Tuesday, 14 October 2025


Adjournment

Syrian repatriations


Evan MULHOLLAND

Please do not quote

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Syrian repatriations

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (18:45): (1988) My adjournment is to the Premier, and the action I seek is to know whether the Premier was briefed in advance on the return of ISIS brides to Melbourne, or whether she raised any objections, and why the government or police did not consult affected communities. It has been truly devastating news for many in my community that the ISIS brides have returned to Australia and have returned to Melbourne, with Victoria Police given advance notice of their arrival. I put this: in 2023 then Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo underlined the importance of state governments when speaking about the repatriation of women and children detained in Syria. He told a Senate committee:

… if a state government chose to say, ‘We don’t want to proceed,’ then I would have thought the Commonwealth would take that pretty seriously, because we have to rely on them for schooling, trauma support, counselling, public health support and the like. So it’s done consensually.

So now we know, and that means that the Victorian Labor government consented to their settlement back into Victoria. I am calling on the state government and the Premier to explain why they did not oppose the repatriation of these people into Victoria. So many communities in the northern suburbs – like the Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Yazidi, Druze, Alawite, Shia Muslim and other communities – suffered tremendously at the hands of the Islamic State death cult. It is unconscionable that the government would simply settle them back into the state to live amongst the very communities they persecuted out of their homeland without any opposition. It is widely documented, including firsthand, from survivors, who told me that these ISIS brides and ISIS brides in general assisted their husband fighters with the enslavement of persecuted minorities. The Victorian government owe it to the communities that fled their homelands at the hands of Islamic State to explain where in Melbourne these ISIS brides are living; what prosecutions will be made, like there have been in other countries; if they will be entered into any deradicalisation programs; and if these people are being monitored by authorities.