TRANSCRIPT - MINISTER TONY BURKE - ABC INSIDERS - SUNDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: ISIS brides, Temporary exclusion orders, Update on new laws for hate speech

DAVID SPEERS: Tony Burke, welcome to the program.

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, TONY BURKE: Hi David.

SPEERS: So on the passports, was it possible to deny passports to these women and children?

BURKE: Under Australian law, if you're a citizen and you apply for a passport, you get a passport. I've heard the Opposition claim, ‘oh, there's this clause or that clause’. Anything would have to be under ASIO advice. Of course, if our intelligence agencies said that different parts of the Passports Act had been activated, then 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 is just plain wrong, and they know that.

SPEERS: Well, the Passports Act is pretty clear, that a passport can be denied if someone might prejudice the security of Australia. So are you saying there was no advice from ASIO that any of these people prejudiced the security of Australia?

BURKE: 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've effectively said the Minister should 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 a national security portfolio you should ignore your national security intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Anyone who has that sort of view is not fit to handle the nation's security.

SPEERS: Okay. Well, a couple of things you've just said there: just to be clear, the one person who's been issued a temporary exclusion order, there was ASIO advice to do that, you've said, but there was no ASIO advice that there was any problem giving a passport. Can you just explain to people why, if there's no advice that this person presents a security threat to Australia, they get a passport, there is then advice saying they should get a temporary exclusion order, why give the passport and then slap the ban on? Just explain that.

BURKE: You're dealing with different legal thresholds.

SPEERS: Right.

BURKE: I'm not going to be able to give you chapter and verse of every provision, but ASIO is an agency that is very conscious of the specifics of its legislative responsibilities.

SPEERS: So they're fine with giving the passport, but then there's a lower threshold that's been hit.

BURKE: A different threshold, yes.

SPEERS: Okay. That might confuse people. It's a level of risk, but not the highest level of risk posed by this person.

BURKE: Well, the threshold for a temporary exclusion order is by definition a lower threshold because it's not a permanent decision, it's something that's very much time-limited. A Minister, even when a temporary exclusion order is in place, if someone seeks a permit, is obliged to do it. You can put conditions around that permit, but the concept of a permit itself is something that you're then legally obliged to provide. So even though a temporary exclusion order officially lasts for two years, if someone seeks a permit during that time, and you'd presume they will, the longest you can keep someone out under the permit is 12 months.

SPEERS: Okay, I understand that. Were this entire group of 34 interviewed at any stage by any Australian official before deciding to give them passports?

BURKE: I'm not going to go through anything that our intelligence agencies do. We certainly had people on the ground in the camps way back in 2022 when there was a repatriation being organised for a very limited group of people. There have been times when there have been Australian officials on the ground, but it's quite some time since that's been the case.

SPEERS: Okay. And back then in 2022, were they all interviewed?

BURKE: As I say, I'm not going to go through everything that our intelligence agencies do, but I can put it in these terms: the cohort is not consistent; there are very different people within that cohort with different histories and different states of mind, if I put it in those terms. They are quite different, but our agencies have been following them and following them for a long time. The fact that one person has been pulled out for saying that person meets the threshold for a temporary exclusion order is quite specifically because of what we know about that individual.

SPEERS: Okay. But - appreciate they're all a little different in their level of risk.

BURKE: Well, more than a little different.

SPEERS: Yeah, okay. But none of them, by the sounds of it, have been interviewed prior to issuing them passports. Now issuing them passports as –

BURKE: Well, it depends what you say by prior, like in 2022 we had people on the ground there, so the process –

SPEERS: But were they interviewed? You're not able to say?

BURKE: Well, if you've got people on the ground, and that's when DNA checks were done and things like that, then obviously people were being spoken to at the time.

SPEERS: Okay. So the Australian community should be –

BURKE: I'm just not going to go through specifically what certain agencies do, but I can give the complete confidence to the Australian 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, and that is why the person, where a temporary exclusion order has been issued, is in a different category to other members of that group.

