I can't believe Albanese stood next to this woman on that podium while she suggested the mass rolling back of freedom of speech and association in this country.
If those proposals were promoted by any other special interest, shit, if it was that Islamic envoy who was supposedly going to be this person's counterpart, Albanese would probably have cancelled the event.
As such this ones completely on this Labor Government. The envoy idea should have been a non-starter from the beginning. It was always a cynical attempt to control the direction of policy through unrepresentative means. The fact of Islamophobia being a much greater problem, and its inclusion seemingly an after-thought was so telling. The political trap Labor have led themselves into was ridiculously obvious, now they have given these extremist fringe views, (in the Australian context), the air of legitimacy. They have no doubt shifted the overton window in favour of a group who will never do Labor or Australia any favours. And the only reasoning i can summon is that we don't want to get too far out of line on policy position in this area to pur major ally USA. At some point, we'll have to draw a line, for my money, i think its better to push back early against US policy excrement than late.