The ASIO director-general has said that there is “absolutely no evidence” of a link between Australia’s refugee intake and terrorism: The Weekend Australian, May 27-28, 2017, p.1. This was a bit hard to swallow, and even The Australian said that the remarks were made “despite multiple Islamic terrorist acts in the past three years involving individuals on humanitarian visas, or their children.”
The debate exploded with the Attorney General defending the ASIO boss’s comments: The Australian, May 31, 2017, p. 1, saying that Middle East refugees are not the source of the terrorism problem. There is, he observed, many aspects to the Islamic terrorism problem, including the radicalisation of young people by terrorist organisations. True, but trivially true. This is really a superficial response to the issue, as other experts admitted that even if the actual refugees were not a terrorist risk, the sons and daughters of refugees were at danger of radicalisation: The Australian, June 1, 2017, p.1. Thus, it is true that merely being a refugee from the Middle East did not automatically make one a terrorist, but who has said that? No Australian authority has said that the children of refugees have radicalised solely because their parents were refugees, for clearly other cultural factors must be at work.