SPEERS: And just - 'cause again, this has been a question during the week – why just that one? You're saying that she presents a higher level of risk than the rest.

BURKE: That's right, that's right. That's how you meet the threshold. We never stop collecting information on people.

SPEERS: So more could be issued?

BURKE: We never stop collecting information on people. If the agencies decide it's in the interests of public safety, given what we continue to find out, for any additional orders to be issued, they'd be issued straight away.

Unlike my opponents, I take the advice of these agencies really seriously. These are people who have dedicated their entire professional lives to keeping Australians safe. Their advice matters. The moment their advice came to me on this one person, I worked through it, and the temporary exclusion order was issued.

SPEERS: Why can't they go and interview them? I mean from what you're saying it sounds like they're monitoring their communications and collecting what information they can. Wouldn't it be better to sit down with each of them before giving them a passport to come home?

BURKE: Well, at the moment we're not sending officials in there.

SPEERS: But why not? Because if there's a risk of them coming back and they do pose any sort of risk, wouldn't it be better to send a –

BURKE: I think I've just gone through the extent to which we have knowledge of these individuals.

SPEERS: But not interviewed them. Like why not interview them?

BURKE: Well, we had people there on the ground earlier, we have continued to track these individuals the whole way through. I appreciate the line of questioning, but I think your presumption there is that you're saying there's a gap in our information, and what I'm telling you is our information is very strong. That's how you can single one person out from the others.

SPEERS: Okay and on the point of issuing these temporary exclusion orders on ASIO advice, doesn't the Act also give you the power to do that without ASIO's advice?

BURKE: Well, you need to remember that under the Act it has to be based on fact because anything the Minister does is then reviewed by a retired judge. Now it's not just any retired judge; they've got to be retired High Court, Federal Court or State or Territory Supreme Court.

If you've just made it up, which is what the Shadow Attorney-General has suggested that I do, then it will go to a retired judge, they'll say, well, clearly this isn't based on intelligence in either of the two meanings of the word, and it would be thrown out.

SPEERS: So neither you nor ASIO has concluded that the 33 who didn't get a temporary exclusion –

BURKE: Meet the threshold.

SPEERS: -- meet the threshold, and therefore pose a threat to Australia?

BURKE: That's right. I mean if at any point the agencies decide that a further brief should come to me, I would deal with that immediately, and I think the record shows how seriously I take the advice of those agencies.

SPEERS: But right now sitting here –

BURKE: Right now nothing further has been presented to me.

SPEERS: They don't pose a threat to Australia?

BURKE: On the information that we have, the best way to protect Australians has not involved any further temporary exclusion orders.

SPEERS: They don't pose a threat to Australia?

BURKE: That's right, you need to make sure you've got the best way of protecting Australians; that's what our agencies do.

SPEERS: Are you actively trying to stop them coming back then?

BURKE: Oh, we don't want them to come back.

SPEERS: No, but are you actively trying to stop them?

BURKE: We're actively making sure we do nothing to help them, nothing to help them at all. The only reason they are in –

SPEERS: Nothing to stop them coming back?

BURKE: Well, you can't, other than a temporary exclusion order there isn't a legislative power to be able to stop an Australian citizen from entering Australia. So effectively that question goes to are we breaking the law, and the answer's no.

SPEERS: Why were passports issued now, because they've been there seven years, presumably they've been keen to get home for seven years, why now?

BURKE: Well, applications get made, they take time going through the bureaucracy, they take time going through a whole range of different checks, including security checks. It gets to the point where the bureaucracy decide that by law they have to issue, and they make decisions under law for any application for an Australian passport.

SPEERS: So this is just - when did they apply for the passports?

BURKE: I don't have that information.

SPEERS: You're seriously saying this is just how it's turned out, that they applied at some point, and it's taken this long and now they get the –

BURKE: This is bureaucrats in the government doing their job.

SPEERS: So over the last seven years, that just took a long time, and here we are now, they've got passports.

