Government defends policies on families linked to Islamic State fighters
Matt Thistlethwaite, the assistant minister for foreign affairs, said claims by the opposition that Labor had failed to protect Australians’ safety were a “stunt” on Sky News this morning.
Thistlethwaite said Kovacic’s comments, as reported earlier in the blog, were incorrect, saying the Albanese government had “toughened up” border security through its refusal to provide any assistance or repatriation support.
He said:
If anyone is advised by the security and intelligence agencies to have been involved in potential terrorist activities, they’ll be excluded. And we’re going to exclude someone.
So, we’re actually taking a tougher stand than the Coalition took.
Read more about a temporary exclusion order issued to one woman last week here:
Key events
Australia’s athletes on the snow, ice and in the air at the 2026 Winter Olympics – in pictures
Team Australia’s Winter Olympians mixed it with the world’s best athletes across a wide range of events at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
See more here:
Duniam says ‘constitutional risk’ of proposal isn’t enough to stop Coalition from pushing it
Duniam said the risk a policy would result in a high court defeat isn’t enough to keep the Coalition from pushing it forward.
He said:
The constitutional risk or legal risk is not a reason to do nothing.
If that’s the approach the Albanese government want to take when it comes to national security, then they can explain why they choose to do nothing to strength strengthen laws to protect our border
Our view is sitting by and doing nothing while someone is over in the Middle East trying to bring back terrorist sympathisers to our country, you have to act.
Save the Children says effort to ‘criminalise advocacy for Australian children’ would be extraordinary
Save the Children says the Coalition’s proposal to criminalise any assistance would be “extraordinary”, saying politicians should be focused on trying to find ways to protect kids, not stop help from reaching them.
The group’s CEO, Mat Tinkler, said in a statement:
Save the Children has already made it clear that we are not facilitating the re-entry of Australian citizens from northeastern Syria. We have not, and will not, conduct extraction or repatriation operations.
As a humanitarian organisation we abide by principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence and humanity and operate in compliance with Australian and international law. In the case of innocent children stranded in camps in northeastern Syria our role has been twofold: providing them with lifesaving humanitarian relief and advocating for national governments to repatriate their citizens.
Tinkler went on to say no child should be left “stranded”, saying “both sides of government have previously recognised this by repatriating groups of Australian children and women in the past”.
We call on political parties to dial down the political rhetoric. It is time to show leadership and compassion for Australian children. The race to the bottom at the expense of vulnerable children’s lives must end.
Jonno Duniam, the shadow minister for home affairs, said the proposal isn’t about targeting an individual group, like Save the Children, it’s about targeting “anyone who breaks the law”.
“This is targeting terrorist sympathisers, that’s who this is targeting,” Taylor adds.
I think it is reasonable to ask the government to be part of a solution here.
Angus Taylor calls on Labor party to work with them to exclude some Australian citizens
Opposition leader Angus Taylor is speaking in Brisbane about the Coalition’s proposal to criminalise any assistance given to Australians linked to Islamic State fighters stranded in Syria.
He claimed the Albanese government is “is failing to prevent the return of terrorist sympathisers to Australia”, adding:
Labor needs to be upfront with the Australian people about what’s going on here. But most of all, Labor needs to support this legislation.
Taylor said the Liberal Party will stand ready to “strengthen our laws to protect our way of life”.
Australians applied for more mortgages and credit cards at the end of last year
Australians have leaned into debt ahead of the central bank’s pivot to hike interest rates, with applications for mortgages and credit cards doubling in the recent quarter, AAP reports.
Mortgage credit demand grew 12.3%, while credit card applications jumped more than 15% in the three months to December compared with the equivalent 2024 quarter, according to Equifax’s Market Pulse report.
The significant increase in mortgage applications was at a level not seen in five years. Kevin James, the chief solution officer at Equifax, said:
It’s likely to have been supercharged by the government’s expanded 5% first home buyer deposit scheme that became available in October 2025, and buyers acting on the impression that rates had peaked in late 2025, and therefore rushed to lock in deals before the year’s end.
Lenders appeared to be tightening their belt, however, dropping limits for new credit cards by an average 8.3% year-on-year and cutting personal loan limits by 3.9%.
Sarah Basford Canales
Australia will ‘examine all options’ to avoid new 15% tariffs announced by Donald Trump
Australia will “examine all options” after the US president, Donald Trump, announced a temporary 15% tariff would apply to US imports from all countries this weekend.
The US president’s move came less than 24 hours after the US supreme court overturned his original 10% import tariff. Shortly after the ruling, Trump announced he was reinstating the 10% duties using a different law before raising it again to 15%.
In a brief statement on Sunday morning, the trade minister, Don Farrell, said he was working closely with Australia’s embassy in Washington to “assess the implications and examine all options”.
“Australia believes in free and fair trade,” he said.
We have consistently advocated against these unjustified tariffs.
Read more here:
Government defends policies on families linked to Islamic State fighters
Matt Thistlethwaite, the assistant minister for foreign affairs, said claims by the opposition that Labor had failed to protect Australians’ safety were a “stunt” on Sky News this morning.
