Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, will the ISIS affiliated women who landed in Sydney yesterday be living in Fairfield, Liverpool or Bankstown, and has the government or any representative of the government been in contact with local community leaders regarding this issue?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I've said to the member for Fowler before in this House, the government isn't settling anyone. The government is not involved in settling people at all. We have had citizens return, as we had citizens have self-managed returns before we came to office—including 45 men who had gone there to fight. But, in terms of the consultation with the community, I can give examples of consultation that has been very powerful and has happened in the lead-up to when it was first reported that these individuals might seek to return. I'd include Manda House in Australia, the Assyrian National Council, the Assyrian Australian Association, the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.

I'd also add that there was no meeting more powerful than when a delegation from the Yazidi community came here from Wagga, which involved one woman—from memory, she would have been 19—who had herself effectively been a slave and hadn't seen her mum since she was eight. There are reasons why the government have the view that we have of what these individuals did.