BURKE: Well, I'm not going to go through the different processes that happen in terms of other agencies that are part of this process; I'm not going to go through that, you understand exactly why I'm not going to go through that.

SPEERS: Well, that's what I'm interested in –

BURKE: What I can assure you is the process has happened as a bureaucratic process of officials obeying the law and doing what they are obliged to do by law with nothing coming from any ministerial level encouraging that process along.

SPEERS: So the bureaucrats and our intelligence agencies coming to the view that now's the time to give them a passport?

BURKE: Well, the different processes and checks that they had to make are complete, and once all of that's complete, by law they have to issue.

SPEERS: And is part of this to do with the situation on the ground in Northern Syria?

BURKE: I don't see how that would be relevant to their consideration under the Passports Act.

SPEERS: Well, one element would be that the Kurdish and Syrian authorities are planning to shut down that-.

BURKE: Yeah, but I don't see how that would be relevant to consideration under the Passports Act. Under the Passports Act they have specific things they have to take into account. I don't see how that would be relevant.

SPEERS: Okay. So the situation on the ground's not relevant.

BURKE: It's not the Act that I manage, but I don't see how it would be relevant.

SPEERS: Or to your Act when it comes to any security issue here?

BURKE: No, for temporary exclusion orders it's relevant to the extent that if somebody can't come to Australia, an exclusion order is pretty irrelevant. So for me, once it was clear that people were starting to move, it was at that point that the whole system gets activated and say, "Okay, do we now need to consider a temporary exclusion order?"

SPEERS: What happens if the camp does close?

BURKE: Well, the people will be in an intolerable position entirely through actions they themselves took, entirely through shocking decisions that those parents made.

SPEERS: Has there been any contact between the Australian Government and Kurdish or Syrian authorities about this cohort?

BURKE: Well, certainly nothing from Home Affairs. It's nothing that I'm involved with, I don't know the answer beyond that. I've seen –

SPEERS: You don't know if Foreign Affairs, or any of the agencies have been in touch?

BURKE: Well, there would be different reasons why Foreign Affairs would engage with the Kurdish authorities in different ways in terms of Foreign Affairs relations.

SPEERS: So this report in The Australian yesterday that local authorities there were warned by Australia that the women and children were terrorists and would not be accepted in Australia, is that accurate?

BURKE: Well, what I can say is that is largely a similar view to things that have been said publicly. So, I know it made the sort of news flash in terms of the front page of that particular paper –

SPEERS: Are they terrorists? Are they terrorists?

BURKE: This is a very mixed group. Certainly everybody who went there, went there at a time where everyone in the world knew exactly what ISIS was.

SPEERS: No, but right now, are you suggesting they're terrorists, 'cause a few minutes ago you said–

BURKE: No. No, I'm not suggesting that.

SPEERS: Okay.

BURKE: What I'm saying, because you've got language issues, that person wasn't reading from an email or anything like that. But in terms of the general concept of the article was about Australia not wanting people back, like that's what that article was about –

SPEERS: There was no warning.

BURKE: -- you don't need an email, you can Google that, you can find that anywhere, you can listen to the Prime Minister any day of the week for it to be clear that we do not want the individuals in Australia. Legally, you can't stop a citizen from entering your country, legally, if a citizen applies for a passport and the authorities don't think thresholds are reached to be able to block it, then a passport gets issued.

SPEERS: So there was no message to the Syrians or Kurds, "Don't let these people go"?

BURKE: Well, I've answered that with as much detail as I'm able to give you, David.

SPEERS: Okay, but I'm still a little confused. Was there any message –

BURKE: Well, no, I've told you. I haven't gone through every email of the Embassies so you're asking a question where I've already told you I don't have the answer to that.

SPEERS: Okay. Do any of them have dual citizenship?

BURKE: If I start with this: the majority of them are born in Australia, so overwhelmingly this is a cohort that's born in Australia. Immigration is a small part of the story of these individuals, whether the countries they were from would still recognise that citizenship or not is something that I don't know.

