‘Cover-up’: Penny Wong, Michaelia Cash clash over return of IS brides

Officials from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s department have declined to confirm basic details about the return of wives and children of Islamic State fighters to Australia from Syria, prompting accusations of a cover-up from the federal opposition.

It was revealed last week that a group of six women and children had smuggled themselves out of Syria and returned to Australia despite Albanese denying earlier reports that a cohort was set to return home by the end of the year.

The women were wives of men who travelled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State (also known as IS or ISIS) when the radical jihadist group was trying to establish a hardline Sunni caliphate across the Middle East.

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet officials told Senate estimates hearings it would be a breach of privacy to detail how many wives and children have travelled from camps in Syria to Australia despite such figures being widely reported in the media.

The Coalition homed in on the issue on Tuesday, probing why Albanese dismissed as inaccurate reports that Australian women would be returned to Australia before Christmas as part of a top-secret operation.

The government has stressed that, unlike a 2022 repatriation mission, it did not organise an evacuation of the latest cohort or organise their flights to Australia.

The women and children fled the notoriously violent Al-Hawl detention camp in northern Syria and flew to Victoria via Lebanon.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who was representing Albanese at the hearings, and officials from the prime minister’s department repeatedly took questions on notice, including about when government briefings were provided about the issue and why Albanese had denied the initial reports.

“It isn’t a free-for-all here,” Wong said as opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash and acting opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson probed for details.

“You are asking questions in the wrong committee.”

Wong said the opposition should instead direct its questions to officials from the Department of Home Affairs and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at their hearings later in the week.

Officials are entitled to take questions on notice to ensure their answers are accurate, Wong added.

Describing the lack of detail as a “cover-up”, Cash said: “It is an absolute disgrace that the Albanese government refuses to give the most basic details about the return to Australia of this cohort.

“Australians deserve to know how they are being protected from this highly dangerous cohort who associated themselves with the barbaric Islamic State regime.”

Coalition senator James McGrath accused the government of “using the cloak of privacy” to decline to reveal how many wives and children had returned to Australia from Syria.

Former home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie resigned from the opposition frontbench on Friday, complicating the Coalition’s ability to attack the government over the issue.

The Coalition did not raise the issue in question time in the House of Representatives, turning down an opportunity to grill Albanese or Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

The federal government confirmed last week that the six women and children arrived in Beirut and were detained by Lebanese authorities as they did not have valid visas or legitimate entry records.

Members of the group were issued passports after being processed by Lebanese authorities, the government said.

The dispute over the accuracy of the initial reports, published in The Australian, appears to hinge on the level of support the government did or did not provide for the cohort’s return to Australia.

That report said that government officials were “assisting the operation quietly in the background”.

Albanese said last month: “I confirm that the Australian government is not providing assistance to this cohort.”

Members of the group were issued Australian passports after being processed by Lebanese authorities, including passports for children who were entitled to Australian citizenship but were born in Syria.

Wong said that the government was obliged to help eligible Australians receive a passport, but argued this should not be seen as providing support for the group to return to Australia.

The Rojava Information Centre, the Kurdish media arm in Syria, told this masthead there had “not been any delegations from Australia coming to the region for repatriations for a year now”, supporting the government’s claim it had not organised a repatriation mission.

The federal government said in a statement: “If any of those people find their own way to return, our security agencies are satisfied that they are prepared and will be able to act in the interests of community safety.

“Our agencies have been monitoring these individuals for some time. We have confidence in our agencies.”

With Michael Bachelard

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