I wish other world leaders had that guys Balls. Basically its live by our rules or get the FCUK out.

About damn time - sure wish they would have done this before the spate of Muslim-on-Aussie rapes that were happening all the time last year.

I would love to live there. Besides the gun laws they seem like a good bunch of folks.

Our way or the highway - cool.

It appears the ROP has found the level of resistance increasing today.

Quoted: Australia's Muslims told to fit in or get out Sydney | February 23, 2006 6:15:06 PM IST Some Australian Muslims have argued that their religion takes precedence over their nationality and that they were duty bound to work for the overthrow of the secular state.

Just wanted to emphasize this sentence....  That would never happen here, would it?

Nice to finally see this said by someone in a position of authority.
It would be really nice if our own leaders would be so bold.
What a concept.....dont like it here...leave.
One would think it would be easy enough to stick to, but then again the majority of the ruling class are left leaning appologists with no spine, so I suppose we get what we have.

Shame the gun laws down there werent comparable to what I need to sustain my happieness.
I would enjoy living in a place where the leadership isnt afraid to call the problem what it acutally is instead of the joke line about 'religion of peace'. Good for Australia. Now they just need to deal with the fallout from the statement.....hope they have the balls to back up the words with real action, because you know the muslim extremists are going to have something to say about this.

Costello said the rights and responsibilities of citizenship were not negotiable but absolute.

I guess the right to self defense doesnt apply here?

"The place of Muslims in Australian society has been a hot topic since the country's worst race riots in December where a mob of 5,000 white Australians on Sydney's Cronulla beach chased and beat up anyone who looked like an Arab."

Good for them.

now all we need ot do is get those gunlaws killed off down there and I can move down

Finally a politician grew a pair and said the obvious to these hypocritical savages.
What he said is so fundamental to western civilization and democratic rule that I can’t fathom why no one else has done this. Western Civilization, love it or leave!
Well said mate.
Rich V

Sounds about right...
Remember to old shirt from the 70's..."America Love it or Leave it"
Wish our leaders would make a statement like that guy.

Quoted: I would love to live there. Besides the gun laws they seem like a good bunch of folks.

Except for the fact that everything there is posionous and wants to kill you  

Quoted: Quoted: I would love to live there. Besides the gun laws they seem like a good bunch of folks. Except for the fact that everything there is posionous and wants to kill you

Damn!  I'd momentarily forgotten about that.  It is true that something like, I dunno, 819 of the 820 deadliest fanged creatures in the world live in Australia and each and every one of them has developed a taste for human flesh!

Quoted: A senior leader of Australia's ruling Liberal Party Thursday said Muslim immigrants must accept the country's cultural values or leave. "Australia is a secular state and any Muslim immigrant who cannot accept that should leave," Peter Costello, the likely successor to Prime Minister John Howard, said.

If he's liberal, than I wonder what their Conservative Party must be thinking.  The probably kick ass!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I would love to live there. Besides the gun laws they seem like a good bunch of folks. Except for the fact that everything there is posionous and wants to kill you   Damn!  I'd momentarily forgotten about that.  It is true that something like, I dunno, 819 of the 820 deadliest fanged creatures in the world live in Australia and each and every one of them has developed a taste for human flesh!

And it only gets worse when you get in the water - box jellyfish, irukanji, venemous sea snakes, salt water crocodiles, great white sharks ....  

Quoted: I wish other world leaders had that guys Balls. Basically its live by our rules or get the FCUK out.

I'll one up you....Live by our rules and still get the fuck out.

It's a God damned shame that our politicos don't have that same attitude. I can think of several groups of immigrants to whom that should be an applicable attitude in this country.

Quoted: Quoted: A senior leader of Australia's ruling Liberal Party Thursday said Muslim immigrants must accept the country's cultural values or leave. "Australia is a secular state and any Muslim immigrant who cannot accept that should leave," Peter Costello, the likely successor to Prime Minister John Howard, said. If he's liberal, than I wonder what their Conservative Party must be thinking.  The probably kick ass!

Liberals usally hate Christianity and love feminism. At last they have started to realise that although the ROPers hate Israel and USA, that's about everything they have in common. The muslim patriarchtic culture clashes more with the liberals than with the conservatives.

Quoted: Quoted: I would love to live there. Besides the gun laws they seem like a good bunch of folks. Except for the fact that everything there is posionous and wants to kill you

Sounds like you are referring to the girls here in NY.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: A senior leader of Australia's ruling Liberal Party Thursday said Muslim immigrants must accept the country's cultural values or leave. "Australia is a secular state and any Muslim immigrant who cannot accept that should leave," Peter Costello, the likely successor to Prime Minister John Howard, said. If he's liberal, than I wonder what their Conservative Party must be thinking.  The probably kick ass! Liberals usally hate Christianity and love feminism. At last they have started to realise that although the ROPers hate Israel and USA, that's about everything they have in common. The muslim patriarchtic culture clashes more with the liberals than with the conservatives.

"Liberal" in the international sense is classically liberal... not how Americans use the terms.  I can't say much about the Aussie's party in particular, but Liberal parties are generally free market and individual rights oriented.

- BG

While I applaud Mr. Costello's statements, he inadvertently exposes a flaw in free and democratic societies.

Recognize this passage?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Given enough time, and with the "Progressives" and their multicuturalist "diversity" agenda running top cover for them, Islamicists will inevitably use the democratic institutions of the secular Western democracies to "alter or abolish" those democracies.

