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The former prime minister John Howard has warned political parties against banning migration from certain countries as the debate over Australia’s immigration settings continues.
The 87-year-old was in Canberra last night for an hour-long chat with Australian National University national security professor Rory Medcalf before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
But I think the mood is overwhelming that we have to try very hard to stop terrorism creeping in under the cover of immigration, and you can’t do it by just stopping immigration, and it’s very hard to do it by stopping categories of immigration.
When some people say you stop it by saying ‘we won’t take migrants from any country that has got a reputation for terrorism’, well, it might be a lot more limiting than those people imagine.
