.

👉🏻This is the same Liberal National coalition who voted ‘its OK to be white’ (similar sentiments in NZ terrorists’ manifesto). This is the same Liberals who have courted Pauline Hanson for years, happily taking the vote of an openly racist and Islamophobic extremist.

👉🏻Just recently, Liberal Minister Coleman overrode his department’s decision to ban Milo’s visa after right wing media shock jocks encouraged him to. Milo is openly Islamophobic. The ban has now been put back in place - a cynical act of rewriting history. Where is he apology?

All of this context should not be wiped clean because the PM has suddenly realised his anti-immigration anti-Muslim past is now a political problem for him. It is journos’ jobs to use history as context for the present. Don’t let Morrison rewrite history. End.