TRANSCRIPT - TV INTERVIEW SKY NEWS SUNDAY AGENDA WITH ANDREW CLENNELL - SUNDAY 10 AUGUST 2025
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS SUNDAY AGENDA WITH ANDREW CLENNELL
SUNDAY, 10 AUGUST 2025
SUBJECTS: PALESTINIAN VISAS, GAZA CONFLICT, PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD, HARBOUR BRIDGE PROTEST, INTERNATIONAL STUDENT VISAS, PERMANENT MIGRATION, AFP COMMISSIONER
ANDREW CLENNELL: First today, about this cancellation of the visa of a Palestinian woman, Mona Zahed, after it was discovered she had praised the October 7 attacks online. Take us through your thought process on that. Looks like the media brought this to attention, the visa was cancelled. Are there legitimate concerns out of that, that since October 7, some people with the wrong kind of views have been allowed into the country?
TONY BURKE: Yeah, there's a bit to unpack with this, but I'll do it as tightly as I can for you. First of all, the visa ended up being cancelled before we even got to character grounds. So this particular person was a very unusual visa application and a visa that she was in fact, not eligible for. So before we even got to the character grounds issue, she wasn't eligible for the visa that had been issued and the department administratively cancelled the visa. If I explain how unusual this application was, this was someone from Gaza who had who was not going through the humanitarian visa process that we've got in place, or even through a visitor visa for that matter. But who'd applied on the entertainment stream where the presumption of that visa is, you are coming for a fixed tour, where the tickets are being sold, the dates are all in place, and your intention is then to return to the country you came from. Now, you can see a few reasons there, why, as soon as it was brought to the attention of people more senior in the department, they looked at them and thought, “Hang on, this individual is not eligible for this particular visa.” So had we got to eligibility and then we got to the character stage, there's a few things that would have had to be unpacked and worked through. So this ended up not being determined, but obviously it would have had to take into account, what's there on the record that's been reported in the media. There's some complexity with some of that because a lot of it doesn't actually appear on her social media accounts. It appears on the social media accounts of others and has been attributed to her. Now, I don't make any conclusion on that. It never got to me at that sense because administratively, she ended up being not eligible for the visa that she'd applied for.
CLENNELL: We had a situation, I guess people couldn't get out of Gaza. There was a pause in Palestinian visas after the government let a couple of thousand people in after October 7 on visitor vas. Has that pause ended now? Are you planning to offer more visas, especially now the conflict appears to be getting more serious? Where’s it all at?
BURKE: Okay, so even though these visas were issued in the numbers that you've referred to, not that many people came here, in that order. So in rough terms, you’re talking about half the people who, for the visas have been issued, ended up actually getting here, and that was because the borders started to close, and secondly, people could only in fact get out if consular assistance was given, because you needed the approval of a number of countries to be able to get people out, which goes to the visa we were talking about a moment ago. Even if the visa was still in place, I'm not sure how she would have actually got out. There are some very strict rules around consular assistance, and what other countries are willing to agree to on transit. So where we're at now, we would have had something in the order of close to 1,000 visas where people were trapped in Gaza, where now down to more than half that number, but not too much more, where we still have visa holders. Now, some of that will be that people decided they didn't want to come to Australia, some of it will be people found another pathway out of Gaza. Some it will be that those people are no longer alive. There's a few different reasons for the reduction in numbers. Overwhelmingly now are the people who are in that visa group, that had the initial check against the Movement Alert List. I've subsequently, we've had ASIO go through everybody on the list twice now. And so they are in fact the most highly checked cohort that we've ever had. They are still a situation, though, where overwhelmingly, they're not able to leave. The borders are closed and to get those individuals out, and some of them have a very close family in Australia. There's some who I've been in rooms where people have been talking to them on FaceTime and I've seen over those couple of occasions, people just get thinner. This is, the example I'm giving here is a couple of people, a couple of women who have been hiding in to church for more than a year now. So there's some real challenges, people with some very direct family connections, people have been thoroughly vetted and I really do want Australia to be able to welcome them here. For those individuals, so at the moment, getting them out is incredibly difficult. We have people working on it, but it's not simply the agreement of Israel. You also need the agreement of transit countries. It's not an easy pathway and obviously with… we're watching with the humanitarian disaster there, the need to try to be able to help some of these individuals has never been greater.
