THE ABC’s 7.30 on Monday accidentally showed exactly why we should stop the boats of illegal immigrants — and not only to end the drowning.

The ABC’s footage, including video shot by boat people turned back last month, actually showed a dangerous cultural difference.

BLOG WITH ANDREW BOLT

How could these 34 people from Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal — mostly Muslim countries that are neither war-torn nor famine-struck — think that threatening to kill our sailors, shouting “f--- Australia” and warning of another September 11 would make us unlock our hearts and our door?

And how many people just like them are among the more than 50,000 Labor let sail in uninvited, even taxiing them in on our warships?

Last month our Navy — under new instruction from the Abbott Government — towed another boatload of illegal immigrants back to Indonesia after intercepting them at sea and transferring them into an unsinkable lifeboat.

Some on the lifeboat filmed their tow-back on their mobile phones and, evidently to win our sympathy, gave the footage to the ABC — their friendliest media outlet.

They also gave interviews to tell of the alleged inhumanity of our sailors.

I don’t criticise the ABC for broadcasting all this on Monday and do not accuse it of bias. In fact, I praise it for not deleting footage from the boat people, which actually discredited them.

And here is the point: how complete is the cultural disconnect between such boat people and their Australian audience that they thought their story would soften our hearts?

First, the ABC admitted its main subject, Iranian Arash Sedigh, who is pictured, twice tried to smuggle himself and his wife here by boat after he’d been “refused entry to Australia through the skilled migration program”. Sedigh added: “We decided to go there in illegal way, to make them accept us.”

This sounded like a man we didn’t want telling us we had no right to reject him.

Next, Sedigh said after his boat was intercepted, he warned our sailors: “I will kill you if you don’t take us to that ship. I have nothing to lose. I will kill you. Believe me.”

Then, as the 34 illegal immigrants were towed back to Indonesia, they filmed themselves shouting “f--- Australia” and raising the middle finger.

Sedigh even had himself filmed issuing this warning: “F--- Australia ... If later on you said why they do that to America on September 11, you should know the cause of it is your very deeds.

“Remember 9/11 for United States. All the world should know why.”

Sedigh and his fellow passengers were naturally bitterly disappointed and you could excuse their threats as heat-of-the-moment things, done under stress. Maybe they don’t really think the 3000 civilians who died in the September 11 terror attacks were just asking for it.

But why, weeks later, did they still think we should hear their threats when considering their case?

Add this consideration: life in Australia can also be stressful. An immigrant here may not get a job, or their marriage might collapse. Refugees in particular are much more likely to be poor, with 85 per cent of households on Centrelink benefits even after five years.

How would the ABC’s boat people react to such stresses, once here? With more threats and “F--- Australia” fury?

See, culture counts and under stress some people revert to a cultural identity that helps them explain or disguise their failure — an identity that puts a contemptible “them” against a virtuous “us”.

UNEMPLOYED or unskilled men from Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds, for instance, now dominate many criminal bikie gangs, turning themselves from social zeros to feared “heroes”.

The mufti of the Lakemba mosque, our biggest, praised September 11 as “God’s work against oppressors”.

Others turn to radical versions of the faith of their fathers, to become fighters of such “oppressors”. About 20 Australians have now been jailed for links to Islamist terrorism and more than 100 are fighting for jihadist forces in Syria. Even an Australian soldier — deserter Caner Temel — two months ago died fighting for the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against more “moderate” Syrian rebels.

Yes, I am describing only a tiny minority of refugees and boat people, and an even tinier minority of immigrants generally, among whom were my parents.

But it is grossly irresponsible to allow thousands of illegal immigrants from countries very different from our own to crash our borders when we know it exposes Australians to extra risks they don’t want and never accepted.

Stop the boats. Let us choose for ourselves the immigrants we want and judge will fit in. For me, they do not include the people in the queue shouting “f--- Australia” and warning of terror to come.