From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlan McGee.
This is seven am. When you look at the Al Roje refugee camp in northern Syria on Google Maps, you can see that it's only a few hundred meters away from an airport tarmac, But for the Australians stuck in the camp, getting on a plane home could.
Still be years away.
About forty women and their children are living there intense with no water, no electricity, and no real plan for their future. Today the Saturday Papers Jason Katsuki so on why the government seems to have abandoned its plans to bring them home. It's Tuesday, May twenty one. Jason, tell me a bit about these camps where the Australian women and children are stranded.
So we think about forty forty one Australian citizens, women and children who are living mostly in Al Roj, which is a large camp of internally displaced persons that's controlled by the Syrian Democratic forces up near the Iraqi border.
These are the.
Women and children left behind after the fall of Islamic State in twenty nineteen.
We're all tayed, to be honest, like we just want a normal life.
These are women who went to join the kind of Islamic Caliphate and married men who were considered to be fighters and part of that Islamic state terrorist group.
It's understood most of the women won't face any charges when and if they returned to Australia after they were trafficked or coerced by relatives to enter Syria.
Many of them had children while they've been living over there in Syria, and now that the war is kind of essentially over, they are stranded in these camps.
We're tired, we're broken, which shaded.
We just want normality for our kids.
It's not fair.
It's not fair for the kids.
It's not fair for us.
Most of us didn't even come willingly. I'm not a refugee of a country, like what am I doing. The Oleroche camp is located next to an oil field, so there's a lot of pollution that's coming from the oil field and floating through the camp. It's located in a desert. It gets very very hot there in summer. Temperatures now already in the mid to high forties, so it's very unpleasant conditions. Obviously very crowded. These are tents and it's
very makeshift. None of those essential kind of services that we're used to hear. You're running water, electricity, you have very harsh conditions and of course no air conditioning. What the governing authority there wants is for all of the country whose citizens are detained in this camp, they want those countries to repatriate their citizens to their home countries.
So Jason, it's not just the governing authority there in northern Syria that wants these Australians returned home, is it.
There's a bit of pressure back here as well.
So Save the Children has been one of the strongest advocates for the repatriation of the Australian citizens who are in Syria. Matt Tinkler, the CEO of Save the Children Australia. One of the things he said this week was these are Australian citizens.
They are all Australian citizens. All of these children are innocent, All of them are trapped in a dire situation.
What is the value of Australian citizenship if your government is not prepared to step in and help you when you're stranded overseas.
There's no good reason and ow of you are no reasonable explanation as to why some women and children were brought home and others were not.
They had been in encouraging the former Morrison government to repatriate those citizens. Scott Morrison authorized the return of eight children in twenty nineteen, and I think there was an expectation that he was prepared to consider the repatriation of all the others, but then COVID got in the way.
Then when the new government came in in October twenty twenty two, they repatriated seventeen people, that was four women and thirteen children, and then things kind of stopped, and save the children continued to advocate the return of the other forty, but there's been no movement. So they decided that the best thing they could do to put pressure on the government was to try to get the court, the Federal Court, to issue a rid of habeas corpus
so literally bring the body to the court. The Federal Court is a world away from a Middle Eastern war zone, but a group of Australians stuck in Syria believe this
is where they can win back their freedom. That attempt was heard in the Federal Court by Justice Mashinsky and he dismissed the application on the basis that the Australian government just does not have control of these people and therefore the court was unabled to issue this rid of habeas corpus and Save the Children have appealed that ruling. So Greg Barton, he's a research professor in Global Islamic politics at Deacon University. He has provided an affidavit in
support of Save the Children application. It's his very strong view that there's no obstacles to the Australian government repatriating the citizens who are located there. He is also of the strong view that the governing authority in that part of Syria very much wants the Australian government to repatriate our citizens and that they will do whatever they can to help to facilitate that.
So why nonsense? Then what has happened?
Do you think that's really put the brakes on this?
I think this is a classic case of politics getting in the way of good policy. Prime Minister Albanezi knows. I think that the right decision is to bring all of these citizens back home. He made a very powerful argument in favor of why that's necessary in October of twenty twenty two.
People have gone to where they are from. That is what has occurred here and that there's been something that's been worked through with the States, and it has been worked through on the basis of the national security advice. Will keep acting on the national security advice. Our priority is to keep Australian safe.
But once those seventeen people were back home, community leaders around where those seventeen people were returned, these are people in Western Sydney, started to get a bit worried about the security risks posed by these seventeen people. Those community leaders are led by there's three mayors from Western Sydney. They turned this into a national news story.
Where the radio silence from the government, from the Albanesi government, a complete lack of details.
The communities where these women and children are.
Likely to end up have accused the government of playing politics.
One that was quite astutely kind of fanned by Peter Dutton, the leader of the Opposition.
There is a very significant risk in bringing some of these people to our country that can't be mitigated, frankly, not to the level that we would require to keep Australian safe. And I think the government really needs to explain properly what it is they're proposing here.
But the most prominent of those was Frank Carbon, the mayor of Fairfield, which is located in western Sydney.
We stand by them. They're not welcoming Fairfood and if a wants to bring them back, well perhaps he can put them in his own neighborhood where he lives. We certainly don't want to be Fairfuld. We don't think it's so.