The one person who I've had a temporary exclusion order over is somebody who's been here for a long time. She arrived when John Howard was Prime Minister and received a citizenship when John Howard was Prime Minister, and went there when Tony Abbott was Prime Minister. I won't give the country that she came from - but given the country that she came from in those circumstances, I'm not sure that they would actually recognise that citizenship.

SPEERS: Okay. But she may have dual citizenship by the sound of it.

BURKE: I'm pretty confident they wouldn't recognise that citizenship.

SPEERS: Okay. Are you talking about Iran?

BURKE: David.

SPEERS: You're not going to say.

BURKE: Like seriously, I'm giving you as much as I can but we are talking about some pretty serious national security information that we're talking about here.

SPEERS: Okay. And the reason I'm asking ask, if it's a dual citizen, there is a provision - I know it's been changed by the High Court - but is there still a provision to strip Australian citizenship?

BURKE: Yeah, look, there is, but it's not an entirely effective provision.

SPEERS: So that won't apply here?

BURKE: Well, can I just tell you what happens with that provision?

SPEERS: Yeah.

BURKE: Because we had one where there was part of the cancellation that had to happen under me, and effectively people are now given notice of the attempt to cancel their citizenship, and we've had one instance where someone just went off and renounced the other, at which point the courts don't let you do it. So those provisions and that entire line of argument that was advanced under the previous government has really hit a constitutional dead end.

SPEERS: Look, I want to ask you, the US has long urged countries like Australia that it should take its citizens back from these camps on security grounds, and your predecessor, Clare O'Neil, made a similar point a few years ago when four women and 13 children were brought home in 2022. Here's what she said: "The question for us is, is the safest thing for these 13 children to grow up in a squalid camp where they're subjected to radical ideologies every single day and then return to Australia at some point when they're an adult, or is it safer for us to bring them here so they can live a life around Australian values?" Minister, what's changed since then?

BURKE: Well, the government's position on the remaining cohort, and as I've said, this is not a cohesive group of people, for the remaining cohort the government's position has been what it is now for a very long time. Do not forget that one of the not-for-profit groups took the government to court to try to get us to do a repatriation. We fought it and we won. Our position that we would not repatriate these individuals is a long-standing position, they –

SPEERS: They're a different group is what you're saying, to that earlier group?

BURKE: Well, they're by definition different, and the government's position that we would not repatriate has been a position for a very long time.

SPEERS: Look, I want to show you, these are the images of the Al-Roj camp we're talking about, these were taken just in the past week. I mean, and yeah, we know the security situation in that region of Syria is deteriorating. What's going to happen to these Australian kids if they're left there?

BURKE: That's in the hands of their parents. This entire situation –

SPEERS: Doesn't the Government have any obligation here?

BURKE: Well, we are not the people who are holding them there, they're being held there by Kurdish authorities, they're being not allowed over a border by Syrian authorities. They went there against what the Australian Government wanted. The government at the time was the Coalition, they didn't have an attempt to stop their passports at the critical moment which could have caused the real protection that we all now wish had happened, and that is why they are there. This is not a situation where you're showing me images where someone is there because Australia has put them there.

SPEERS: I understand that.

BURKE: That is not the case.

SPEERS: Beyond this 34, are there other Australians still caught up in any of these camps in Syria?

BURKE: Well, there have been reports, let me put it in that way, about some of the men who were fighters, and some of the men who were fighters, let's remember that some of them returned under the previous government, so returned in the exact same way that we're talking here, and if you were there as a fighter and you returned, the question that you asked earlier about, with respect to terrorism, and under the Coalition Government, they came in with our agencies watching people as they arrived. Some of the men have now been transferred. It's been reported that Australian men would be among that group.

SPEERS: To Iraq?

BURKE: To Iraq.

SPEERS: Is that correct, that about 13 have gone from a Syrian jail to an Iraqi –

BURKE: Once again, we are not confirming the Australians within that group, which is why I've framed it as there have been reports of.

