TRANSCRIPT - ABC RADIO INTERVIEW - AM WITH MELISSA CLARKE - THURSDAY 25 JUNE 2026

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

ABC RADIO INTERVIEW

AM WITH MELISSA CLARKE

THURSDAY, 25 JUNE 2026

SUBJECTS: National terrorism threat level, return permit for ISIS-linked woman, monoculture in Australia.

 MELISSA CLARKE: Tony Burke is the Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration, Citizenship and Cyber Security. I spoke to him about Mike Burgess' speech and he's also revealed to AM that the last ISIS bride has been granted permission to return to Australia. Tony Burke, thanks for speaking with AM this morning.

TONY BURKE: Good morning.

CLARKE: Mike Burgess said last night that the national terrorism threat level doesn't do a good job of describing the circumstances we face. Does the system need to be adjusted to make sure Australians really are getting a sense of what the threat is?

BURKE: This is something that we're looking at, the challenge the Director General went through last night is effectively, once you're at Probable, the next official ratcheting up is Expected, where you have a very specific event that you have had intelligence about that is about to occur. And we are not at that point. But within Probable, there is a spectrum.  And what Mike Burgess was making very clear last night is it has continued to increase the intensity of the threat level since we originally did the escalation to Probable.

CLARKE: So is there a formal process of reviewing these threat levels underway?

 BURKE: There is a review that's happening on that. That's right. And different countries, particularly are Five Eyes partners, everyone does it a slightly different way and we're looking at that. The thing that matters is making sure that the Australian people, but also all the law enforcement agencies get the best possible information. And so in the absence of there being a change in label, last night's speech served that exact purpose.

 CLARKE: Okay. Do you think it would kind of need more gradations in how we look at the threat or is it the description of the threats that might do a better job of helping convey what we're facing?

 BURKE: I guess that's part of what we're considering at the moment, but certainly the threats to national security have continued to increase, and as the temperature continues to rise, it's important that our agencies and the Australian public are given information about that.

CLARKE: He told us last night that there had been 14 events that had been dealt with since the Bondi terrorist attack that were terrorism threats. Could you give us a sense of how serious those incidents were?

BURKE: Well, one of the one of the challenges is we often look back on severity based simply on whether it happened. And every one of these where you intercept before an event actually happens, had that not occurred, then these are people who want to cause real harm.

CLARKE: So all 14 of those could have been very serious events?

BURKE: You don't get - any terrorism event, even when it's an arson attack, carries a risk to life.  When the Adass Israel synagogue fire took place. That arson attack, that terrorist attack, state sponsored from Iran, we were lucky that no one was harmed, but there was certainly a very real risk that people would have been armed. 


CLARKE: On that case, the attack on the Adass Israel synagogue, Mike Burgess gave us a bit more detail last night about the man that had directed that, someone who had lived in Australia, who's now in Iraq. He said that he's now in detention over there, for unspecified reasons. Is there any prospect of the victims and the community that suffered at the hands of that attack, getting justice from this individual? 


BURKE: Well, I'm glad that he's locked up. I'm glad that he's locked up and if he's locked up in another country rather than here, I'm not particularly troubled by that, but he should be locked up.

CLARKE: You don't think it would be good to have a particular prosecution for this crime in particular? 


BURKE: Well, certainly I don't want him at the end of a crime being released into the community in Australia. If he's offshore and out of Australia, I'm happier than if he's here. So at the moment, he's locked up and that's appropriate. If there was a situation where the alternative was freedom, then absolutely I'd want him to be prosecuted. But I want him in a position where he can do as little harm as possible.

You know, and this is where, that particular attack, it was, it brought all the concepts together. It was foreign interference, it was a terrorist attack, it involved organised crime. It's the exact concept that Mike Burgess is talking about in a speech where we used to look at things in silos and some of the discussion lately has been, oh, but how much is on counterterrorism versus foreign interference?  And the point was made I think really strongly last night, these are no longer separate entities.

