Topics: ISIS Brides, Passports Act

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E&OE.......................   

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Dave Sharma is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. He also served, as Australia's ambassador to Israel, so he knows the region pretty well, between 2013 and 2017. He's on the line. Nice to speak with you again, Dave.

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DAVE SHARMA: Yeah, great to join you, Michael. Thanks for having me.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Words matter. In law, in politics, words matter. They have a certain currency and a weight. I just want to start by looking at this term ISIS brides and get your thoughts on the way that we use that term, because some have said that such a term would suggest that what we're dealing with here are merely plus ones in addition to a bloke who held evil ideology but they're just the wife, I mean? That's not always the case, is it?

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DAVE SHARMA: No, I think the term suggests it's, a little more innocuous than it actually is. I mean these are people who, uh, voluntarily left Australia. They weren't conscripted, they weren't sent, they weren't kidnapped or abducted. They voluntarily left Australia, uh, to go and, um, join the caliphate. Now, they might not have been fighting for the caliphate, the Islamic State, but they were there to support it, politically and spiritually and in a community sense.  They went against the advice of Australian government agencies, officials, everyone at the time. They were as much part of the enterprise as the partners they were accompanying, to my mind. They were committed by the same, had the same world view and committed the same ideological end.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: On language again, I mean, the government are being very deliberately careful with their language when they say, "We're doing nothing to assist repatriation." Um, well that is debated. But that is also very different from doing absolutely everything possible to stop them returning, isn't it?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think they've been too cute by half with this. I mean they say they're doing nothing to assist but now it's been we revealed that federal government officials have been talking to New South Wales government officials for months about this, right? So, there's federal government resources that are going into preparation and planning. Passports have been issued. Those are federal government resources. I mean, I, I would expect that there has been a lot of bureaucratic involvement in all of this for some time now. So, for the federal government to say, "Oh, look, it's nothing to do with us. We can't, we basically have no agency in this," I think is wrong. And I think the, the other point is that the federal government, if it chose to, could be doing more to prevent this and that's what they're trying to avoid committing to.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Okay. On the issue of passports, I saw Peta Credlin made the point in The Telegraph yesterday that the prime minister keeps saying that, "Well, look, essentially we've got to give these ladies and children passports under Australian law." She says that's not true. The law, in fact, says that he could refuse, or that is the government could refuse to issue passports. What's your understanding?

