News live: Burke says ‘we know the state of mind’ of Australian women and children in Syria; authorities seize 28kg of cocaine hidden in luxury bus

The home affairs minister says the Coalition is ‘just plain wrong’ on the women and children’s Australian passport rights. Follow live updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Burke is asked if there is progress on banning a particular group yet as part of the new laws to ban hate groups passed last month: There were two groups that largely been spoken about before that. There was the Neo-Nazi and Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Neo-Nazi disbanded before the legislation put through. Hizb ut-Tahrir which is an organisation I’ve been fighting since my first term in parliament. … Asio have now provided the advice that that organisation meets the threshold that Asio requires for them to be able to be banned. So the next stage is the department prepares a brief for a minister, that brief is the second threshold that has to be determined and then after that presuming that that’s determined, then the Leader of the Opposition is advised and the Attorney-General has to sign off on it. They’re being held there by Kurdish authorities. They are not being allowed over a border by Syrian authorities. They went there against what the Australian government wanted. The government at the time was the Coalition. They didn’t have an attempt to stop their passports at the critical moment, which could have caused the protection that we all now wish had happened. And that is why they are there. This is not a situation where you’re showing the images where someone is there because Australia has put them there. Continue reading...