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Asked by Insiders host David Speers if they don’t pose a threat to Australia, Burke replies:
On the information that we have, the best way to protect Australians has not involved any further temporary exclusion orders.
Speers goes on to ask Burke, if he is actively trying to stop them, he responds:
We are actively making sure we do nothing to help them. Nothing to help them at all.
Speers:
Nothing to stop them?
BurkeL:
Other than a temporary exclusion order, there isn’t a legislative power to stop an Australian citizen from entering Australia. Effectively that question goes to are we breaking the law and the answer is no.
Burke calls information on Australians detained in Syria ‘very strong’
Burke stresses the women are “not a coherent cohort”.
I can give the complete confidence to community we know the different individuals, we know the state of mind and the effective ideology of different individuals – they are not a coherent cohort. That is why the person where a temporary exclusion order has been issued is in a different category to other members of that group.
… our information is very strong. That’s how you can single one person from the others.
Tony Burke tells Insiders Coalition is ‘plain wrong’
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, says the coalition is “just plain wrong” on the passport rights of Australian women and children in a Syrian detention camp.
On Monday night, 34 Australian women and children – the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters – left from al-Roj camp, in north-eastern Syria, after being released by Kurdish authorities for their expected repatriation to Australia
Appearing on ABC Insiders, Burke says:
Under Australian law, if you’re a citizen and you apply for a passport, you get a passport. I heard the opposition claim - this clause or that clause. Anything would have to be under ASIO advice. Of course, of course, intelligence agencies said the different part of the Passports Act had been act we would respond to that, if they had intelligence to that effect. But the claims from the opposition that somehow the standard right for any citizen to have a passport has been suspended here just plain wrong and they know that.
…There’s been no advice from ASIO that the Passports Act provisions have been activated. There has been advice for one of the people that has come to me that the threshold for a temporary exclusion order has been activated and I have acted on that and issued the temporary exclusion order. One of my concerns with how the opposition have handled this is they have effectively said the Minister be able to make it up. Michaelia Cash did a long media release saying, “This is all the minister needs to do”, as though somehow in national security portfolio you should ignore your national security intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Federal police seize 28kg of cocaine hidden in luxury bus
Authorities have found more than 28kg of cocaine on a luxury bus in South Australia, concealed behind the vehicle’s television.
The discovery came after Australian Border Force (ABF) officers intercepted a vessel berthed at Outer Harbor, examining a roll-on/roll-off vessel on Monday 16 February.
A forensic search using technology including videoscopes and detector dogs, identified “several one-kilogram packages of a white powdered substance hidden behind a television inside a luxury bus,” Australian federal police (AFP) said in a statement.
Border force officers referred the detection to the AFP who seized the illicit drugs and commenced their inquiries.
This amount of cocaine, had it reached the Australian community, had an estimated street value of about $9m, with the potential for about 140,000 street-level deals.
AFP Det Acting Supt Simon Lalic said the AFP – together with its state, commonwealth and international law enforcement partners – was committed to disrupting and dismantling organised criminal syndicates threatening Australia. He said:
Criminals are driven by their own greed and profit and will attempt any method to import harmful illicit substance into our country. No matter how creative these criminals attempt to be, our message is clear – we are on to you.
Be bold in May budget, roundtable guests urge Chalmers
It’s been six months since Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable and the economists, business heads and union figures who attended are feeling cautiously optimistic, AAP reports.
Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood hopes the roundtable laid the foundation for a broader set of changes in the budget and beyond.
Dr Chalmers did an “amazing job” of marshalling disparate views, finding consensus in the room and communicating it to the public, according to ANU Crawford School of Economics and Government research fellow Shiro Armstrong.
Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally says the budget must build on the momentum of the roundtable and eventually result in a set of proposals to take to the next election.
While declining to be interviewed, Dr Chalmers says via a statement the budget will be the “main game” for economic reform.
Following Labor’s landslide election win and with the maximum distance until voters return to the polls, the timing of the budget is ripe for genuine reform, in the view of independent MP Allegra Spender. She says:
If you’re ever going to do something meaningful, this is the budget to do it, because it’s the budget where you can take the greatest risk.
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Good morning and welcome to our live news blog this Sunday.
The Australian federal police have seized more than 28kg of cocaine hidden behind a television on a luxury bus in South Australia.
Meanwhile, guests of Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable are urging the treasurer to be bold in the May budget, acknowledging the government has already taken some important steps.
The Winter Olympics is coming to a close. It’s Australia’s most successful campaign to date, with six medallists. The Moguls champion Cooper Woods and the aerial skiing silver medal winner, Danielle Scott, were selected as the flag bearers for the closing ceremony, to take place in Verona early tomorrow morning.
Parents in NSW will be able to access a new personalised childhood vaccination schedule tool launched today by the state government amid increasing measles cases circulating in the community and decreasing immunisation rates.
Amid heightened immigration tensions in Canberra, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, will appear on the ABC’s Insiders.
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