Cameron Milner: Tony Burke must come clean on his mate Jamal Rifi’s plan to return ISIS brides to Australia

The Federal Government is in the middle of full-blown, self-made, ISIS crisis. Dr Jamal Rifi, a Western Sydney GP and Muslim community leader who spearheaded the Friends of Tony Burke campaign which helped save the Home Affairs Minister from electoral oblivion in his seat of Watson last election, is co-ordinating a push to spirit the entire cohort of so-called ISIS brides back to Australia. Politics is all about perception, and this doesn’t look good. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he has no sympathy for the ISIS brides, who abandoned Australia to support the Islamic State. “We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine, destroy our way of life,” Albanese told the ABC. “And so, as my mother would say, ‘you make your bed, you lie in it’. It’s unfortunate that children are impacted by this as well, but we are not providing any support.” But they don’t appear to be doing too much to prevent it either. That this comes while the nation is still mourning the slaughter of innocents at Bondi, allegedly by gunmen inspired by ISIS ideology, is a further insult. So what did the Home Affairs Minister know of the plan by his mate to bring these women back into the country? Sky News host Sharri Markson revealed last year that Burke had held private, closed-door meetings with representatives from Save the Children, the charity which has lobbied for the ISIS brides’ repatriation to Australia. According to minutes from that June meeting, publicly released after Senate estimates proceedings, Burke asked Home Affairs officials present to exit the room so he could speak privately with the brides’ advocates — including Dr Rifi. What was said in that portion of the meeting is unknown. No minutes exist. What was recorded by one of the Home Affairs officials is that Burke told the room that the “government doesn’t want to be perceived to have been paying to have them smuggled out” and that he thanked the advocates for keeping the matter out of the media. Burke was also recorded to have said there “may be a way to get them out without government undertakings”. None of the record has been contested. This is a test not only for the current Government, but also the Opposition and indeed One Nation. The Opposition have to get a scalp here. They can’t possibly get any better opportunity to place the Government under immense pressure and take Burke out. These women aren’t refugees. They are people who left Australia to marry and provide children for terrorists. Likewise, One Nation has the opportunity to add rocket fuel to their vote just as Nigel Farage has done in the UK. Pauline Hanson’s comments suggesting there are no “good” Muslims was disgraceful. It was also a well targeted call to her base. Hanson will weaponise the ISIS brides saga if they are not refused entry to Australia by Labor just as Farage weaponised the rape of a 12-year-old girl by an Afghan asylum seeker in Warwickshire. Under different circumstances, this would have blown over. But, coming on the back of a poll surge by One Nation and the tragedy of Bondi, this is a crisis for the Government. At least Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has taken a principled stance, saying should the women return to Australia, they will face the full force of the law. Like Burke, Rowland is a Western Sydney MP, but she hasn’t allowed that to compromise her position. It’s another case of the tail wagging the dog. Albanese has outsourced leadership on Hamas, Gaza, Palestinian statehood and now the ISIS brides to Penny Wong and Burke. Wong is weak on these issues because she’s from the Labor Left. Burke has debts to repay. Home Affairs is a critical portfolio for keeping Australians safe from an evil world of jihadists and terrorists. Under Burke though the portfolio has been far less about stopping the boats as it’s been about Tony Burke getting the votes.