‘No more, no less’ help given to ISIS brides than other Australians, minister insists

Two Australian ISIS brides stranded in Syria received no special government help to return home, according to the Albanese Government as it continues to face pressure over the handling of the controversial case.

The Opposition pressed the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke over what support was given to the two women — so-called ISIS brides — and their four children to help them quietly return to Australia in September.

The Labor Government continues to argue it did the bare minimum, and didn’t repatriate the group, as has happened in the past.

Home Affairs officials confirmed to Senate estimates this week the department had first learned in early June the six people were seeking to return to Australia.

The women, who had either travelled or been taken to Syria to become partners of ISIS members had been living in refugee camps, but smuggled themselves out of the country to Lebanon after the collapse of the Islamic extremist group.

They were issued Australian passports in Lebanon after passing security checks and establishing that the children were entitled to citizenship by descent.

The group arrived in Australia on September 26.

The Coalition accused Mr Albanese of misleading Australians when he said in early September that the Government was not providing any assistance to the cohort.

“Evidence at Senate estimates confirmed that the government assisted with medical interviews, assisted with DNA tests for children, assisted with citizenship by descent claims, and assisted with passports,” Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said during question time on Thursday.

“Why did the Prime Minister tell Australians one thing while doing the exact opposite?”

Mr Burke said every government had legal obligations under citizenship and passport laws to assess applications and provide documents.

“Everything that was just described as assistance by the Leader of the Opposition, it would have been an offence for the government to not do,” he said.

“These individuals received what they were entitled to by law, no more and no less.

“What is hidden behind what the Leader of the Opposition is saying right there, is she is suggesting … that one of the options in front of the government was to not obey Australian law.”

Ms Ley said the government should have stopped the women and their children from entering Australia and “worked harder to make sure that we did not allow them back”.

Asked whether that was legal, she said there wasn’t any evidence the government had tried to prevent them.

“This is not some romance that went wrong.” she said.

“ This is a group of individuals who willingly left this country, in itself breaking the law, to go and join ISIL, a death cult that has at its heart the destruction of our way of life and our society.

“If we cast our minds back to Islamic State at its height and the security threat that was talked about here in this country, do we really want these individuals just let back in?”

Mr Albanese rejected a question about Australian Federal Police revelations that authorities expected more women and children to return from the Syrian camps, saying it assumed that “they are coming back to Australia with our support, which they are not”.

He quoted AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett describing the group as making a “self-managed” return home.

“Fact one: A non-government organisation took this government to court demanding that we repatriate these people,” Mr Albanese said.

“Fact two: They lost the court case. Fact three: We did not repatriate these people, unlike the former process of both the former government and the government in its first term early on.”

He reiterated that all Australian citizens had rights that meant governments owed them some obligations.

“(If) the question is whether we are repatriating people, the answer to that is no. If the question is do Australian citizens have rights, the answer to that is, of course, yes,” he said.

Labor repatriated four women and 13 children in 2022, while the former coalition government repatriated eight unaccompanied minors in 2019.

At least 40 people, including some who had fought with or supported ISIS, returned under their own volition under the former Liberal government.