As fact is sorted from fiction about recent incidents involving members of Australia’s Muslim communities. The media is not making any effort to minimise the hysteria that is developing.  To constantly speculate about aspects that have no foundation will cause great harm.

Publishing the wrong photo of the man who attacked two police officers in Melbourne’s South-East by the Fairfax media this week was disgraceful. The ramifications of such an error could have been enormous if any subsequent harm came to the innocent man concerned.

Prior to the 1990s, there was no issue in our country with Muslims. There may well have been an underlying, simmering degree of discontent in certain quarters.

There are people among us who continually harbour a suspicion that those who are different and culturally unusual, are somehow a threat to our way of life.  Ignorance breeds contempt. Many in the community are already spooked enough.

A man paying too much attention to his iPad causes Sydney Airport’s Terminal 3 to go into lockdown. A Virgin Airlines low level fly over at the MCG on Saturday, caused an AFP officer to reach for his gun.

What has made our country so tolerant and so successful at peaceful integration in the past has much to do with our egalitarianism, the absence of a class structure and our layback approach.  Up until 1996, immigration was always managed on a bipartisan policy agreement.

It enabled a post-Vietnam War exodus of refugees to seek a safe haven here with not so much as a whimper of opposition. They came in their thousands and in a matter of a few years had established themselves as hard working, diligent members of society. It was just what we needed.Our already broad cosmopolitan make-up was richer for the experience.

Prior to the 1996 election Pauline Hanson tapped a racial intensity of feeling in the electorate and won her seat even after the Liberal party disowned her.

When her One Nation Party had won over a large chunk of Liberal voters in a Queensland State election, that was the beginning of the end of immigration bipartisanship in Australian politics.

Just 5 years later, John Howard seized an opportunity to win an election with the Tampa incident by appealing to the same racially minded mentality. From that point on, to our national shame, the issue of immigration and management of refugees has become a game of political football.

But it wasn’t Asians that bore the brunt of this new degenerate attitude. Greatly assisted by our engagement in a falsely contrived war in Iraq, the fear of Muslims became a dark, festering disease covertly encouraged by certain sections of the media. Its nakedly, aggressive manner is a blight on a once welcoming nation and is covertly urged on by vested political interests.

In 2011, Scott Morrison, as Opposition Immigration spokesman, “urged the shadow cabinet to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about “Muslim immigration”, “Muslims in Australia” and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate.”

And, we know the mindset of Scott Morrison. We also know the mindset of Cory Bernadi. Who else in government thinks this way? By their actions, or lack of them, we will know them. How can we possibly begin to reverse this attitude when government members are so vocal?

Democracy does not serve us well when elected representatives act in a manner that creates division. It is counterproductive. It may suit the interests of some but in the long term, everyone pays.