← The Morning Edition
The Morning Edition
The return of 'ISIS brides’ raises so many questions about what it means to be Australian
00:27:04
Loading summary
Transcript37 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Today on the pod, we're going to discuss the so called ISIS brides. That is the group of Australian women and their children who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State and are now trying to get home to Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the women are not being provided with any assistance from the government. But it seems there is a little bit more to the story than the government is willing to admit to. And here to discuss, we have our senior writer and Warclear Award winning general legend. Michael Bachelard, who's been following the story for years, joins us from Melbourne. And joining us from Canberra as usual, is our chief political correspondent, Paul Sacal. Hello, gentlemen.
- [00:39]
B
Good day, Jacqueline.
- [00:40]
C
Morning.
- [00:40]
A
Beth Bach, thanks so much for joining us. I think it's the first that you come on Inside Politics and we're deeply honoured. Can you tell us a little bit about this group of Australian women and children who tried to leave Syria this week or tried to leave their camp this week and were turned back? How many of them are there? Where are they coming from and where are they trying to get to?
- [01:00]
B
So there's 11 women and 23 children in this cohort of 34. They're about half and half from Sydney and Melbourne. They moved to Syria or they in some cases say they were forcibly taken to Syria by husbands or whatever. When the Islamic, the so called Islamic State caliphate was in operation between about 2014 and 2019, when that collapsed in March 2019, they were captured by Kurdish forces fighting against Islamic State in the northeast of Syria and put in internment camps. There are two camps there and mostly they were put in a camp called Al Hol, which I visited that year, 2019, and they've been there ever since. They are Australian citizens. They have an entitlement, as Anthony Albanese has said multiple times this week, to a passport and to return home. And this week they tried to, I guess, enjoy that entitlement and for various reasons have been unable to.
- [02:03]
A
Mm. So you, as you say, you went to the Al Hol camp in the northeast of Syria in 2019. It's quite a notorious camp. Can you tell us just briefly what the conditions were like there and what you saw there with that larger group of Australian women and children?
- [02:17]
B
Yeah, they called themselves, they said they were living on Australia street, but it really wasn't a street. It was a few tents amid the dust and dirt. There were tens of thousands of other people there. It was very hard for us to get in. The authorities were worried about the security situation. It took us several hours to convince them to let us in. They gave us not very long. As we drove in, the van we were in was pelted with stones by some of the kids there. We saw young boys holding up the one finger, which is a sort of a sign, an Islamic State sign. It was a pretty rough, rugged area. We could only interview them for not very long. They had to keep their niqabs on the whole time because to be seen without one among the hardliners there would have been dangerous to them, and they wanted to conduct the interview inside the tent. So it was a very tense, difficult situation, partly relating to the security situation in northeastern Syria at the time, but just in general. That was a terrible camp. They were moved a couple of years later to a better camp called Al Raj. Better regulated, better run and less violent, I think. But nevertheless, they've been all up. They've been living in tents in pretty dire situation, climatic extremes, often with very young children. There were babies and toddlers when I was there, and they've been there for seven years.
- [03:48]
A
Yeah. So successive Australian governments going back to the Morrison government have moved or have helped repatriate groups of women and children previously. So this. This is sort of the most recent tranche, if you like, of these women and children. The Morrison government helped. Claire o', Neill, when she was Home Affairs Minister, you know, under the Albanese government in their last term, helped. But this time, Paul, the political climate's really different. And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made it very, very clear that he wants to distance himself and his government from these women. And he says that they are not being provided with any help. What's going on here?
- [04:26]
C
Yeah, that's right, Jack. So there's been a few different moments of debate over the past six or seven years post the caliphate coming to an end, where different groups have come back to Australia. Under the Morrison government, there was a group of orphans brought in by that coalition government. I was reading quotes from Scott Morrison today where he expresses great sympathy with the plight of the children who he says made no mistake of their own. They were dragged into this and Australia has a obligation to give them a decent life, notwithstanding the mistakes of their parents. Then, in the early part of the Albanese government, there were four women repatriated and 13 children. That was under the home affairs minister, Claire O'. Neill. And then just after the last election in May, there was another outbreak of debate where a group was. Well, did they come back Bach? Did that group come or not?
