You might know him as the man who threatened to kill Johnny Depp‘s dogs, who turns the colour of a ripe tomato at the slightest provocation, or you might know him as the leader of the National Party – it’s the Akubra wearing, R.M. Williams scuffin’ Barnaby Joyce.
Joyce has made a surprising condemnation of One Nation‘s policies, being one of the first in the Coalition to specifically attack Pauline Hanson instead of either laughingly dismissing her or saying some platitudes about intending to work with her.
Himself an avowed Catholic, old mate Barbs took objection on Sky News to Hanson’s genuinely insane suggestions that we install CCTV cameras inside mosques:
“If you put them in mosques, then when I go to mass are we going to have one in a Catholic church? You never know. Every group has their ratbags, even Catholics.“We had, in the past, the IRA, but if someone said every Catholic is a member of the IRA I would say ‘no we’re not’. They’re lunatics, crazy criminals who want to kill people who have nothing to do with the religion I practise.“In Islam at the moment, they have also got a lunatic fringe. You can’t go through every person of the Islamic faith and say they are all just like them.”
He was similarly not stoked on her (and Sonia Kruger‘s) plan to ban Muslim immigration:
“Why? Because of a person’s religion? What happens when you turn that on its head and you start banning people because they are Catholics or because they are Protestants or because they Jewish?“I’m not into banning people on the premise of their belief. How they see their god is completely and utterly their own personal reason. It’s up to them how they practise their religion.”
While this might be a little self-serving in the interests of protecting his own religious freedom, it’s honestly just really nice to see someone on the right reject the horrible anti-Islam fear mongering being preached by a lot of people.
Please don’t threaten anymore dogs.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images / Stefan Postles, Bradley Kanaris.
