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If Tony Burke was to be believed, he was dying to comment on reports Australian women and children had returned from Syria — if only someone had asked him.
The home affairs minister was speaking in question time on Wednesday, five days after it first emerged a group of six had quietly returned to Australia after years stranded in war-torn Syria.
The question Burke was answering hadn't been directed to him. Instead, it was meant for the prime minister but he was in no mood to answer it.
"I thank the member for Fowler for raising the matter in the house," Burke started. "Those opposite have given the impression in the media they were going to, but once they get in here appear, for some reason, unwilling to raise the issue."
The silence behind him met heckles from those opposite.
Even if you forget the fact that Burke is one of the nation's most senior cabinet ministers, he's also the leader of the house: a job that's exactly what the name on the tin suggests.
With a whopping majority, Burke need only click his fingers and he'd have a platform to make a ministerial statement. So too could he have accepted the rolling interview requests his office was receiving since reports of the cohort's return to Australia emerged on Friday.
Curious too was his noting of what the Coalition had been saying in the media.
For days, his frontbench colleagues had been performing acrobatics that'd make Simone Biles blush, doing all they could to avoid any acknowledgement of the reports, let alone confirm it.
There had been no repatriation, Burke continued. The government was not involved in settling people, he added.
He told the parliament there had been "a number of Australian citizens" who'd made "an absolutely dreadful decision" to "join others who were involved in ... one of the most horrific organisations that the world has seen".
"This is not the first time that Australian citizens who have made that decision have returned," he said. "When Australian citizens seek to return to Australia, they are able to do so."
Burke went on to accuse the Coalition of hypocrisy, noting that not just the families of Islamic State fighters, but "some who had fought for ISIL".
"Forty," the PM chirped in from alongside Burke.
Burke suddenly wasn't shying away from the return of the two women and four children. He argued security agencies closely monitored people both outside and within Australia and he had full confidence in their work.
Until this moment, the government's actions outside the House of Representatives, at least at a ministerial level, had been as opaque as a brick wall.
Instead, it was left to federal police representatives and senior bureaucrats to answer the questions frontbenchers dare not speak. As it transpired, Burke had first been made aware of the group's likely return back in June, then updated ahead of their imminent departure and again once they arrived at the end of September.
The officials also confirmed citizenship by descent was approved to two of the children after Australian officials processed the cohort in Lebanon prior to its return.
All of which Burke could have confirmed, if only he had the platform to do so.
Scenes you'd laugh at if they weren't so serious
One of the reasons the Coalition hadn't asked Burke about the returning cohort was it was instead ensuring Communications Minister Anika Wells met her daily step targets. The Coalition peppered question after question at Wells.
At the same time, Senate estimates was hearing scenes that even the script writers of Utopia would find too ridiculous to envisage. You'd laugh, if it wasn't so deadly serious, as the Optus triple-0 outage has proven to be.
To recap, the week started with Wells summoning the heads of the major telcos to Canberra for a please explain.
She wanted assurances the triple-0 network could be relied upon this summer.
From there she introduced legislation for a triple-0 custodian, a task she inherited from her predecessor Michelle Rowland who, despite insisting it was a priority in 2024, hadn't done so before this May's election.
Gone was the "I'm a new minister" rhetoric Wells offered last week. This week she was her more assertive, laying the blame for the outage at Optus' feet and accusing the Coalition of seeking to let the telco off the hook.
The trouble for Wells was that in Senate estimates, farcical evidence emerged that Optus, a communications company, somehow found itself using the wrong email address to alert the communications department about the outage.
"Surely someone can pick up a phone. I'm sure they had plenty at their disposal," Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain offered when asked about the saga on Thursday morning.
In the end, the government finished the week facing more questions about its handling of the Optus outage than it started the week with.
It looks all but certain that a Senate committee, backed by the Coalition, Greens and independent David Pocock, will be established, joining the regulator, company and coronial reviews already underway.
A silver lining for the government here is that a Senate committee, until estimates, has the ability to call on Optus. Few in the government will be disappointed to see the telco's officials face a grilling like its bureaucrats faced this week.
Backbencher Andrew Hastie might need earplugs
Andrew Hastie would have led the Coalition's prosecution of Labor over the Syrian return had he not quit the frontbench mere hours before the first reports emerged.
He'll likely need earplugs for his new seat on the backbench, having found himself sitting alongside South Australian Tony Pasin, one of the parliament's most vocal and kicked out members of question time.
Hastie, in contrast, has remained silent, having dismissed suggestions his quitting was part of a ploy to topple Ley.
Finding her voice in the party room was first term MP Mary Aldred, who took aim at Hastie behind closed doors, reportedly saying his actions in recent weeks could risk the Coalition going even further backwards at the next election.
Senior moderate Andrew Bragg went further publicly, agreeing in part with former cabinet minister George Brandis's suggestion that the Coalition was fast running out of people to offend.
And look, it could be worse for the Liberals.
Faring even worse in the polls, the Liberals' UK counterparts, the Conservatives, were desperate to pep up disheartened loyalists at the party's conference in Manchester.
Willy Wonka the Tories are not, after misspelling the name of the nation they seek to lead.
Another scene even Utopia's writers couldn't make up. |