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DAVE SHARMA: That, is true. I mean, section 14 of the Passports Act makes that quite clear that a person isn't, um, can apply to be issued with a passport but the relevant minister, in which case it's the foreign minister in this instance, can refuse that passport on the advice of authorities including on national security grounds. Now it's not uncommon for an Australian who is in Australia to be refused to be granted a passport, if someone is known to be wanting to head overseas for child sex tourism purposes or, or terrorism for that matter. Normally it would be normal course of practice, and I saw this when I used to work in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, not to grant that person a passport if they had an adverse ASIO security assessment to them. They could appeal that decision at the AAT and sometimes they did and sometimes they would be successful. Oftentimes not. But it is entirely a normal just part of discretionary power for the government of the day to be able to refuse someone a passport, and this idea that Anthony Albanese has been trumpeting, that it's basically a rubber stamp, the government has no say, it happens automatically, it's simply not true.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Okay. So, some of these people are not mere brides in that sort of traditional sense of the term. A government, as you say, has the power to deny these people an Australian passport if it chooses to exercise that power. With all of that established, should we deny these people an Australian passport? And what are the consequences if we do?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I think the, the denial of a passport, I mean that has to be it can't just be a politician a whim. It needs to be on the basis of advice from agencies. But that advice can include where a person is likely to pose a national security threat to Australia or to other countries as a result of being issued with a passport. Now, clearly ASIO thinks at least one of these people is likely to pose a national security threat because a so-called temporary exclusion order has been issued to them. We don't know whether ASIO has had the opportunity to look at the other 33 of them and make that assessment or not, and until such time that that happens and the government is satisfied, no passports should have been issued, um, to my mind.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Okay, so a passport can be denied because of national security threat to Australia or, as you said, to other countries. Um, this is, see this is the point that I struggle with. I don't want to see these people within coee of the joint, and clearly at one point in their life they didn't want to be within coee of the joint either, not, not as it operates as a democratic nominally Judeo-Christian society. They obviously had these crazy ideas of global caliphates and all this sort of horrible stuff. Um, but if we, as a relatively powerful, wealthy nation, say, "Look, we don't want to give them Australian passports, we'd rather they hang around the desert over there and good riddance to them," they clearly could pose a threat to other nations, not just in the region but, should they skedaddle out of Syria, potentially to somewhere else. Um, do we not have some obligation?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I, I think we do and partly, the denial of a passport would make it harder them to cross international boundaries, right? Partly that's why you would deny someone a passport, not just to, um, prevent them leaving Australia and going to somewhere to cause trouble, but to crossing between third countries. Um, but I would say the the obvious thing we should be doing here, and I've seen no evidence that this, is actually speaking to the Syrian government. There is the Assad regime fell in Syria little over a year ago now. There is a new government, the Al-Assad regime, which we've all had some cause to be skeptical towards because of its background. But it seems to be doing a good job in trying to unite the country and make it a responsible international player. Um, we should be talking to them because I think we should be asking for their help either to it's clear they haven't been consulted up until now because they've been saying that, "Well, hang on, these people were departing, no one spoke to us about that. We don't agree." And they also want to behave responsibly here. They don't want to be seen as a terror exporting state. Why have we not been engaging with them about how to best manage this issue?

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Yeah. Well, as, you've got a new government there, um, and it's probably easier than dealing with the old government there under Assad.

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DAVE SHARMA: Yes, much easier.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: And they will be, I think, pretty keen to get rid of these people. The Americans behind the scenes, though, I think I'm right in saying, Dave, are planning to move thousands of these people from these camps, Al-Roj, Al-Hol, all these other places, into Iraq where the Americans have facilities. Now, the concern here, of course, is that the Australian government do have a diplomatic presence in Baghdad. So this argument that we've been running, "Oh, look, we don't have a diplomatic presence in Syria. It's all too difficult and dangerous to go to the camps and to meet these people and work out who's who in the zoo and..." that won't hold much water if they get moved as part of this American cohort across the border into Iraq.

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DAVE SHARMA: And so one way or another, we're going to have to deal with these people, either with legislation to lock them out or with effective legislation to lock them up, I assume, once they get back, because the timing may not be of our choice going forward. No, I think that's, I think that's right. And I think, what we need to see here, I think, is more active involvement of the direction of the foreign government, of our national security agencies in this process because the moment the government's basically throwing up their hands and saying, "It's nothing to do with us. We can't prevent these people from arriving here. If it happens, so it happens." Well, what a responsible government should be doing is getting on the front foot, getting ahead of this, engaging with countries in the region, including Syria, including Iraq, with our allies, the United States, and getting our intelligence and security agencies on the case to see how we can best safeguard Australian security, given what we know about these people and given what we know about their background.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: This de-radicalization thing, I mean, that seems to be part of the argument, doesn't it? You bring people back, particularly the children... Now, I don't blame... the children, you can't... they're guilty of the sins of the father, right? Or the mother. So, they've been born into or brought into this underage. So we bring them back, so the argument goes, and we put them through intense de-radicalization. Well, that's a bit hit and miss, isn't it? Uh, we've seen internationally some cases where it's worked, and we've sadly seen in a number of cases in the United Kingdom, for example, where we believed it had worked until it didn't. Um, what guarantee does the Australian public have that, uh, children of ISIS families, uh, if they return or they come to Australia, in some cases, probably for the first time in their life, de-radicalised, uh, that that will be an effective process?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I don't think we can offer any guarantee. I think we can say, well, the, I think the government can make its best endeavours there. But that's why you need to, you can't put all your faith in the de-radicalization process. There also needs to be a law enforcement, a security, and a monitoring component to all of this to make sure that people, either do not... people are not successfully de-radicalised, we know about it and we can take other steps to deal with the threat that they pose to Australia.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Are the coalition concerned that if we were to add, say, another 34 names to the already extensive list that the ASIO agents have to monitor, that it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, like, it's certainly, um, a big light. I mean, obviously, our intelligence agencies are dealing with a number of threats. They're dealing with foreign interference. They're dealing with state-sponsored espionage. They're dealing with homegrown radicalization terrorism. They're also dealing with antisemitic extremism, the Bondi terror attacks,

