MY OATH, WE CAN’T TRUST SHORTEN

LABOR leader Bill Shorten picked the wrong time to call for rebellion against the Queen. Australia is fragmenting and the watchword now is loyalty.

Proof: Labor has an MP like Khalil Eideh, who has pledged his “absolute loyalty” to the bloody dictator of Syria.

So it was a mistake for Shorten on Saturday to promise a national vote on becoming a republic, breaking the oath he swore last year at the opening of the 45th Parliament to “bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors”.

It was an even bigger mistake for this oath-breaker to call for a republic while standing in front of a single flag — not the Australian one but the Aboriginal, the flag of apartheid.

Shorten couldn’t be clearer: the Left will divide us into tribes, without a common law or allegiance. He already supports changing the Constitution so Aboriginal Australians get different rights, including an Aboriginal parliament. Breaking the old bonds will just hasten this descent into tribalism.

You see, I do not trust Labor to invent new loyalties that bind us as well as have the old. And Eideh is a warning

Eideh is the Lebanese-born transport tycoon Labor recruited to win Muslim votes, having headed Victoria’s Alawi Islamic Association.

Yes, this is the tribalisation Labor encourages and exploits. Its branches now also promise to recognise Palestine as a nation to please Muslim voters — even though one half of Palestine is run by Hamas terrorists and the other by Fatah extremists.

Most Victorians know of Eideh because the US has just banned him from visiting. But look closer.

His parents were Syrian, and he has cultivated relationships with Syria’s dictator, Bashar al Assad, accused of war crimes.

In 2001, Eideh wrote to Syrian officials introducing himself as an “Arab Syrian citizen” and boasting that “I have built excellent relations with the highest-ranking Australian officials”. Labor ones.

In 2002, Eideh sent a letter to the Syrian President declaring the “threat from the Imperialist and Zionist is increasing on our Arabic world”, and in such times “we owe our complete loyalty to and are working to protect Syria”.

To Assad, he pledged “loyalty, absolute loyalty to your courageous and wise leadership”.

Eideh has since claimed “my first loyalty is to Australia”.

I wish I could trust him. But I know I can’t trust Labor.