To be honest with you: I needed this. Today was pretty shitty – Bill Leak pissed out another one of his shitty cartoons, a poll got released saying that 49% of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration, and I spent all day copping abuse on twitter because I said that Bill Leak was a dickhead – but this takes the edge off a little bit.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts reared his Grand Moff Tarkin-esque head on ‘The Project‘ tonight to discuss that very same poll, and he sure came across like someone who had accidentally wandered onto the set of a panel show and just tried their best to make it up as they go along.
Fill-in host Hamish Macdonald wasted no time grilling the senator about One Nation’s completely ridiculous “swamped by Muslims” claim, which he wasted no time in not at all answering in any way:
Macdonald: I just wonder what you mean by swamped, how fast are the numbers increasing?Roberts: Our culture- I don’t know that, we’ve got an advisor who goes into all of that.Macdonald: You don’t know that but you think we’re being swamped.Roberts: Our culture is being swamped, is what we’re discussing.Macdonald: But you said we’re being swamped by Muslims, so I just want to know what the figures are, and you say you don’t know.Roberts: Sharia law.Macdonald: What about sharia law?Roberts: Look, we’re opposed to the, um – The Sharia law is a set of laws that Islamic people want to take in preference to us.Macdonald: But we don’t have sharia law here.
It does not get much better from there. Macdonald asks Roberts if he knows what the second-fastest growing religion in Australia is (after Christianity):
Roberts: No, I don’t.Macdonald: Don’t you think you ought to know before you start saying this sort of stuff in public?Roberts: No, I don’t think we need to know that, I think what we need to focus on is whether Islam is an ideology or a religion.
Roberts also takes some time to try and take a shot at the absent Waleed for “not condemning” Muslim extremist terrorism, which counts as like 5 squares on bigot bingo.
What a muppet. Watch it for yourself, if you’re inclined to have a laugh at a racist man’s expense:
We speak to @SenatorMRoberts about why 49% of Australians want Muslim immigration banned. #auspol #TheProjectTV https://t.co/s5AcoZcAie
— #TheProjectTV (@theprojecttv) September 21, 2016
Source and photo: Channel 10.