- [05:17]
B
In the end yeah, they did. They. There was.
- [05:21]
C
Yeah, they did.
- [05:21]
B
They went to Sydney. They escaped. They were in El hall, not in El Roja. They escaped themselves via people smugglers and made it to the Lebanese border. The Lebanese authorities imprisoned them and then somehow they got to the embassy and were given passports and came back to Melbourne.
- [05:41]
C
Yeah. And in that post election debate, the government used similar language around, and this kind of technical language around providing, quote, no assistance, where they say that the only engagement they have with the group that's attempting to come is to issue them passports, which the government says they are obligated to under Australian law, but they are not facilitating the repatriation through flights or any other means. But there's this kind of rhetorical double game going on where they say there is no assistance, but there is the provision of passports. The opposition says that is a form of assistance. And the opposition questions why the passports are being given. Because in previous moments there has been a rejection of the provision of passports and the opposition argues that could occur again. But the interesting difference, I think, in the debate this last week compared to the one last year, is that the Prime Minister is using much more forceful moral language when asked about whether there should be sympathy for the group attempting to come. In this past week, he's said that to quote his. He's quoted his mother here, he says, you make your own bed and there should be no sympathy with a group of people who, at least in some parts, maybe not the whole group, willingly went to fight with a group that massacred Christians. Other minority groups used rape as a tool of war and was driven by motivation to create an anti democratic theocratic state. And the underpinning argument from the Prime Minister there being that these people do not share Australian values and have no place in Australia. So that's the intriguing difference this time around. And obviously the context, whether or not this is the driving force. But the obvious intervening event is the Bondi massacre, which has created a long and at times toxic debate about Muslim immigration in Australia.
- [07:29]
A
Bach, what's your take on what's going on there? Because, I mean, is it tricky word games from the government? Does the provision of passports amount to assistance? Has any other assistance, consular or otherwise, been given to these women? Presumably they need money to get out. Presumably they couldn't apply for passports from within in this horrific camp they're staying in. What's really going on?
- [07:53]
B
There's a bit of a mystery around this, but I think we can say a few things. Paul's right. The government's rhetoric has hardened over the past year, the message is the same. If they can make it back themselves, our hands are tied. We are forced to do this. It's not our fault, essentially. And I think that is probably a post Bondi thing. But at the same time, these people have been asking for passports for a long time. A lot of the information that the passports are based on photographs and whatever else. The other stuff that they need was collected by the government in 2022, as I understand it. So since then there's been various attempts by the family members to get passport issued and they have not been. And suddenly now they have been. And I can't get to the bottom of why Penny Wong's not answering questions about it and the Department of Foreign affairs won't talk about individuals. So that's one sort of aspect of the mystery. The other aspect is it is true that this is what they call a family rep. The families have gone over or representatives of the family have gone over to Syria to try to bring them back, that the government hasn't been actively involved in that. But the provision of passports and the, I guess the kind of fitting under the rubric that we have to do this because it's what the rules say is the government's position. It's interesting to me that today, I think, or last night, Tony Burke's position on that actually also sort of firmed up. He basically said, we're obliged, we have to do this, we can't not do it, et cetera. Whereas for the past two years at least they have been not doing it. And for the past seven years they haven't explored these options. So there is clearly some assistance going on, in my view.
- [09:37]
A
Yeah, and clearly, as you say, something's shifted in the last little while that these women have been given the passports and are able to leave the camp even though they got turned back. What does the Australian law say about the provision of passports to people who are in fact Australian citizens? I mean, citizenship is an either all thing. You can't be a little bit of a citizen. If you are, then you are and you are entitled to a passport, Right?
- [09:58]
B
Correct. And the government's now kind of been pushed and edged towards that decision because it's clear that finally we found out that passports have been issued. Passports act is the law and underpinning that is, as you say, citizenship and the rights of citizenship. And when a public servant was answering these questions a month ago in estimates, not just citizenship, but identity, and that's tied up with being Australian. That's a right we all have you turn up to an embassy overseas, you've lost your passport or it's been stolen or whatever, you're entitled to a passport as a citizen. And these people are no different. Women and children.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah, that's right. Well, and as we were talking about earlier, the children are entitled to Australian citizenship, even though not born in Australia, some of them, because they were born to Australian citizens overseas. Talk to me about. There's one woman, we've now learned, who is subject to what is called a temporary exclusion order, which prevents her from returning home to Australia for the next two years, whether or not she has a passport. So she. Even if she can get out of Syria and out of this horrible camp, she won't be able to come home. What are the grounds for those orders? And why is it that one woman has been selected out of this cohort that are all a bit sort of suspect, if you like, to be prevented from coming home, but the others are free to do so?