He's a former member of the Labor Party who became an independent. He's quite a popular local mayor and he really became a thorn in the side of the federal government's plans to repatriate more of the Australians who are over in Syria.
Stay alive.
There's not much you can do about it.
That well, there's not much.
We can do about it, but I can certainly make a lot of noise and we're very passionate out hearing fairful in that community will not forgive and forget, and we're telling Albo make sure you do the right thing. Put the strange.
A few weeks after the repatriation there was this kind of showdown at the Fairfield City Council offices where the Minister for Home Affairs, Clara O'Neil, went to meet the mayors, including Frank Cabon and the Mayor of Liverpool, ned Manoon. The Home Affairs Minister is gearing up to meet with Western Sydney mayors to discuss the repatriation of ISIS family
members in their communities. She brought along with her the Deputy Director of ASIO, Chris Teele, and they sat down in a room in the council offices and they went through all the issues. It took weeks, if not months to settle down, and I think by the end of that Anthony Albernezi has decided, well, he just doesn't want that issue back on the front page, especially as we're in the lead up to an election. This is just
a problem that Anthony Alberanezi wants to go away. He doesn't want it to be back in the news headlines, distracting from all the other things he's doing to try to secure his re election next year.
After the break what the experts say about whether these families are really a risk to the community. So, Jason, You've got these politicians in Western Sydney who are kicking up a stink given these women and children have spent so much time in countries and in camps where they're exposed.
To radical ideologies. Are those safety concerns?
Val I don't think the concerns are valid at all, because of all of the people that have been repatriated to their home countries over the last five to six years, there hasn't been a single incident, a single security incident involving any of those people. And of the seventeen that were returned to Australia back in twenty twenty two, they've all just integrated very, very smoothly and peacefully back into
life in Australia. They've all got families here in Australia, extended families, and those families have been very keen to help them settle back into life in Australia. They've all cooperated with the Australian authorities, and we've seen that not just here in Australia, but in every other country that has repatriated citizens from the camps in Syria. So I think what we're seeing from people who are voicing these objections perhaps getting in the way of any further repatriations,
is just classical expediency. As Dennis Richardson, the former Director General of ASIO and former Ambassador to the United States, has said very clearly at the time, and he reiterated those comments this week.
Well, look, I don't want to get involved in party politics of it.
The idea that Australian authorities can't monitor these people once they're home and ensure that they're not going to get involved in any kind of extremist activity is just nonsense.
I would simply note that the United States, Canada, the UK and a range of other countries have founded within their wit to take similar people back to their own countries, and if they can do it, it's simply a nonsense to suggest that we can't.
It's very much in Denis Richardson's view and certainly the view of the AFP and other agencies, that they can manage any security concern surrounding these people.
So Jason, if we have people like Dennis Richardson saying these people under security threat, then what exactly is the government's position here?
What have they been saying to you.
The people that I've been speaking to this week in the government have told me that while no formal decision has been made not to bring the Australian citizens back home, the government is not going to do anything to actually bring them back home. Between now and the election. That Prime Minister Anthony Alberinezi has effectively shelved this decision for the foreseeable future. That it's highly unlikely to be revisited until after the election, which we're expecting around March April
May next year. I guess the only thing that could possibly change that is if there was a very serious deterioration in the security situation surrounding the two camps where those citizens are located. I think if there was a very serious threat to life, then the government might be moved to act a bit so, but it seems highly unlikely at this stage that anything will happen until next year.
So, given other countries are repatriating their citizens, I imagine that the group that is responsible for these camps, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, I imagine they're not too chuffter the Australian governments not taking back our citizens. What sort of pressure is there on the Australian government to bring them home now?
Well, I think it's fair to say that they are pleading with the Australian government to repatriate their citizens. Yeah, they're saying that these cabs are a major burden for them. They're massive security risks for northern Syria. They want to do everything they can to reduce the number of people there,
the burden that they are carrying. It is possible that the Federal Court will overturn the first decision which dismissed the application for the rid of habeas corpus, but I think that's probably unlike even if the court ruled in favor of save the children application, I think the Commonwealth would probably then appeal that decision to the High Court.
We'd see probably more legal argument. I think we just have to wait until the political circumstances are right, that the government feels that they can repatriate the citizens who are mating over there without incurring a significant political cost. It's one of those classic political scenarios where the interests of voters at home trump the interests of those who are stranded overseas.
Thanks so much for your time, Jason.
Thanks Ashland, it's great to talk to you.
Also in the news today, the president and Foreign Minister of Iran have being killed in a helicopter crash, according
to Iranian media reports. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic states an election for a new president must be held within fifty days, which comes as voter turn out in Iran reached historic lows during recent parliamentary elections, and the Australian Electoral Commission has conceded that AI deep fakes are likely to be used in the upcoming election and that it's limited in its.
Ability to stop it.
The AEC's commissioner, Tom Rogers says robo calls using deep fakes could in some cases be perfectly legal, adding that his organizations.
Quote electoral toolkit.
Is very constrained with what we can deal with and not deal with. I'm Ashelin McGee. This is seven am.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you again tomorrow