Australia news live: Tony Burke accuses Coalition of ‘silly hypocrisy’ on Syria camp group

By Martin Farrer · The Guardian World

Home affairs minister says opposition had repatriated Australians from Syria when in government. Follow today’s news live Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Burke revealed that the decision to make a temporary exclusion order against one woman on Monday - who he revealed came to Australia and became a citizen under the Howard government and went to Syria under the Abbott government - was made after reports of the group leaving the camp and preparing to return to Australia had surfaced. Burke said it would not have made sense to issue the order earlier because it is set for two years. There’s a lot of very silly deeply hypocritical claims coming from the opposition today. We had 40 people under the Coalition do self-managed returns, that didn’t just include women and children, it included fighters. It included men who had gone there to fight. Now, they were among the returns who came back. The fact that people with Australian passports have returned from those sorts of situations is not new. It happened under them. Continue reading...