- [11:13]
B
We're all sort of people who are interested in this kind of speculating about that at the moment. The. It's a national security law. It was introduced under the Morrison government. Labor had some real objections to it, including constitutional objections at the time, but ended up backing it. It's a temporary way that the government can exclude people who they believe might be a national security threat, so might be involved in an extremist group or organisation or might be planning some kind of terrorist act or, you know, an associate of terrorists. It's that it's about. It's like that. It's kind of at the far end of what you'd put people's culp, and it's only temporary. It doesn't override the. What we were talking about before, the rights of citizenship, but it's sort of intended as a pause on their being allowed back into the country so that the government can figure out what to do. Now, they are challengeable. This law's never been challenged in the High Court. Those constitutional questions that were raised in 2019, they still exist. And this may be a test case to challenge it, but nevertheless, it's kind of right out there on the edge of national security. And this is, you know, this is for a group of people that the government knows quite well. They've had, you know, in one spot, they've been able to talk to their families and figure out what, you know, their stories are and what have you for seven years. So to apply it to one particular woman is bold. I can't answer the other part of your question. Who is she? What's her particular story? Because the government won't say. Tony Burke has given some details about her, but they haven't identified her.
- [12:56]
A
Yeah, I mean, presumably the intelligence agencies have been all over, you know, the families of these women and sort of their communities and the background from which they come. It's just interesting. It is interesting to sort of wonder what in particular this woman has done, whether there's fresh intelligence or it's based on the reasons, or her affiliation with ISIS when she went over to Syria. Paul, I want to ask you about the broader political context. This is such an interesting story in itself. It raises so many questions about what it means to be Australian and, you know, what Australian citizenship means. But it is unfolding at a time when there is a focus on Islamic extremism. Post Bondi, the opposition is about to release its immigration policy and we have the rise, the surging rise of one nation. And Pauline Hanson, of course, making comments this week saying there are no good Muslims. And more recently, she's come out and said that Lakemba, which is a. A heavily Muslim area in South West Sydney, is not a safe place and that other Australians don't feel welcome there. Connected or not connected, the Lakamba mosque has now received, you know, horrific death threats after those comments were made. To start with, what have coalition members said about Pauline Hanson's Islamophobic comments?
- [14:09]
C
Yeah, I do wonder if this week and the reaction to Hanson's comments on there being no good Muslims, which she slightly backtracked a couple of days later under a lot of pressure, and Barnaby Joyce has not backed her in her newest recruit. Matt Canavan, a Nationals far right senator, has really slammed Hanson and said this is proof she can't lead a major party. I do wonder if this week will be looked back at and perhaps this prediction will not come true at all. But I do wonder if this will be seen as one of the first weeks where scrutiny was really turned on one nation after a period of months in which they've been not really closely scrutinised. There's been a halo on them and they've got a lot of positive media attention and their polling has been surging off the back of immigration concern, even pre Bondi, but particularly post Bondi. And I wonder if the commentary will shift after this week to be slightly more critical to diminish this idea that Hanson has changed, that she's a more moderate person now, that she's more in touch with the mainstream. So we'll wait and see. But on the broader context, in terms of how the Prime Minister in particular is talking about ISIS brides this week. We call them Isis brides, but as James Patterson in the opposition calls out Pop points out, some of them might have gone merely as associates or unwilling partners, but others went with an intent to be part of this movement. So I think that the term is slightly misleading and also maybe even slightly sexist. But in terms of the context of what the Prime Minister's saying this week, I think there's a link to be drawn between how the Prime Minister is talking about ISIS families, how Chris Minns, the new South Wales Premier, has dealt with pro Palestinian protests, and how Peter Malinowskis, another right faction labor leader, dealt with the Adelaide Writers Festival issue. And in all of those cases there was a debate around rule of law and esoteric rights, around freedom of speech, freedom of association and constitutional rights for, for these ISIS families. And the kind of majority instinct to say from a mainstream labor leader to say, no, we don't quite want to emphasize those rights or conventions. We want to reflect the view of the majority. Which are, which is that these views or, or, or rights or the, the, the viewpoint of the advocates who back these kind of more radical positions or protest movements is not what a mainstream labor government wants to be associated with. And they're taking the risk of rubbing up against the rule of law to express that majority viewpoint. And that obviously brings them into conflict with legal experts, potentially with the High Court in the case of the use of these temporary exclusion orders. But if you look around the world as well, I mean, Keir Starmer, other centre left leaders are taking really quite striking steps to counter protest movements and counter extremist groups because they've made a determination that that's where majority opinion is. There is a hardening on attitudes towards immigration across the Western world. And I think that's what we're seeing play out here.
