Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Ciccone. You know that our focus has been to do all we can to keep Australians safe and secure at this time—deploying consular teams, providing options to get Australians to safety and ensuring we have fuel reserves. I again return to what I was asked in the first question of question time, which is to say: it is disappointing that the opposition has sought to play partisan politics with so many aspects of this crisis. I note they have belatedly now backed in the government. We saw Senator Paterson pretty flat-footed when he demanded on Thursday that Australia should send aircraft to the Middle East, on the same day that I had announced that Australia had already deployed military assets as part of our contingency.

No. Look at the time of your tweet. You just got it wrong, mate. The shadow foreign minister has either deliberately misled the public about travel advice or has exposed that he does not understand how it works, and the shadow's shadow, Senator Sharma, suggested repatriating Australians via Cyprus, which has been under drone attack.