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Transcripts
February 18, 2026
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE
SENATOR FOR VICTORIA
TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS PAUL MURRAY LIVE
Wednesday, 18 February 2026
Topics: Labor should stop ISIS brides returning to Australia
E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………
PAUL MURRAY: James Paterson is the Shadow Defence Minister. Congratulations on the promotion, mate. Help me out. Surely this order could have been put in place when they applied for the passport or the passport was approved or the passport was printed or somebody got the passport and took it to the refugee camp that they saw before they left on Monday?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Paul it's great to be back with you mate, it's been too long and what an important issue to discuss because once again Tony Burke is misleading the Australian people on a matter of critical national security and safety. Why have only one of these temporary exclusion orders been applied and as you say why did it take so long for them to do so? And why is Tony Burke allowing one of his close personal friends to run a freelance repatriation operation of members of a listed terrorist organisation to come into our country? Jamal Rifi has been publicly reported as the person organising this repatriation. He's also the Chair of the Friends of Tony Burke, who ran a political campaign at the last election to make sure Tony Burke was re-elected. Once again with Labor when it comes to national security, you just can't trust them. They are willing to put our country at risk, our safety at risk for support in the community.
PAUL MURRAY: Now, obviously, you're not suggesting it, I'm not either, but for those that are running off to the principle, obviously, Dr Rifi's worldview here, as well stated, is that these people deserve a second chance, particularly the kids. We're not suggesting he's doing other work of anyone apart from, again, those people in the community who want that to be taking place. But second bit here, the application for a passport. The Prime Minister's position seems to be, and certainly Tony Burke's stated position this evening is, every Australian citizen has a right to a passport, therefore we can't slow play the ball. Are there any provisions that the government has to at the very least, every time the application gets to the top of the pile to put it at the bottom of the pile, or it's automatic that even in a refugee camp, you are processed the same way as somebody who's trying to renew their passport to come home from London?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, every Australian citizen is entitled to apply for a passport but the government has to be satisfied that they are who they say they are and when they live in a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation or a refugee camp that has no rule of law, it's not so easy to be able to do that. And it's also very complicated to provide what is called citizenship by descent to the sons and daughters of people who are born overseas. In fact, I get emails all the time from Australians who have children overseas to international partners who say it can take them months if not years to get the documentation required for citizenship by descent and then ultimately a passport. And yet it seems in this case in a very difficult environment to operate where there is no Australian government presence on the ground, but the Albanese government is willing to very quickly facilitate all the necessary documentation for people to leave those camps and come into Australia. And frankly I don't think that's good enough because unfortunately I think there is very good reason to believe that members of this cohort do pose a risk to Australia. These are people who by and large voluntarily left Australia, a peaceful, stable,prosperous liberal democracy to go and join what they then hoped would be an Islamist caliphate which viciously persecuted ethnic and religious minorities under their control including by using rape, torture and murder. So frankly, I don't think these are people that we want in our country and the Albanese government should be doing everything they can to slow it down and stop it, not encourage it.
PAUL MURRAY: The PM has been very clear since the early days of his government when the first of the cohort under his watch came back, which was they're Australian citizens, we can't stop it, right? Essentially. He held that line again last year. You absolutely tore them apart at Senate Estimates and again I'm still in awe of what you did about filling in the details, about the difference between the grey that was being presented and the reality of what they did. Yet he's decided to sort of go a different tack this week with the whole, as my mum said, make your bed and lie in it, something he said in two separate interviews, so a message he clearly wanted out there. But at the very same time, his own minister is basically singing from the same song sheet that they had previously, which is we can't do anything about it. Why is the Prime Minister trying to put a new coat of varnish on the way he makes this decision? Because he's making exactly the same decision he did the previous two times, he's just putting different spin on it tonight.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Exactly right, mate. This is all about the optics, this is all about the rhetoric, it's not about following through and actually taking tough decisions in the national interest to protect Australians. What we learned about the previous repatriation effort of the last cohort that came to Australia is that Tony Burke was secretly meeting with the charity Save the Children, who was organising that return to Australia, and he said in that secret meeting that he was grateful that they had kept this out of the media. And then during that meeting he asked the public servants to leave the room so he could have a private conversation with Save the Children. Now we still to this day do not know what was said in that private meeting, but we have notes for when the public servant was present and it's pretty damn incriminating. It shows that he said that they would facilitate all the necessary documentation and support onshore when they arrive back in Australia if the charity brought these people to our country. So it's very clear that quietly the Labor Party is giving the green light to these people returning to our country, in fact encouraging repatriation of them independently by freelance operators, rather than doing everything they can to slow this process down to protect Australians.
PAUL MURRAY: It is wild stuff. Again thank you Senator, congrats on the promotion and again good luck with the rebuild. We will have you on many times between now and we'll see how it's going in the next little while. Thank you, appreciate it.
ENDS