- [17:15]
A
Yeah, batsh. I want to ask you for your reflections on the sort of one nation coalition stance here and how they, how the coalition and in particular the new look Liberal Party leadership differentiates itself from one nation and perhaps distances itself from these very, very hostile to general Muslim population comments that Hanson has made. How does it differentiate itself while also I suppose throwing a bone to or showing some sympathy for the people who adhere to those views or who've switched their vote from Liberal to one nation because they can't alienate those people because they want them back to the Liberal Party. How do they toe that line?
- [17:56]
B
Well, perhaps if I could tell them that they would pay me some money to be a consultant for them. It's difficult for them to do. And Paul's right, I think, I think what he's describing is a move rightward of the centre of gravity of politics. So the. And immigration linked to housing actually is one of those key, one of the key things like the link between a lack of housing and a lack of young people being able to get ahead with immigration is a global trope. It's driven far right movements in Europe. It's driving, you know, Nigel Farage to present similar problems to the Tories as one nation is to the Liberals and nationals here. And Albanese and others are reflecting that they are pushing rightward with where they see the centre of gravity going and you know the expression of that is on the streets with the marches, march for Australia rallies that we've seen and they are very much anti immigration rallies. And I think you know, Albanese and others, certainly Taylor and the Liberal Party with Angus Taylor's comments this week about immigration and bad immigrants and people coming from bad countries and so forth is designed to whistle at those particular dogs because they think that's where the electorate has moved to or is moving to.
- [19:19]
A
And of course Angus Taylor and the Liberals are about to put out their immigration policy. We did have this week a leaked immigration policy that was apparently Susan Lee's the now defunct opposition leaders policy that she was going to put out and that did notably have exclusions of immigrants from Islamic extremist controlled regions of 13 countries. So you know, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, not the whole country, just certain areas within. So basically, I mean it was a ban on Muslim immigrants from particular areas where terrorism is rife. Paul, do we have any sense of whether the Angus Taylor led Liberal Party will put out a similar immigration policy with bans from regions?
- [20:06]
C
Yeah, this was a kind of hilariously absurd moment earlier this week where a few days after Susan Lee was toppled, people close to her leaked to our newspaper and a couple of others this migration plan that she was going to release this week. It was very quite hard line. It probably would have been tested in the High Court and there would have been a serious chance of it falling over. And it was an attempt by her allies to say look Taylor is going to shift to the right on migration, they're going to start countering one nation. But we were going to do the same thing if you just gave us some more time. But then the absurd part was that the right wing Home affairs front bencher John O'Dunniam and the immigration Spokesman Paul Scarr, who's not very right wing, came out and said they'd never seen this document.
- [20:46]
A
So they're either sort of being slightly disingenuous or they were so uninterested in the immigration policy that was going to be released next week that they hadn't read it possibly.
