ASIO tells Abbott to zip it

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From The Australian:

ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis has phoned Coalition poli­ticians to urge them to use the soothing language favoured by Malcolm Turnbull in their public discussion of Islam.

In what is thought to be an unprecedented intervention in politics by a head of the spy agency, Mr Lewis is said to have told the MPs that their more robust comments risked becoming a danger to national security. It is believed the Office of the Prime Minister has been involved in arranging for these phone calls to take place.

A number of Liberals are angry at what they see as an improper ­intervention by the ASIO head into legitimate political issues.

A newspaper interview with Mr Lewis that appeared in News Corp newspapers on Sunday was widely seen as a slap down of ­former prime minister Tony ­Abbott. The interview took place on Thursday last week, a day after an opinion piece by Mr Abbott ­appeared in The Daily Telegraph,in which he argued that Islam as a religion was in need of reform.

…In The Sunday Telegraph interview, Mr Lewis said that Muslim-baiting rhetoric could fuel a dangerous backlash against Muslims that would make it harder for ASIO to do its work.

This is not a question of ‘going soft’ on terrorism or ‘political correctness’. It is a question over whether you want to fight a ‘smart war’ or a ‘dumb war’. If the ISIS strategy is to recruit followers by dividing Muslims from their various Western nations then you can either counter and outflank that or exacerbate it.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.