10s of thousands of individuals have been sharing posts falsely attributing anti-immigration remarks to former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Examples can be seen (here),( here),( here), (here).
Some of these false claims have remained in circulation for several years, given that the time Gillard was prime minister from 2010 to 2013, but numerous of the posts have actually been published in the previous couple of weeks, still wrongly referring to her as the nations leader.
The statements in the post are improperly credited to the previous prime minister, and appear to have been lifted from numerous sources, sometimes with adjustments to match the context.
The posts declare that Gillard asked Muslims to leave the nation if they wished to live under Islamic sharia law, that she supported the tracking of mosques by spy agencies, and that she stated it depended on immigrants, not Australians, to adapt.
A majority of the text credited to Gillard has actually been remodelled from this piece (tinyurl.com/m3g2lnb) written by a U.S. air force veteran, with modifications to make it appropriate to the Australian context. For instance, a reference to the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 has been changed to the Bali attacks of the list below year, in which 202 people including 88 Australians were eliminated.
According to fact-checking website Snopes, the initial piece by veteran Barry Loudermilk was very first published in a local paper (here) and published again by VietNow National Magazine.
Reuters could not discover any recommendation to remarks by Gillard about sharia law. The subject had actually been disputed in the country years prior to she concerned power (here).
Remarks about keeping an eye on mosques also preceded Gillards period. In 2005, then Prime Minister John Howard was reported to have actually authorized the monitoring of mosques and Islamic schools (here) and (here).
Some of Gillards comments on migration and multiculturalism made in 2012 can be seen here (here). In a lecture, Gillard called for a balance between the “the right to keep ones customs, language and religion” and “an equal obligation to learn English, find work, respect our culture and heritage, and accept ladies as complete equates to”. The speech makes no reference to any faith or group.
VERDICT
False. The comments attributed to Julia Gillard were generally raised from a short article by a U.S. veteran.
This short article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Find out more about our work to fact-check social media posts here.
Reuters Fact Check. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
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