CLENNELL: And so from your comments earlier, I suppose about a thousand ended up here and most of them have been put on three year visas now, haven't they? What happens after the three years?
BURKE: I've done the three years on case by case, so not everybody… some people are on bridging visas. Some people, everyone, I think everyone now, there wouldn’t be many who are still on a visitor visa… overwhelmingly, people will either be on a bridging visa, or they went to the Humanitarian stream. There's a part of that group…we've made case by case decisions for some people to be here permanently. There was one of those has been a bit of publicity about someone who competed on the ABC show, The Piano, a man by the name of Baher, and he and his wife, Alaa, she is an optometrist. They're working, they've got three beautiful daughters in Australia. They're making a great contribution here. And if you ever have a look, I know it's a competitor station, if you look at episode three of that show, you'll see him just talk beautifully about the promise of Australia and the new life that they're wanting to start here. So there's some people where we've moved them across all the stages that overwhelmingly people are on the humanitarian temporary visa at the moment.
CLENNELL: Have you had to detain anyone or send anyone back somewhere who has come here and has found on character grounds? Has anyone had a character ground issue after a subsequent screen?
BURKE: I won't go through the individual cases in too much detail. I'll say that at least one person is no longer of Australia, who was brought here, and the work of our security agencies and the partnership, in making sure that we're keeping Australian safe couldn’t be stronger. The reality is you never stop collecting information on individuals. That's what our security and intelligence agencies do.
CLENNELL: Can you say roughly what the concern was around that individual? Was it something they posted online or something different to that?
BURKE: We share this work between myself and the assistant ministers. I didn't do that particular case. I've been briefed at a high level with respect to it. But this is a lot more… the character conversation that you and I started with, Andrew, that's very much, we don't need the security agencies for that. That's not about whether someone's a security threat. That's entirely a values proposition as to whether or not we're contributing to social cohesion or not. There are some tougher tests that are done by the security agencies and those issues, never stop being dealt with, and we have a really high degree of caution. We don't offer for people to even go onto the three year humanitarian visa unless we’ve got a pretty high degree of confidence.
CLENNELL: But this individual, then, was perceived to be some potential terror threat, anything of that nature?
BURKE: Oh, we're not looking at anything of that nature, and there's been no situation where there's anything that I've been briefed, where there is any risk of harm to Australians.
CLENNELL: I mean, given the situation with Benjamin Netanyahu looking to go in an occupy Gaza, do you see a situation where you as minister would want to see more humanitarian visas granted?
BURKE: Look, the priority that I've got at the moment is where Australians have family members who were there, you know… no one country can deal with everything that are the challenges over there, and people don't want to be part of helping with a plan to de-populate Gaza or anything like that. Like that's something that's being weighed up and people having to be really careful with as well. So, yeah, we're not the only country that's in this situation. Canada, even Greece, Belgium, New Zealand have taken some in, the United States have taken some at different points. So there's a lot of countries in the world that are helping in different ways. We’re trying to do it in a careful way. The best outcome is ceasefire, aid gets through, hostages are release, and people are safe. Like that's the best outcome. We're not in control of that. So what we are trying to make sure that we do, just as a decent country, is in the first instance where people have strong connections to Australia, to work with our security agencies, make sure that it's safe to people to bring in here. That gives us a situation where we've kept people on the visa load that we have. But at the moment, the issuing of visas at one level doesn't matter, because we can't get people out.
CLENNELL: No, I understand.
BURKE: There's a limited number that we are sometimes getting out, but I'm also conscious I don't want to be in the business of just, making it look like I'm being compassionate and giving people false hope. We're dealing with a humanitarian catastrophe. That's what we're watching, and we have to be a responsible nation, a decent nation. We've got a preserve our own national security and all of that, and the starting point is always people who already have the strongest links to Australia.
CLENNELL: Alright, we've seen this statement by the Foreign ministers, including Australia again, calling for ceasefire. What do you think will happen if Benjamin Netanyahu does move in and seeks to occupy Gaza?
