Thank goodness, then, that Immigration Minister Tony Burke has invoked his powers under the Migration Act (the legislation that helped consign the White Australia Policy to the dustbin of history in 1958).

In doing so, Burke rejected American provocateur Candace Owens’ application to visit Australia and spread her questionable ideas about Jews, Muslims and slavery.

DOWNPLAYING

“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about (Josef) Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” he said last year when he initially rejected her request to enter Australia and speak to her thousands of local followers in person.

Her appeal against this decision went all the way to the High Court, which this week agreed with Burke: her presence in Australia would “stir up or encourage dissension or strife on political matters.”

The distinguished members of the court might have paused before they so blithely associated “dissension” and “strife” with “political matters”.

In a free and relatively coherent society, as Australia mostly was before 1958, political matters ranked alongside discussions about the weather and football in their potential to cause “dissension” or “strife”.

In what sort of society can “political matters” cause such tension that they require the intervention of both the Immigration Minister and the High Court?

And does banning Owens from the country solve whatever problems that country is facing?

The answer to the first question is: Australia.

And the answer to the second is: of course not.

The clause in the Immigration Act that has enabled the censorship of Owens and others over recent years was more of an afterthought when the legislation was passed 66 years ago.

The first, and presumably more urgent, clauses in sub-section 6 of section 501 empowers the Immigration Minister to reject visas for people who have, or are likely to, commit serious crimes, hang out with gangsters, commit genocide or torture someone.

It’s not until you get to clause (d)(iv) that you find the words that Burke and the High Court have used with such devastatingly censorious effect: “Incite discord”.

The authors of that clause could never have imagined that Australia would one day become the sort of country where the people who openly advocate for genocide and defend terrorists who torture hostages are routinely ignored.

All the while an intelligent, informed commentator such as Owens is banned for her potential to “incite discord”.

Large parts of some of our cities are blocked off every Sunday so thousands of people, many of them recent migrants, can chant about committing genocide of Israelis, and display their enthusiastic support for the proscribed terror group Hamas and Islamic jihad in general.

Not even Burke himself is safe in some parts of the multicultural utopia that he and Labor have mostly created.

LAKEMBA

In March, Burke attended Friday prayers in a park near Lakemba Mosque, which is in his electorate of Watson, obviously hoping to harvest votes from people whose allegiance is more to Allah than Australia.

Federal Police got wind, however, of a credible threat to his safety from gentlemen sporting neck beards wishing to intimidate Burke for his government’s supposed support for Israel in the war in Gaza.

He was quickly whisked to a section of his electorate that more closely resembled Australia before 1958.

This of course hasn’t stopped Burke continuing to ingratiate himself with these highly coveted and politically demanding voters.

He has allowed the repatriation of young women who went to Syria to marry ISIS psychopaths a decade ago and have since decided to return to the safety of the country they hate; and he also made sure he was on hand to welcome the latest additions to Australia’s Muslim population — refugees from Gaza.

These people were rejected by every Arab nation in the world.

Spare a thought for Burke as he negotiates this intricate ethnic and ethical chicane.

He recently approved visits by, among others, British Muslim Sami Hamdi, who thinks the rape, murder and torture of Israeli citizens on October 7 was worth “celebrating”; and Egyptian preacher Mohammed Ghuloom, who used his Australian tour to teach children about Islamic “resistance”.

Owens, as it happens, agrees in part with these preachers: she too calls Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide”.

But her visa was rejected. Why? That’s easy. Owens is not only conservative, but also — block your children’s ears if you are reading this aloud — devoutly Catholic.