CLARKE: The complexity that he outlined. While we have you, just a couple of other issues, we have one Australian woman with ISIS - links to ISIS families, prevented from returning to Australia because of that temporary exclusion order. Has this woman applied for a return permit?

BURKE: Yeah, if I can if I can take you through that because there's some complexity to this that your listeners won't be familiar with, so if I can explain. the temporary exclusion order applies until a permit is issued and when a permit is requested, a permit lawfully has to be issued. I've been working through with my department, my agencies, Australian Federal Police and ASIO, and with the lawyers to see every possible condition we can put on that permit.

CLARKE: So the request has been made? 


BURKE: Request has been made. We received the final advice yesterday that post-entry conditions, that's all the surveillance conditions - there's a whole series of conditions we can put in place there - but we received the final advice yesterday that we can no longer have an exclusion condition, any longer for her. We've checked with our agencies, they are ready, so that permit gets issued. What it then means is the conditions that do apply to her are everything that is possible.

So for example, she will have to report and we will have to know where she lives, where she works, where she studies, if she books a ticket to anywhere. For telecommunications, you cannot use any telecommunications device without 24 hours notice being given and that applies to a phone, to an email account, to anything on the internet, even if you want to use a public phone, it's 24 hours notice. Any social media, 24 hours notice on everything has to be given. So that there will be a very high level of scrutiny and surveillance and we have gone absolutely to the legal limit that we're able to. 


CLARKE: And that's the advice you've received? Has that return permit then now been issued or is that imminent?

BURKE: Yes.

CLARKE: It has been issued. So she could now return at any time under those conditions you've just outlined.

BURKE: That's right and that’s the absolute legal limit we've been able to go to and our agencies are ready.

CLARKE: And is this woman and her child the last of the ISIS linked members that you're aware of that we would be anticipating returning to Australia?

BURKE: That's the people who are in those camps. That's the total number of the people in those camps, but I should add, there has been a focus on these individuals who are in the camps because there are a whole lot of interviews given from them. There have been people returning since long before we came to government, including 45 men who went there to fight, all of whom had returned before we came to office. So the concept of there being returns, there being surveillance, there being work that our agencies have to do, for people who have made a horrific, ugly decision, that has continued for a very long time.

CLARKE: Tony Burke, just with your immigration minister hat on, we've seen One Nation leader Pauline Hanson cause some controversy by saying she would like to see a monoculture in Australia. You're the immigration minister. What do you make of the idea of having a monoculture in Australia?

BURKE: Australia's never been monocultural. Never. To talk about multicultural Australia is to just talk about modern Australia, to talk about who we are and who we've always been. And I find it really odd - I saw Angus Taylor unable to answer the question. Like, it's a really simple question: I love Australia, I love Australia for who we are and for who we've always been. And, you know, the Prime Minister often talks about a covenant, effectively this concept in Australia where you leave hatreds at the door, and other than that, you bring your whole self and we benefit from that and we build a really strong community together.

CLARKE: The other thing is immigration that you have to do is decide whether or not to allow people to come on a visa to speak or to cancel their visas if they’re hate speakers. We know the far right activist, Tommy Robinson, has previously been cancelled and rejected from speaking in Australia. What do you make of his appearance on a podcast being hosted by a prominent Australian?

BURKE: Well, he certainly wouldn't get a visa under me. He certainly wouldn't get a platform under me. The last thing we need in Australia is for the temperature to be raised by people who want to spread hatred being given a louder voice. He was banned by Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton. They knocked back a visa to him. I've made it even harder for people doing speaking tours to get visas here. When our security agencies tell us to turn the temperature down, it's for a reason, and there is a direct line between people who use dehumanising language, and then when we end up seeing examples of violence, I just say turn the temperature down. 


CLARKE: Tony Burke, thanks very much for speaking to AM this morning.