BURKE: Well it’d be a breach of international law and if they start doing what they've been doing with the West Bank and have settlers move in, that's a further illegal action under international law. What we are watching is horrific, and Australia with that statement yesterday, we're joining with other nations and just saying this must not happen. We are we are watching a humanitarian catastrophe, and we have seen for a long time, people being killed and the death toll involving massive numbers of people who have nothing to do with Hamas. Absolutely nothing to do with Hamas are who are being shot, who had been bombed and who are now being starved. None of this, none of this is seen as making excuses for or showing any sympathy towards Hamas. Quite the contrary. We've always condemned their action. They're a terrorist group. They have caused unspeakable harm to Israelis and the Palestinians. That's what that group is. This concept of somehow, you're weak against Hamas if you're not willing to be cruel to the Palestinian people is a ridiculous proposition.
CLENNELL: Alright, well—
BURKE: And we need there to be… I'm not saying that that's your view, Andrew. I'm just saying that that aspect of the debate that we sometimes get is a ridiculous proposition. And we need to have a situation where the world does what we can do, we're not in charge of it. There are things that we can do to help and statements like that were pretty clear and very strong.
CLENNELL: The Prime Minister's trying to get a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, but the International Criminal Court has a warrant out for his arrest. As Home Affairs Minister, what would happen if the Israeli PM came here?
BURKE: Penny Wong’s previously been asked on this… we're not dealing deal with hypotheticals. We're not dealing with any of that. We have a respect for international institutions which Penny Wong as Foreign Minister has referred to before. But we don't get into that hypothetical. The Foreign minister hasn't, the Prime Minister hasn’t, and I'm not going to.
CLENNELL: So you wouldn't say whether he’d be arrested or left alone?
BURKE: I just said I'm not going to go into it. That means I'm not going to go into it.
CLENNELL: The PM’s spoken to the head of the Palestinian Authority as he weighs up recognising the Palestine. But the Palestinian Authority has the West Bank and Hamas has control of Gaza. So what exactly would we be recognising if we recognise Palestine as a state? Because Mahmoud Abbas is not even in charge of Gaza.
BURKE: This is a conversation that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister are leading, and so I don't want to get ahead of any of that. But can I say, there have frequently been countries where part of that nation has been occupied by a terrorist group and we haven't ceased to recognise the country. Both Syria and Iraq had long period where parts of those countries were being occupied and realistically controlled by ISIS. It didn't stop us from recognising and having diplomatic relations with those countries themselves. So, you know, there's a fair bit of precedent on this.
CLENNELL: What's your reaction to what occurred with the Harbour Bridge protest? Should Chris Minns have attempted to stop it? Are you completely at ease with the whole thing, given some of the signs and pictures of the Ayatollah etc that were brought across the bridge?
BURKE: Oh, look, if I start by saying that I'm not going to have some people holding up ridiculous signs undermine the tens and tens and tens of thousands of people who walked across that bridge. I think that the families and the people who were there just wanting to stop the killing, and wanting to add their voice to that, you can't associate them in any way, shape, or form, with a small number of people holding up ridiculous signs. I'm not sure that I've ever been to a protest where there isn't someone holding up a ridiculous sign. And you can see some… there can be some demos where everything's absurd and everything's over the top. This certainly was not that. There's no way it was that. The state approval issue, the traffic issue, I’m a Federal Member I don't get into any of that. What I'll say is, good people walked across that bridge for the right reason, feeling helpless in so many ways to be able to stop something that they know needs to stop, and it was a good statement, well made and well heard.
CLENNELL: The opening up of the student cap announced last week by you and Jason Clare, lifting the number of international student visas here a year from 270,000 to 295,000. Why have you decided to do this? Because clearly migration is still putting a strain on housing.
