Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has asserted the federal government is not repatriating 34 women and children linked to Islamic State, rebuffing claims that it was helping the so-called IS brides return to Australia.
The Albanese government has taken a hard line against the group of Australian women and children who are attempting to leave the al-Roj camp in north-east Syria. However, they have been issued Australian passports, which the government says is a legal requirement.
“What I can assure you is the process has happened as a bureaucratic process of officials obeying the law, and doing what they’re obliged to do by law, with nothing coming from any ministerial level encouraging that process along,” Burke said on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning.
The minister rejected claims made in a Sunday Telegraph article on Sunday, which reported that high-level briefings between NSW, Victoria and federal agencies to repatriate the group, and make arrangements for their return, had been ongoing for months.
He said agencies had met to discuss any risks to national security when conditions in the al-Roj camp started deteriorating, opening the possibility some of the families there might try to leave.
“In that [Sunday Telegraph] report, it makes a claim that we are conducting repatriation. We are not. It claims we have been meeting with the states for the purposes of a repatriation. We have not,” Burke said.
“Our authorities meet with the state authorities to make sure that we are prepared if there is any chance of there being a heightened risk to national security.
“As soon as the conditions of the camp started to deteriorate, and there was a possibility some people would be getting out, which has happened … the national security teams, the joint counterterrorism teams, meet, as they did under the previous government, as they do now, as is essential for public safety.”
One of the group of 34 seeking to return to Australia from an internment camp in Syria has been prevented from doing so, under a temporary exclusion order designed to protect Australians from national security risks.
Burke and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have been pressured by the Coalition to use these orders to prevent the repatriation of the other women and children. However, Burke said they did not meet the threshhold for exclusion orders, according to intelligence advice.
“Other than a temporary exclusion order, there isn’t a legislative power to stop an Australian citizen from entering Australia,” he said.
“One of my concerns with how the opposition have handled this, is they have effectively said the minister [should] be able to make it up … as though somehow in national security portfolio you should ignore your national security intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
Burke confirmed the one person who was subject to an exclusion order was deemed to pose a higher level of risk than the rest of the group.
“I’m not going to go through everything that our intelligence agencies do, but I can put it in these terms: The cohort is not consistent. There are very different people within that cohort with different histories and different states of mind,” he said.
“They are quite different, but our agencies been following them … for a long time. The fact that one person has been pulled out for saying that person meets the threshold for a temporary exclusion order is because, quite specifically, of what we know about that individual.”
Asked whether that meant the remaining 33 people did not pose a threat to Australia, Burke said: “That’s right.”
He added: “If at any point the agencies decide that a further brief should come to me, I would deal with that immediately and I think the record shows how seriously I take it the advice of those agencies.
“On the information that we have, the best way to protect Australians has not involved any further temporary exclusion orders.”
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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.