Their primary weapon is "tolerance" and multiculturalism.  No one dares to point out that the Islamicist front organizations "fighting for tolerance" and "against hate" are themselves totally intolerant and are "hate-based".  The so-called Counsel on Armerican-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for example.  

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."   - Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman

"Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."  - Omar Ahmad, co-founder of CAIR

Look at the religous hate-speech law that narrowly failed in the UK as another example.  Based on an existing Australian law, it would have made it a crime for a non-Muslim to read the Koran outloud in public as "inciting religious hatred" because of that would have stirred up non-Muslims because of the inflammatory nature of most of the Koran. But it would not have been a crime to read those same words inside a mosque.

How can an open, secular, tolerant society tolerate in its midst a group that seeks to use that openess, tolerance and democratic nature of that society to transform that society into an intolerant, theocratic (I don't think "theocratic" is strong enough but there isn't a word for "cult-dominated government") religous dictatorship that would destroy every societal and political aspect of that society?

Obviously, to do so is to commit suicide as a society (nation, people).

But no one dares say this, because its "intolerant" and "hate".

Did I wake up in a Kafka novel?

Quoted: Costello said the rights and responsibilities of citizenship were not negotiable but absolute. I guess the right to self defense doesnt apply here?

Good point.

This isn't the first time Peter Costello has made these sorts of comments. He said basically the same thing last year, that Aust is not an islamic country and that sharia law has no place in the Aust legal system, If moslems want to live under sharia law, they should pack their bags and relocate to a country that has sharia law.

Edit. In Aust politics, the "Liberal" party IS the mainstream conservative party, and is clasically liberal, not the modern interpretation of "liberal/progressive" The mainstream left wing party here is called the "Labor" party.

Quoted: Quoted: This isn't the first time Peter Costello has made these sorts of comments. He said basically the same thing last year, that Aust is not an islamic country and that sharia law has no place in the Aust legal system, If moslems want to live under sharia law, they should pack their bags and relocate to a country that has sharia law. Peter Costello has more balls than all the other world leaders put together.... he's the first one to say the unsayable...'If you don't like it here, bugger off'. ANdy

I just dug up a TV interview of Peter Cotello from August 2005.  
www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1444603.htm

TONY JONES: It sounds like you're inviting Muslims who don't want to integrate to go to another country. Is it as simple as that? PETER COSTELLO: No. I'm saying if you are thinking of coming to Australia, you ought to know what Australian values are. TONY JONES: But what about if you're already here and you don't want to integrate? PETER COSTELLO: Well, I'll come to that in a moment. But there are some clerics who have been quoted as saying they recognise two laws. They recognise Australian law and Sharia law. There's only one law in Australia, it's the Australian law. For those coming to Australia, I think we ought to be very clear about that. We expect them to recognise only one law and to observe it. Now, for those who are born in Australia, I'd make the same point. This is a country which has a Constitution. Under its Constitution, the state is secular. Under its constitution, the law is made by the parliament. Under its Constitution, it's enforced by the judiciary. These are Australian values and they're not going to change and we would expect people, when they come to Australia or if they are born in Australia, to respect those values. TONY JONES: I take it that if you're a dual citizen and you have the opportunity to leave and you don't like Australian values, you're encouraging them to go away; is that right? PETER COSTELLO: Well, if you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps then that's a better option.

This is the same gov't that banned private ownership of most firearms?

Quoted: This is the same gov't that banned private ownership of most firearms?

Yes, it was, but to be fair, if the other major party had been in power at that time, they would have done exactly the same thing. The bans were the outcome of the worst mass shooting in Australian criminal history, the public reaction and outcry in response to the shooting was massive. When enough of the population stands up and says they want something changed, those who rely on public voters to keep their jobs end up changing things.

I fundamentally disagree with the bans. If Tasmania, the state where the shooting happened, had US style CCW laws the shooter would probably have been stopped reasonably quickly. He was only caught when he tried to fortify himself in a nearby house, but until then he was walking about freely with none prepared or able to stop him.

Unfortunately most Australians have no personal experience with firearms of any kind and are more than willing to accept the "guns are bad, mmmkay?" argument at face value. To most Australians, the idea of CCW here brings images of wild west style shootouts in public streets, or road rage shootings on the freeways because someone cut someone else off, etc. Look at the recent frothing at the mouth by the brady bunch over the last revision to Florida's CCW laws, trying to advise tourists to stay away from Florida "for their own safety". That's exactly the sort of thing that would be said here, and it would be accepted at face value by a larger propertion of the population than in the US.

There is no easy answer to changing the mainstream opinion on this. It's going to take a severe breakdown in public order and people being forced to personally protect themselves and their loved ones before they'll realise that the govt cannot and will not be everywhere and take care of everything for them. Until then, the public are more then happy to believe that the government will fix all their problems for them, partly because the politicians rely on promising to do exactly that in order to get elected in the first place.

GarethB hit it on the head.

When enough of the population stands up and says they want something changed, those who rely on public voters to keep their jobs end up changing things.

And that's why the Western secular democracies (including the US) are losing to the "5th columns" in their midst.

Between Islamcist migration to the West (and I include Australia in that), the openness of Western social and political institutions, "tolerance" (actually the adoration) of "multiculturalism" (which usually becomes a cultural death-wish for the Progressives), aggressive prostelization - esp. among the 'disenfranchised' (in the prisions, etc.), and the "useful idiots" in the Progressive political parties who see appeasement as their way to permanent political power in a dhimmi state, the Islamcists will "get things changed".

The war will end with a whimper.