Controversial anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders has postponed his visit to Australia, on the same day the federal government announced it would not block his visa.
Mr Wilders was scheduled to make two public speeches in Melbourne and Sydney later this month at the invitation of the Q Society, a local group concerned about the “islamisation of Australia”.
But shortly after Mr Bowen made his decision public, the Q Society said the visit had been postponed.
The group’s media representative Andrew Horwood said the long delay in the visa approval had left them without enough time to get the logistics in place.
“We’re hoping to postpone until February. We think that’s the next window of opportunity that will be good for all parties,” Mr Horwood told AAP.
“Geert is 100 per cent committed to coming out here.”
Mr Horwood said he believed Mr Wilders’ visa application would still be valid in February.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen today said he would not block the bid by Mr Wilders, despite condemning his views as “offensive”.
Writing in The Australian, Mr Bowensaid that “to read his writings is to be struck by their ignorance and their wrongheaded views of other people’s beliefs”.
But this was not a reason to stop Mr Wilders from speaking, Mr Bowen said.
“The way to deal with extremist commentators such as Wilders is to defeat his ideas with the force of our arguments and experiences, not the blunt instrument of denying him entry into Australia,” he writes.
The British Home Office once banned Mr Wilders from visiting the UK, where he planned to show a video about the Islamic holy book the Koran, for fear his visit would spark riots.
Mr Wilders is the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands, where he was once charged with incitement to hatred but was later acquitted.
He openly promotes watching the film the Innocence of Muslims, which has led to violent protests across the world for its offensive portrayal of Islam.
In Sydney, the film was blamed for a protest in the CBD that turned ugly, with several men charged for dozens of offences including assaulting police, affray, and possessing offensive weapons.
Mr Bowen said Mr Wilders was a “provocateur” but that he was confident Australians would use calm reasoning to expose his “views for the sideshow they are”.
He also said that the violence in Sydney a few weeks ago, which was broadcast around the world, were not a symptom of multiculturalism.
He said they were not representing Islam or multiculturalism, just “thuggery”.
Mr Wilders’ blog includes a link to a story on his stalled visa bid.
The story says “the high priests of Australian multiculturalism want to silence Wilders’ warnings about the tragic failure of multiculturalism in Europe”.