Australian children ‘desperate’ to leave Syrian camps, aid agency says
Luca Ittimani
The 20 Australian children detained in Syrian camps have been left “devastated” by the government’s refusal to help them return to their home country, the head of Save the Children has said.
The prime minister has repeatedly said the government will not help repatriate the 34 Australian women and children – wives and children of Islamic State fighters – from their detention camps.
Mat Tinkler, the Save the Children chief exective, said 20 of those 34 were children, some of whom had “never seen a tree” having grown up in detention.
He told the ABC:
We have staff who are supporting the women and children in the camp in Syria, and what I know is that they’re devastated by what’s happened in the last few days, having spent almost seven years of their lives – some of these kids have never seen a tree – and to finally get on a bus and you’re on your way to safety and back home to Australia, only to be turned around, and even then they’ve been displaced from within the camp because their tents have been re-purposed.
They are devastated. They are desperate to get home to Australia. … We have means to put that tragedy to an end right now if we just show courage, the moral clarity and the political will to do what’s right for these innocent Australian children.
Key events
Luca Ittimani
Australian detainees want to work with law enforcement, says Save the Children
The Australians stuck in “one of the [world’s] worst” detention camps want to cooperate with strict security demands, the head of Save the Children has said.
The government has refused to repatriate 34 Australian citizens, who had ties to ISIS, from Syrian detention camps. Those citizens are desperate to leave the camp and would comply with security agencies, according to Mat Tinkler, Save the Children’s chief exective. He told the ABC:
I go to a lot of refugee camps around the world and I can tell you without a doubt this is one of the worst. This is one of the most difficult places in the world to be a child.
Tinkler acknowledged the government had security concerns about the women and has temporarily banned one of them from entering Australia. He said the women were willing to work with Australian agencies:
They have all said they will cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities. In the past, they volunteered to be subjected to terrorism control orders which would be conditions placed on who they meet, wither they live, how they communicate with people. … The best way to mitigate any risk that they pose is to put faith in our security and enforcement agencies.
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Australian children ‘desperate’ to leave Syrian camps, aid agency says
Luca Ittimani
The 20 Australian children detained in Syrian camps have been left “devastated” by the government’s refusal to help them return to their home country, the head of Save the Children has said.
The prime minister has repeatedly said the government will not help repatriate the 34 Australian women and children – wives and children of Islamic State fighters – from their detention camps.
Mat Tinkler, the Save the Children chief exective, said 20 of those 34 were children, some of whom had “never seen a tree” having grown up in detention.
He told the ABC:
We have staff who are supporting the women and children in the camp in Syria, and what I know is that they’re devastated by what’s happened in the last few days, having spent almost seven years of their lives – some of these kids have never seen a tree – and to finally get on a bus and you’re on your way to safety and back home to Australia, only to be turned around, and even then they’ve been displaced from within the camp because their tents have been re-purposed.
They are devastated. They are desperate to get home to Australia. … We have means to put that tragedy to an end right now if we just show courage, the moral clarity and the political will to do what’s right for these innocent Australian children.
Lisa Cox
Property developers spark anger over plan to clear woodland home to Baudin’s and Carnaby’s black cockatoos
Property developers in Perth plan to bulldoze an endangered banksia ecosystem used by threatened black cockatoo species, and conservationists have warned the damage cannot be mitigated by proposed offsets.
The developers want to replant the banksia ecosystem within a different type of protected woodland – a proposal that a leading botanist said was doomed to fail.
The woodland to be bulldozed for three housing developments is home to species including the threatened Baudin’s and Carnaby’s black cockatoos.
Prof Kingsley Dixon, a restoration expert and the national expert on the ecosystem – known as the banksia woodlands of the Swan coastal plain – said he had “deep concerns” about the proposal to offset clearing by trying to create banksia woodlands from scratch within another woodland type in protected reserves around Perth.
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Benita Kolovos
Jacinta Allan backs CFMEU administrator to ‘weed out the bad apples’
Allan says she’s confident the administrator of the CFMEU was “weeding out the bad apples”. She went on:
Victoria police is making arrests. We have addressed the areas of our responsibility here in the Victorian government, making sure the private companies are required to report these matters, making sure that workers are protected. Because it’s those workers that I am firmly focused on. That’s why a royal commission doesn’t support those workers. It’s about clawing back their wages.
She also refused to comment on a report in the Herald Sun this morning that she met with former premier, Daniel Andrews, after his trip to China last year, in which he posed in a group photo that included Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Allan said:
I meet regularly with a whole range of former premiers, former ministers from both sides of politics. I’m not going to comment on the conversations I have with those individuals, but let’s remember we’re talking about this because I brought transparency to the ministerial diary process. We introduced the requirement for ministers to report and to publish their diaries.
The very reason we can have this conversation is because I enhanced transparency in this state around the meetings that I and other ministers of the government hold with individuals, with private companies, with a whole range of organisations here in Victoria.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian premier dismisses report of internal push for CFMEU royal commission
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, held a press conference at parliament this morning, which she began by dismissing a report in the ABC that suggested Labor MPs were calling for a royal commission into corruption within the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union.
