That psychopath Peter Dutton, our dishonourable minister for immigration, has excelled himself.

Today he’s said that he thinks Malcolm Fraser made an error by allowing immigrants from Lebanon to come here in the 1980s, as there is a high prevalence of Lebanese Muslims figuring in terrorist incidents in Australia.

This is the very definition of racism: the automatic ascribing of racial characteristics to every member of a population based on a fixed view of a few examples.

He has automatically classed all Lebanese as either terrorist sympathisers or potential terrorists based on his ideas of some Lebanese immigrants. This is outrageous. Obviously, I don’t know the exact figures for terrorism suspects, but the web tells me that there were around 70,000 Lebanese-born people here in 1996 and the population now, including Australian-born descendants, is around 250,000.

But get this: 55% of them are Christians!

There’s no doubt that Lebanese men figure disproportionately in crime statistics, but to ascribe lawlessness and terrorism to all Lebanese Australians based on the actions of a minority is pure racism.

If you check Wikipedia, there’s a long list of distinguished Australians in all walks of Australian life, including one of our finest writers, David Malouf; the CEO of Australia Post; the Governor of New South Wales and many others.

How about this, Minister: many examples of organised crime executions, violent events, standover crimes, extortion, drug importation and manufacture, kidnappings, blackmail, Mafia cells and so on are carried out by Italians. You only have to look at the names. Are you going to brand the entire Italian community as deplorables, Minister? Why not?

This man Dutton is a deplorable example himself, of a racist, cruel, simple minded bastard who deserves to be in some internment camp himself. It would be interesting to dig into his background.

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In a similar vein, the proprietor of Silicon Chip magazine, Australia’s only remaining electronics hobbyist magazine, writes an editorial every month. He’s well versed in electronics and electrical power, having been in the business since the 1960s.

But I emphasise business. He’s not actually qualified in electronics or electrical engineering. However, that doesn’t stop him from spouting forth, and he likes to point out all the flaws in renewable power technology, verging on outright climate change denial. He’s a supporter of Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, who’s one of the very, very few scientists in Australia who argues against man made climate change.

In this month’s edition of Silicon Chip, the editor has let his prejudice run away with his pen. Editorialising on the storms in South Australia last month that caused a complete loss of power for some hours, he launches in a sneering sarcastic tone, saying it was caused by SA’s many wind power generators which, he says, on sensing strong, hurricane force winds, “feathered” their blades and shut themselves down, thus causing the loss of a large part of SA’s power supplies. In his view, the wind power generators were the cause of the power failures.

Unfortunately, the official report after the event quite categorically says that the wind generators shut down (disconnected themselves from the grid) as a result of a series of voltage and current surges caused mainly by the toppling of many of the high voltage line towers, as we all saw on the news. The wind farms didn’t cause the problems, the problems came from other causes. He was wrong, factually wrong.

If it wasn’t for the sneering tone of this guy’s editorial, I wouldn’t mention it, but he nailed his colours to the mast as a climate change sceptic extraordinaire.

I’ve emailed him calling his editorial a disgrace and saying I hold him in contempt. If he were just a man in the street, his views wouldn’t matter, but he’s in a position to influence uninformed minds. This can cause serious difficulties. It’s akin to the anti-vaccination movement: it doesn’t just affect the individual, it can affect an entire population, and the damage it causes is irreversible.

If my views on climate change prevail, it will cause the expenditure of large sums of money, but the effects, even if not fully successful, will have major benefits in cleaner air and new industries and employment opportunities. No harm will be done, indeed the results will be very beneficial.

But if the climate change denialists have their way and we don’t make the efforts, don’t spend the money, the damage will be catastrophic and irreversible. What will the denialists do? Apologise and try to fix it in 50 years’ time? Can’t be done.