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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7AM.

When you look at the Al Roj refugee camp in Northern Syria on Google maps, you can see that it’s only a few hundred metres away from an airport tarmac.

But for the Australians stuck in the camp, getting on a plane home could still be years away.

About 40 women and their children are living there in tents with no water, no electricity, and no real plan for their future.

Today, The Saturday Paper’s Jason Koutsoukis, on why the government seems to have abandoned its plans to bring them home.

It’s Tuesday, May 21.

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ASHLYNNE:

Jason, tell me a bit about these camps where the Australian women and children are stranded.

JASON:

So there’s, we think, about 40 to 41 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.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 1:

“These are the women and children left behind after the fall of Islamic State in 2019.”

Audio Excerpt - Al Roj refugee 1:

“We are all tired. To be honest, like, we just want a normal life.”

JASON:

These are women who went to join the, kind of, Islamic caliphate and married men who were, you know, considered to be fighters and part of that Islamic State terrorist group.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 2:

“It’s understood most of the women won’t face any charges when and if they return to Australia after they were trafficked or coerced by relatives to enter Syria.”

JASON:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Al Roj refugee 2:

“We are tired, we are broken, we are shattered, 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 did not even come willingly here. I’m not a refugee. I have a country. Like, what am I doing here?”

JASON:

The Al Roj camp is located next to an oil field. So there's a lot of pollution that's coming from the oil field and floating, you know, through the camp. It's located in the desert. It gets very, very hot there in summer. Temperatures now already in the mid to high 40s. 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 here. You know, running water, electricity. Yeah, very harsh conditions and, of course, no air conditioning.

What the governing authority there wants, is for all of the countries whose citizens are detained in this camp, they want those countries to repatriate their citizens to their home countries.

ASHLYNNE:

So Jason, it’s not just the governing authority there in Northern Syria that wants these citizens returned home, is it? There's a bit of pressure in Australia too.

JASON:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Matt Tinkler:

“They are all Australian citizens, all of these children are innocent, all of them are trapped in a dire situation.”

JASON:

What is the value of Australian citizenship if your government is not prepared to step in and help you when you're stranded overseas?

Audio Excerpt - Matt Tinkler:

“There's no good reason in our view and no reasonable explanation as to why some women and children were brought home and others were not.”

JASON:

They had been encouraging the former Morrison government to repatriate those citizens. Scott Morrison authorised the return of eight children in 2019. 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 2022, they repatriated 17 people. That was four women and 13 children. And then things kind of stopped. And Save the Children continued to advocate for the return of the other 40, 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 writ of habeas corpus. So literally bring the body to the court.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 3:

“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.”

JASON:

And that attempt was heard in the federal court by Justice Moshinsky 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 unable to issue this writ of habeas corpus, and Save The Children have appealed that ruling.

So Greg Barton, he's a research professor in global Islamic politics at Deakin University, he has provided an affidavit in support of the Save The Children application. It's his, you know, very strong view that there's no, 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.

ASHLYNNE:

So why none since then? What has happened, do you think, that's really put the brakes on this?

JASON:

I think this is a classic case of politics getting in the way of good policy. Prime Minister Albanese knows, I think, that the right decision is to bring all of these citizens back home. He made a very powerful argument in favour of why that's necessary in October of 2022.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“People have gone to where they are from. That is what has occurred here. And, that'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. We'll keep acting on the national security advice. Our priority is to keep Australians safe.”

JASON:

But once those 17 people were back home, community leaders around where those 17 people were returned, these are people in western Sydney started to get a bit worried about the security risks posed by these 17 people. Those community leaders, led by these three mayors from western Sydney, they turned this into a national news story.

Audio Excerpt - Sky News Reporter:

“With radio silence from the government, from the Albanese 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.”

JASON:

One that was quite astutely, kind of, fanned by Peter Dutton the leader of the opposition.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“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 Australians safe, and I think the government really needs to explain properly what it is they are proposing here.”

JASON:

But the most prominent of those was Frank Carbone, the mayor of Fairfield, which is located in Western Sydney.

Audio Excerpt - Frank Carbone:

”We’re hurt, we stand by them, they're not welcome in Fairfield. And if Albo wants to bring them back, well perhaps you could put him in his own neighbourhood where he lives. We certainly don't want to them in Fairfield, we don’t think it’s….”

JASON:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Radio Host:

“There's not much you can do about it, though.”

Audio Excerpt - Frank Carbone:

“Well, there's not much we can do about it, but we can certainly make a lot of noise, and we're very passionate out here in Fairfield and our community will not forgive and forget. And we're telling Albo, make sure you do the right thing. With the Australians…”

JASON:

So, a few weeks after the repatriation, there was this kind of showdown at the Fairfield City Council offices where the Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O'Neill, went to meet the mayors, including Frank Carbone and the Mayor of Liverpool, Ned Mannoun.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 4:

“The Home Affairs minister is gearing up to meet with Western Sydney mayors to discuss the repatriation of ISIS family members in their communities.”

JASON:

She brought along with her the deputy director of ASIO, Chris Teal, 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 Albanese 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 Albanese 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.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, what the experts say about whether these families are really a risk to the community.

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ASHLYNNE:

So Jason, you’ve got these politicians in Western Sydney 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 valid do you think?

JASON:

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 5 to 6 years, there hasn't been a single incident, a single security incident involving any of those people. And of the 17 that were returned to Australia back in 2022, 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, you know, voicing these objections, perhaps getting in the way of any further repatriations, is just classic political expediency. You know, 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, those comments this week.

Audio Excerpt - Dennis Richardson:

“Look I don’t want to get involved in the party politics of it.”

JASON:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Dennis Richardson:

“I would simply note that the United States, Canada, the UK and a range of other countries have found it 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.”

JASON:

It's very much, in Dennis Richardson's view and certainly the view of the AFP and other agencies, that they can manage any security concerns surrounding these people.

ASHLYNNE:

So Jason, if we have people like Dennis Richardson saying these people aren’t a security threat then, what exactly is the government’s position here? What have they been saying to you?

JASON:

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 Albanese 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, a bit sooner. But, it seems highly unlikely at this stage that anything will happen, until next year.

ASHLYNNE:

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 to chuffed the Australian government's not taking back our citizens. What sort of pressure is there on the Australian government to bring them home now?

JASON:

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 camps are a major burden for them, their massive security risks for northern Syria. They want to do everything they can to reduce the number of people there, the burden that they carry. It is possible that the federal court will overturn the first decision which dismissed the application for the writ of habeas corpus, but I think that's probably unlikely. Even if the court ruled in favour of the 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 remaining 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.

ASHLYNNE:

Thanks so much for your time, Jason.

JASON:

Thanks, Ashlynne. It's great to talk to you.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today,
The president and foreign minister of Iran have been 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 50 days, which comes as voter turnout in Iran reached historic lows during recent parliamentary elections.

And the Australian Electoral Commission has conceded that AI deepfakes are likely to be used in the upcoming election, and that it is limited in its ability to stop it.

The AEC’s commissioner, Tom Rogers, says robo-calls using deepfakes could, in some cases, be perfectly legal adding that his organisation’s, quote, “electoral toolkit is very constrained with what we can deal with and not deal with.”

I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you again tomorrow.

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