Tony Burke<\/a>, will discuss the incident in a meeting with the Australian federal police commissioner, Krissy Barrett, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\u201cPeople that go in to shout abuse at people, intimidate people and use dehumanising language against people for observing their faith \u2013 don\u2019t pretend you\u2019re patriotic,\u201d he told reporters in Canberra. \u201cThat\u2019s the opposite of who we are as Australians.<\/p>\n
Tony Burke said the man\u2019s alleged behaviour at the iftar dinner was \u2018the opposite of who we are as Australians\u2019. Photograph: Dominic Giannini\/EPA<\/p>\n
\u201cA whole lot of this, as I understand, is videoed, and the fact that there wasn\u2019t an immediate arrest doesn\u2019t mean that police won\u2019t be looking at this very closely.\u201d<\/p>\n
King described the incident as incredibly distressing and a \u201cviolent and racist attack\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery Australian Muslim has the right to feel safe, just like every other Australian has a right to be safe and feel safe,\u201d she wrote on social media. \u201cAt a community iftar, at home, and in the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaders and elected officials who care about social cohesion have a responsibility to tone down their rhetoric and call out behaviour like this. We must all do our bit to turn the temperature down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the City of Ballarat council said it was deeply saddened and strongly condemned racial discrimination and intimidation.<\/p>\n
Victoria\u2019s premier, Jacinta Allan, said: \u201cI\u2019ve reached out to the Ballarat Muslim community to offer my support after this horrific and violent incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of rightwing, anti-Muslim rhetoric online and in parliament has serious consequences \u2013 ordinary Australians are getting hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am confronting Islamophobia with strong leadership and strong laws because every Victorian deserves to feel safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Additional reporting by Benita Kolovos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Muslim community is reeling after police opted not to immediately arrest a man accused of crashing an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-532495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}