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Neo-Nazis, the whole lot, yeah.

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DAVE SHARMA: Exactly. So, and we're often telling them, "No, the priorities change. Now we need to focus on this. Now we need to focus on that." Um, and it means that, it's either we need to get better at eliminating these risks or reducing these risks before they reach our shores, which I think is why adding these 34 more people here is a problem, and we should be opposed to it. Or we need to be giving a lot more resources to the intelligence agencies, but also, frankly, more powers. And I don't know if we all want to live in a society where we have something more akin to a domestic intelligence service or surveillance service. I don't think we do. But that's incumbent on us all to make sure that these sorts of threats are not imported into Australia unwittingly or unnecessarily.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Okay, just finally, and thank you for your time, as always. Uh, as your colleague said today, uh, the coalition will table, I think, next week when parliament resumes, uh, proposed legislation to make it illegal to assist in the repatriation of Australians who remain in a declared terrorist hotspot, who have committed a terror offense, or who have been a member of a listed terror organisation. Um, some Australians would be thinking, "Well, isn't that already an offense?" Clearly, it's not. I mean, Look, I... As a father, I mean, I can understand that if your daughter went over to Syria, even if it was against your wishes, uh, and married one of these fools and the rest, uh, you'd want to get them back, uh, because you love your child. Um, it'd be a bit difficult, I think, wouldn't it, to be prosecuting parents who are simply trying to...... return their children, but third parties and the like, that's a different story.

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DAVE SHARMA: I think it is. I think what we've seen that's been alarming here is basically a whole lot of freelance repatriation efforts being undertaken by private citizens without any background or security arrangements, and basically embroiling us as government, as a country, in issues where we're not having, we're not having control over it. Um, it's like they're out there negotiating on our behalf, but we don't know what they're saying or what they're offering, what they're promising. That is deeply problematic. I mean, look, I, I was in, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade when we repatriated two people who'd gone and fought with a terrorist organization, David Hicks and Mumtaz Habib, you'll recall, fighting, uh, in Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Now, they both ended up doing time in Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks was tried by a military commission. Mumtaz Habib was released. But we as the government repatriated them. We took the responsible action. We put in safeguards we knew that when they were coming, how they were arriving, where they were going to be settled, what the systems were that would, would have been in place, and that's what a responsible government does. Instead, you've got the government here saying, "Look, 34 people, someone's trying to bring back 34 people to Australia. We don't know when they're going to get here. We don't know where they're going to settle. We don't know how we're going to manage it." That's an irresponsible approach.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Mind you, I don't think anyone believes them when they say that, do you?

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DAVE SHARMA: No, I think they're winking at us when they're saying that. One hand is doing something quite different in the background, but they're saying to us upfront, "Oh, no, it's nothing to do with us." It's clear that they're up to their armpits in this. They're just not being frank with the Australian public about what that is.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Well, the debate rolls on. I thank you for your time. Really appreciate it, Dave. All the best.

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DAVE SHARMA: Glad to talk to you. Thanks, Michael.

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MICHAEL MCLAREN: Ditto. Dave Sharma, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Uh, the coalition will be introducing that legislation, I believe, next week. Uh, this is one of those really hot issues, and it goes to national security, and therefore everyone has a stake in the outcome.

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[ENDS]