QG Rozario says in White supremacy Down Under that my response to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's criticisms of Australia's "travel ban" and its treatment of Muslims here is "very selective and vitriolic". He says Mahathir's criticism reflect popular Muslim sentiments. He then goes off the tangent to present an array of racist policies, actions and attitudes in Australia towards non-whites, including Aboriginal Australians.

I wish Rozario would keep a sharp focus on the issue I raised  they're being warned to be vigilant against possible terrorist attacks.

Rozario's response overall to my criticisms is deliberately misleading.

For starters, Southeast Asia hasn't been singled out. Travel warnings by the Australian government also extend to the parts of South Asia (Kashmir), the Middle East, parts of central Asia, eastern Europe, parts of South America, and even France more recently.

But these warnings, to be sure, are mostly the result of very serious bungling by the Australian government. Had the Howard government been on the ball, many Australians and others may have survived the Bali bombs unscathed. Make no mistake: there's blood on Howard's hands. Just as there is on George W Bush in the United States for the Sept 11 attacks.

And I was hardly being "selective" in what I said, and I said exactly what I meant.

I said Mahathir was being completely insensitive about Australia's travel warnings after so many innocent Australians and other foreigners, including Indonesians, were killed or injured in the cowardly Bali attacks. I was referring to his placing tourism (and investment) profits over human lives. I also said Mahathir would probably have issued similar warnings to Malaysians if Malaysians had been attacked and killed or injured by terrorists.

I added that common sense, decency, humanitarian spirit, and sensitivity towards the serious plight of fellow human beings in the Bali carnage have escaped Mahathir, that his loose tongue is a reflection more of his thoughtlessness.

As for Mahathir's criticism of two or three Muslim Australian homes being raided by law enforcement agencies, it seemed out of whack with a sense of perspective and proportion. Most Australian Muslims have condemned the Islamic terrorists, whether they consented to Billal Clelland's media statement or not.

But then it's typical of Mahathir to deliberately take things out of proportion and milk it to his own ends. After all, what is Mahathir doing in Malaysia but using the Internal Security Act to silence critics, persecute political opponents and fundamentalist Muslims.

Even Muslim schools in Malaysia aren't spared from Mahathir's witch-hunt through his cowardly autocratic conduct. All of which are undoubtedly aimed partly at boosting his popularity among secular Muslims.

If my response to Mahathir's criticisms is vitriolic, I make no apologies. I generally dislike and distrust politicians. It's not always that I'd agree with Mahathir or for that matter John Howard.

My criticisms of the Howard government are on public record in the media in Australia and abroad, as they are of the United States and George W Bush, Japan and Junichiro Koizumi; Indonesia and Megawati Sukarnoputri, and the Philippines and Gloria Arroyo-Macapagal.

Vitriolic? So be it. But I will not, unlike Rozario, put Mahathir or any politician anywhere on a pedestal and revere them as if they were god.

Mahathir is an elected political representative of the Malaysian people and he must realise that he's not the law, he's not above the law, he's not above criticism, and he should and must be made accountable and held responsible. No more and no less.

As for the rest of Rozario's response to my letter, since it deliberately digresses from the issues I'd originally raised (I never mentioned Malay supremacy or white Australian supremacy) — and which anyway in part contains factual errors and which in part I could respond with equal bite and with Malaysian examples — I won't respond here because it would only amount to a ridiculous childlike tit-for-tat.

Suffice to say, however, that the way the Australian government has handled illegal boat people and the Sieve X tragedy has been blasted by my colleagues and I to this day. We even joined the protest movements to places like the Villawood and Woomera detention centres, and very openly criticised John Howard and his immigration minister Philip Ruddock as closet racists.

Yes, Rozario, there's racism in Australia — and many decent white Australians would readily admit to and openly condemn this. There's racism in Papua New Guinea among the Papuans. There's racism in China. There's racism in the US. And we all know about institutionalised racism in Malaysia.

But that was not my point.