BURKE: It's still eight per cent below where the student numbers had previously been at. The key thing here to remember with international education, yes, it's an important export for Australia, but there are lots of industries that have to provide a home for their workers…this is the only one I can think of where you've got to provide a home for every customer. International education has a particular obligation to be able to help with student housing. And particularly the larger universities, a whole lot of them had not been pulling their weight. They'd simply outsourced that job. In the increase that we've done, we've made very clear to international education generally, the universities in particular.. “You need to pull your weight on student housing.” It is an unusual industry in that way, and that's what we expect. We want the industry to do well, we want the industry to thrive, but we want them to carry the responsibility and not simply outsource to others, the obligation there is to provide a home for these students.
CLENNELL: You are yet to announce a permanent migration figure for the year. Could it be that for the first time ever, Australia breaks the 200,000 mark in terms of permanent migration?
BURKE: I'll say a couple of things on this… at the moment that we're processing on the same numbers as last year. So at the moment, the way we're processing certainly doesn't do what you've just described. Second thing I'd say is the permanent migration figures are often quite perceptive, because the public debate on permanent migration happens as though they are additional people coming here. Overwhelmingly, the permanent migration applicants are already here on temporary visas and convert from being here on a temporary visa to being here on a permanent visa. So there's lots of visa classes where overwhelmingly we're adding to the number of people living in Australia. This one, because it appears in the budget, always attracts a lot of eyeballs. The reality is the permanent visa program overwhelmingly, not entirely, but overwhelmingly, involves people who in fact already live in Australia.
CLENNELL: Are you saying that it'll be around 195,000 a mark, which is the record. Would it be around there? Just under 200,000.
BURKE: It's a good try. I'm not going to announce before I announce. There's a final layer of consultation that happens with state jurisdictions, that Jim Chalmers is working with me on at the moment. So that's going around right now. It won't be too long before we announce. There won't be major movement, and at the moment, we're processing on the same program that we had last year.
CLENNELL: Alright, you announced during the week, Reece Kershaw was retiring as Federal Police Commissioner, Krissy Barrett is replacing him. Why wasn't the job advertised? Why wasn't there a recruitment panel put in place as is customary for these kind of appointments?
BURKE: I'll say a couple of things. First of all, I want to pay tribute to Reece Kershaw. It's one of the privileges of my life to work so closely with the Australian Federal Police. They are an extraordinarily organisation and Reece Kershaw’s been a great leader. I was surprised when he came to me and said that he was ready to retire. When he explained the family situation and wanting to move back north with them… I get it. And I respect it. And I reckon there's a lot of fishing that he's looking forward to. He'll work flat out right up to October 3, but I reckon he'll love putting his feet up, and he's earned it. He's kept Australians safe and full credit to him. Historically, the Australian Federal Police, this commissioner position has been filled from people within the Australian Federal Police. Whenever you get a vacancy, you do have to make that decision. Do we run a public application process or do we believe we already have the outstanding candidate? When I went to the PM, they were the two options in front of us. The interesting thing was the Prime Minister and I both had the same name in our heads as to who the outstanding candidate was. You see, with Krissy Barrett, you don't only have somebody who right now has played such a phenomenal role in the national security work of the Australian Federal Police. You look at the different roles the Federal Police plays, one of our key things that we do now is our engagement in the Pacific. Krissy Barrett played a critical role there in the Solomon’s. Another part of what the Federal Police do is they in fact run the policing in the ACT. Krissy worked on the beat as an ACT police officer. And not everybody in the Australian Federal Police is a sworn officer. There are a whole lot of people who just dedicate their professional lives to the organisation without becoming sworn officers. Krissy Barrett started in the organisation in one of those roles. So you don't just have someone who has serious leadership and serious policing skills. You've got somebody who understands the depth of the Australian Federal Police, like no other. So, you know, what's the point—
CLENNELL: Alright I'm just going to ask you—
BURKE: What’s the point of going through the whole advertising process if you already know who you want.
CLENNELL: Alright, but I'm just going to ask you briefly, and I am out at the time. Did the government…was there any tension between the government and Reece Kershaw over the handling of the terror caravan hoax?
BURKE: No, I wouldn't say tension at all. At all. I wasn't the minister at the time of that, but certainly everything that I saw, the relationship is good. He's trusted by the government. He's valued by the government and we wish him well.
CLENNELL: Tony Burke, thanks so much for your time.