SPEERS: But you'd know?

BURKE: Yeah, of course. There is a lot that you know in these portfolios, David, and-

SPEERS: Why's that - why can't you say that?

BURKE: Because I leave it for our intelligence agencies to determine if they think it's in the national interest for different information to be made public. When there's things that have been speculated on and it's relevant to the inquiry you've just made, I give you an answer.

SPEERS: Okay. Look, I want to move off that issue just briefly. Parliament –

BURKE: Sorry, there's one thing that you haven't touched, which is the front page of today's paper, which I just do need to say that that report ---

SPEERS: Just tell us which report you're talking about.

BURKE: There's a report on the front page of today's Sunday Telegraph. In that report it makes a claim that we are conducting a repatriation. We are not. It claims we have been meeting with the States for the purposes of a repatriation. We have not.

Our authorities meet with the State authorities to make sure that we are prepared if there is any chance of there being a heightened risk to national security. As soon as the conditions of the camp started to deteriorate and there was a possibility that some people would be getting out, which has happened - some without passports, I might add, who've then turned up to an Embassy at which point you have to give them a passport as well - that the national security teams, the Joint Counterterrorism Teams meet, as they did under the previous government, as they do now, as is essential for public safety.

SPEERS: Good to clear that up. Parliament passed your new laws to ban hate groups last month. I just wanted to check what's happened since then. Is there progress on banning a particular group yet?

BURKE: Okay, so there were two groups that had largely been spoken about before that, there were the Neo-Nazis and Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Neo-Nazis disbanded before the legislation went through. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is an organisation I've been fighting since my first term in Parliament - back in the days when the Liberal Government was rolling out the red carpet for them at the Embassy and giving them speaking tour visas in Australia - ASIO have now provided the advice that that organisation meets the threshold that ASIO requires for them to be able to be banned.

SPEERS: Right.

BURKE: So the next stage is the Department now prepares a brief for a Minister, that brief is the second threshold that has to be determined, and then after that, presuming that that's determined, then the Leader of the Opposition is advised, and the Attorney-General has to sign off on it.

SPEERS: Okay. So that could happen fairly soon.

BURKE: But the first stage, on the process of a prohibited group listing happening for Hizb ut-Tahrir is now complete, the ASIO advice is in.

This is the first time we've been able to ban, potentially, a group which falls short of a terrorist listing. It says you don't have to be specifically calling for violence, but you do have to be acting in a way that increases the risk of communal violence or politically motivated violence.

SPEERS: Okay. And just finally - we've gone long here, but I do appreciate you sticking with us, Tony Burke - final one, Pauline Hanson's comments on Muslims on Lakemba as well, which sits in your electorate. The Federal Police are now examining what she said about Muslims in particular. What's your view on this? The Senator says ‘the government's trying to put her back in jail’. For the record, is that what's happening here?

BURKE: I was back in Lakemba on Friday night for the Lakemba Nights market during Ramadan, and a whole lot of people remembered the last time Pauline Hanson went to Lakemba. She turned up with a TV crew from one of the commercial stations expecting to be greeted with anger from people. They showed her hospitality, they were really glad she was there, some of the women gave her a hug; it really blew her mind, and afterwards, security guards she turned up with stayed in the area and went down and had a kebab.

I think what is happening here is part of Pauline Hanson's frustration with Lakemba is it didn't give her what she wanted. This is a generous community. There's a whole lot of hospitality there, and a group of people who sadly, are becoming used to be being demonised.

But let me say this, it's not just the cruelty of it, there's a national security angle here as well. We've had a big national discussion about when anti-Semitism becomes normalised it is more likely you get anti-Semitic violence, as we saw in Brisbane over last night. That is the same for any form of bigotry, including Islamophobia, and I just say to people, don't pretend you care about national security and then make it harder for our agencies and more likely that violence will occur.

SPEERS: Tony Burke, we'll have to leave it there but thank you for joining us this morning.

BURKE: Great to be back.