Home affairs minister says opposition had repatriated Australians from Syria when in government. Follow today’s news live
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The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, told ABC’s 7.30 program last night that the Coalition pressure to prevent the 34 Australian wives and children of IS fighters killed or captured in Syria from returning to Australia was “silly hypocrisy”.
He said if the Coalition wants the group excluded from Australia permanently, “they should look at the laws they voted for, they put in place when they were in government.”
There’s a lot of very silly deeply hypocritical claims coming from the opposition today.
We had 40 people under the Coalition do self-managed returns, that didn’t just include women and children, it included fighters. It included men who had gone there to fight. Now, they were among the returns who came back.
The fact that people with Australian passports have returned from those sorts of situations is not new. It happened under them.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2026/feb/19/tony-burke-syria-camp-jobs-figures-angus-taylor-anthony-albanese-coalition-labor-accc-coles-ntwnfb
Author : Martin Farrer
Publish date : 2026-02-18 19:45:00
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