LDN.
ó IRVING HOWARD (REPEATING) VIC; PREFERENCE
WOULD HAVE BEEN NEEDED FOR IRVING;
HOWARD MELBOURNE,
Nov 8 Australian Associated Press. Allowing
controversial historian David Irving into Australia
would have required giving him preferential
treatment, Prime Minister John Howard said
today. Mr Howard
told ABC Radio that people with Irving's record of
offences were being routinely rejected for entry to
Australia "all the time". "So to let
Irving in in these circumstances would have
required to give him preferential treatment
ó we would have been required to
discriminate in favour of him." Mr Howard
said Mr Irving was a "crackpot historian", but that
did not alter the fact that he had been convicted
in the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada "and two
of the offences, as I understand it, related to
passport, immigration and visa issues. "That
record, if it had been, dare I say it, John Howard,
Doug Alton (to whom he was speaking) or anyone of
your listeners, it would never have even got to the
minister ó people with that background are
being routinely rejected by the department all the
time." Mr Howard
said Gerry Adams was the head of Sinn Fein, "the
political mouthpiece of a terrorist
organisation". "I would
have thought that that was an open and shut case
which, once again, has precious little to do with
free speech," he said. "The
movement of people in and out of Australia is not
so much a question of free speech but of whether
the government of the country has the right to
decide at all times who can come here in for
temporary purposes." AUSTRALIAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS er/lw AP 4 D
11-09-96 1721GMT | 
David Irving 1998