- [20:56]
C
But I think it did show it was a perfect encapsulation of the existing trend which was Susan Lee trying to preempt where her right wing would go, just continually shifting that way and not really standing up for the values that she put in her first speech around maintaining centrist values, but just on where debates in the west are going on migration and Bach, I take your point fully and agree there is clearly dog whistling going on and there's no, no doubt that far right bad actors are using this in their cause. But I think it's worth pointing out that there are lots of centre left governments picking up sentiment in non racially motivated parts of the community on this, on this issue as well. And a really good example is the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau who's kind of been a beacon of the left in the past decade OR2. In 2022 he determined that there was, you know, a housing crisis, crisis in infrastructure and just generally the Canadian society was feeling pretty uneasy about how the country was headed. He drastically cut immigration in the last two quarters of last year under Mark Carney who's kept the same policies in place. They actually had negative population growth in Canada. House prices have gone down by 22% and the Centre left government there, the Liberal Party they're called, talks about getting back in control of the borders. Kirstama is in the same vein. Albanese is using similar language now. So I do wonder if it's a kind of revolutionary moment in western politics where some of these talking points are no longer far right talking points, they're becoming much more mainstream and potentially with the support of the electorate.
- [22:29]
A
I guess where I'm interested in the sort of, I agree that it's become almost like a bipartisan position and with very sort of sensible logic behind it. I mean if you believe in sovereignty, you believe in sovereignty and you believe that we should be able to control our borders. But I just wonder, I'm sort of more interested I suppose in where that, that rhetoric, that anti immigrant or immigration rhetoric falls into more one nation territory which is actually we just don't want immigrants from certain countries and we don't like certain sections of the population who are here. And that seems to me to be a Real borderland between some sections of the coalition, right wing perhaps and the one nation support group Batsh. Just quickly tell us about. You talked before about the March for Australia rallies in Melbourne. You've attended a couple of those. What did you see at those rallies? What kinds of people were there? What kind of behaviour was witnessed?
- [23:20]
B
At the first rally I went to last year, that was the one that was led by Neo Nazis. And when I say neo Nazis, I'm not using, you know, a euphemism or an allegory. They are guys who wear hh Heil Hitler on their shirts, right? So these guys goose step and salute, Nazi salute. They led the rally, they, the rally moved literally to their drumbeat. They had a drummer to move the rally around the city. Since then they've kind of under the hate speech laws, they've kind of disbanded. But in the rally I went to recently that was held around Australia Day, they were still very much in evidence. The same personnel, they were just in MUFTI this time. They were harder to recognise, they were dispersed, but they were there. And the rally was a lot smaller this time and despite it being Australia Day and I think that perhaps the reporting around the Nazis had a. Put some of the more, you know, mainstream people off. But yeah, it's very white, it's very out of suburban and some of the rhetoric is incredibly hardline. I heard numerous racial slurs, aggressive, nasty, nasty stuff.
- [24:26]
A
You, you sent me a video that you'd taken at the rally. Can you just describe for listeners what was on that video? I was really shocked by it.
- [24:35]
B
Yeah, there were a couple of kids, as police might say, of African appearance who were sort of walking around with a microphone and a camera doing some kind of social media thing and trying to interview March for Australia participants. And a bunch of the marchers had gathered around them yelling aggressively, send them back. Chanting, send them back, send them back,
- [25:00]
C
send them back, send them back, send them back.
- [25:03]
B
And then using a variety of racial slurs which we can't really use, but one of them multiple, multiple times was the N word. It was quite distressing. We put it up on, we tried to bleep it and put it up online to show people what was going on. But you know, the whole thing was a bleep basically. So we took it back down again. It's disturbing vision and I hate to say it, but one nation was addressing that rally as was a couple of kind of Nazi affiliated people. So, you know, I think we all agree that the centre of political gravity has moved right on this issue. But the further right you move, the more you put people like you kind of privilege people like that who are right on the fringe. And I think that's we're at a slightly dangerous moment on this issue.
- [25:53]
A
Yeah, certainly. That's right. Happening openly and apparently legally on the streets of Melbourne, that, yeah, two boys of African appearance are being rounded upon, yelled at, racially vilified and intimidated in a very, very hostile way. It's scary stuff. Guys, we've run out of time. And Bach, you've been so interesting to talk to, and we'd love to have you back on again as things unfold. So thank you and thanks, Paul.
- [26:18]
C
Thanks so much, guys. Thanks, Bach.
- [26:20]
B
Thanks. Thanks, guys. It's been great.
- [26:29]
A
You can read all of our political news on our websites, theage.comau or smh.comiu Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong, with help from Debbie Harrington and Cormac Lally. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. Before you go, follow Inside Politics and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you for listening.