Allan told reporters “no one in the caucus” had raised a royal commission with her. She went on:
I’m just not going to respond this morning to anonymous gossip, but I’ll repeat why I don’t support a royal commission. The claims don’t stack up. There has already been a royal commission that failed. And furthermore, when Liberals call for a royal commission, it’s all about wanting to claw back workers’ wages, go industry by industry, cutting into workers’ wages. And that is absolutely something I do not support.
She also defended comments made by her attorney general, Sonya Kilkenny, and police minister, Anthony Carbines, who launched an attack on anti-corruption lawyer Geoffrey Watson yesterday. Allan said:
I support the work of my police minister, I support the work of the attorney general … The attorney general made a really important statement yesterday, a statement that just shouldn’t apply to people who are people who come from the legal profession. It should apply to all of us – to politicians, to journalists, to anyone who has a position from which they can commentate on these matters. To repeat unfounded claims is reckless. It is reckless behaviour.
Victoria loses MotoGP to South Australia
Tory Shepherd
One of the weird things about South Australia (along with building a one-way expressway, pie floaters, and a half-hour time difference) is how long it’s held a grudge about Victoria stealing the Formula One Grand Prix.
In 1993, then Victorian premier Jeff Kennett presided over the coup that left residents of the middle bottom bit of the nation aggrieved for decades.
Today, South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas announced that, in what will be seen by some as revenge being served cold, Victoria’s MotoGP will move to SA.
After almost 30 years at Phillip Island, the event will run on the original Adelaide grand prix street circuit from 2027.
Before the announcement, Kennett told ABC Adelaide radio he was “both crying and laughing”:
I’m crying because it’s leaving. I’m laughing because your premier has just taken another page from the Jeff Kennett bible.
He’s gone and borrowed the MotoGP … but don’t think it’s in Adelaide forever, because Phillip Island is a most wonderful circuit, and I’ve just got a feeling in my bones we’re going to get it back.
We never stole the Grand Prix. We borrowed it. The only thing is we forgot to give it back. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Peter has borrowed the MotoGP … I’m all for borrowing it back.
Unemployment rate holds at 4.1% in January
Patrick Commins
The unemployment rate remained at 4.1% in January, extending the extraordinary resilience of the post-pandemic jobs market but also underlining the potential for further Reserve Bank rate hikes this year.
The number of employed Australians climbed by 17,800 in January, with a solid 50,500 rise in full-time jobs offset by a 32,700 drop in part-time employment, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The underemployment rate, which measures those with jobs but who are trying to get more hours, lifted from 5.7% in December to 5.9% in the new figures.
The latest jobs numbers come after wages figures on Wednesday showed decent growth in workers’ pay rates were not enough to keep up with resurgent inflation in the back half of last year.
The RBA board, which hiked rates earlier this month, believes the labour market is a “little tight” and so would be contributing to inflationary pressures.
Telstra reports net profit of $1.1bn for second half of 2025
Australia’s biggest telecommunications company has beaten earnings expectations and increased its payout to shareholders after its strong mobile business offset continued weakness in its enterprise division, AAP reports.
Telstra on Thursday delivered a $1.1bn net profit for the six months to 31 December, up 9.4% from the same time in 2024. Revenue climbed 0.3% to $11.6bn.
Chief executive Vicki Brady said it was a strong period for Telstra.
“We delivered ongoing growth in earnings, reflecting momentum across our business, strong cost control and disciplined capital management,” Brady said.
Telstra’s mobile business brought in $2.6bn in earnings. Its average revenue per mobile user rose 5.1% to $45.47 after hiking prices in July, with the cost of most postpaid mobile plans climbing by between $3 and $5 a month.
Despite the price increase, Telstra managed to add another 135,000 mobile customers during the half.
Telstra said it would pay an interim dividend of 10.5 cents per share, with 9.5 cents of that franked and one cent unfranked, up from a fully franked 9.5 cent per share interim dividend a year ago.
Caitlin Cassidy
Linda Burney joins UTS board with a mission to boost Aboriginal participation
Linda Burney has been appointed to her first public role since leaving federal parliament, joining the board of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in a move the New South Wales government hopes will restore faith in the embattled institution.
Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the federal House of Representatives, ended her two-decade career in politics in early 2025, departing as the minister for Indigenous Australians in mid-2024 and formally leaving office at the end of the 47th parliament.
The Wiradjuri woman carried much of the public weight of the failed voice to parliament referendum, even as she faced some private health challenges.
She said it was not the referendum defeat but a desire to “pass on the baton to the next generation” that led to her resignation from political life.
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Chris Minns says Hanson should ‘probably’ apologise, but ‘we’re not going to get it’
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, is speaking in Sydney, saying the country needs an emergence in the “normal middle” of politics free from racist rhetoric.
He said he believes Pauline Hanson should issue an apology for her comments about Muslims, but added a major caveat:
Look, probably, but we’re not going to get it, let’s be honest. In my view, there has to be an emergence of people … in the normal middle that have no interest in hurling racist insults at one another, that don’t want to see Australians divided.
We can’t let the public space be taken over by extremists in these debates, who, let’s be honest, will profit politically by letting us be divided against one another.
