Wilders waits for Australian visa
An Australian anti-Islam group which has invited Dutch MP Geert Wilders to give two speeches next month, has accused the Australian authorities of delaying his visa application.
The Q Society says although Wilders applied for a visa three weeks ago, he has yet to receive it. ‘We cannot see why it would not be approved,’ spokesman Andrew Horwood told news agency AAP.
But Australia’s immigration minister Chris Bouwen has defended the time taken to process the application, saying ‘it is not unusual for applications to take several weeks for a decision in complex cases’, AAP reports.
Attention
Australian media also report Green Party senator Richard Di Natale as saying Wilders is not welcome in the country.
Nevertheless, refusing a visa would only bring more attention to Wilders and ‘that is not what we want’, Di Natale is quoted as saying.
Wilders, whose party lost over 40% of its support in last week’s general election, has again courted controversy by placing links to the American film Innocence of Muslims on his website.
The parliamentarian was refused entry to England in 2009, but later allowed in for a screening of his anti-Islam video compilation Fitna.
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