Thistlethwaite said Kovacic’s comments, as reported earlier in the blog, were incorrect, saying the Albanese government had “toughened up” border security through its refusal to provide any assistance or repatriation support.
He said:
If anyone is advised by the security and intelligence agencies to have been involved in potential terrorist activities, they’ll be excluded. And we’re going to exclude someone.
So, we’re actually taking a tougher stand than the Coalition took.
Read more about a temporary exclusion order issued to one woman last week here:
Butler criticises Coalition push to criminalise assistance for families linked to Islamic State
Health minister Mark Butler said the opposition’s policy to criminalise any assistance granted to the women and children of Islamic State fighters in Syria wasn’t serious, labelling it a “grab for a headline” that could potentially punish aid workers, AAP reports.
Butler told ABC TV this morning “all we’ve seen is newspaper articles about (the policy)”, adding:
No serious content about what appears to be some plans to try and criminalise the work of aid organisations like Save the Children.
We’re focused instead on applying the strict letter of the law.
The opposition’s proposal would apply in circumstances where the government has given “express permission” for repatriation to occur.
The federal government has ruled out any efforts to repatriate the group.
Sussan Ley ‘undermined’ by colleagues, Albanese says
Sarah Basford Canales
Anthony Albanese says former opposition leader, Sussan Ley was “undermined” by conservative colleagues, Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, during her 276-day tenure in the seat.
Speaking to Hit 104.9, which covers Ley’s southern NSW electorate of Farrer, the prime minister criticised the Coalition’s recent internal turmoil while praising his own side of politics. Albanese said:
From day one, she was undermined by Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie and a range of them who weren’t really working to try to get her success in the party. …
It’s, I think, unfortunate that politics can be a pretty rough game, and that [Ley] was elected by the Liberal party caucus, fair and square, she was the leader, but never even got to give a budget reply. I don’t know if that’s happened before. I’m not sure, but certainly she didn’t even get one year in the office, which is pretty rough.
Liberal senator says government should change laws to restrict some Australian citizens from coming home
Liberal senator Maria Kovacic says the Albanese government should do more to be able to restrict Australian citizens returning to Australia.
The senator’s comments come amid the new Coalition call to criminalise any assistance given to those with links to the Islamic State.
Kovacic told Sky News this morning:
We want to ensure that people who leave our country and go to terrorist hotspots, people who go there to support terrorist organisations or to support Islamic State or organisations or other terror listed organisations, and then who actually commit crimes over there … they can’t come back to Australia.
I’ve got a newsflash for the government. They are the government. They can change the law. If the law is not strong enough to keep Australians safe and to keep people out who actually hate Australian values and hate the Australian way of life, and who have left our country to fight for an alternate way of life, then we should change those laws.
Petra Stock
Pollution from trucks and buses costs Australians $6.2bn in health effects each year, study finds
Air pollution from trucks and buses is costing Australians about $6.2bn each year due to the health effects of exposure to vehicle exhaust, a University of Melbourne study has found.
Like cigarette smoke, heavy vehicle exhaust is a mixture of tiny toxic carbon particles and gases that cause inflammation when inhaled, and is associated with a wide range of respiratory, heart and other health impacts, according to Dr Clare Walter a health and policy researcher and an author of the study.
Most Australians are exposed to traffic pollution on a daily basis. Proximity to roads and truck routes increases the health risks and some groups, like children, elderly people and disadvantaged populations, are more vulnerable, especially if they live, work or attend school or childcare near major truck routes.
Heavy diesel vehicles like trucks and buses account for a disproportionate share of the problem, making up about 4% of the vehicle fleet but one quarter of exhaust-related pollution.
Read more here:
Amanda Meade
Here’s a tribute to Rowland from the ABC
ABC veteran Michael Rowland to leave broadcaster
Amanda Meade
Michael Rowland has announced he is leaving the ABC after almost four decades on air, with 15 of those spent hosting ABC News Breakfast.
At the end of 2024 Rowland quit News Breakfast and has spent his final year as 7.30’s national affairs reporter, including as a fill-in host for Sarah Ferguson.
“I’ve marked 39 years in the last couple of weeks or so, and when you know, you know,” Rowland said on News Breakfast.
I’ve had a great ride of the ABC, a charmed career, including back in the early days there at News Breakfast with Virginia [Trioli].
It’s just the right time for my family, my friends, just to step back from full-time work [and] move on to the next stage in life.
Rowland joined the ABC in Sydney in February 1987 as a radio news cadet and covered state and federal politics. He was Washington correspondent and has anchored four presidential elections and multiple major events, including the death of Queen Elizabeth.
Major rail corridor connecting WA to South Australia and eastern states closed for at least a week
The East West rail line, a major outback transport network that connects South Australia and Western Australia, will be closed for at least seven days after heavy rain and flooding.
The rail corridor, which also provides a rail link between WA and the eastern states, was significantly affected by flooding, with track washaways of up to 100 metres in some areas, the Australian Rail Track Corporation said yesterday.
The body warned that while weather systems were slowly dissipating, heavy rain in the area could further affect part of the network and “may exacerbate existing damage and recovery efforts”.
Large parts of the country in for stormy, wet start to the week
Communities could be cut off and large parts of Australia disrupted by severe thunderstorms forecast to dump hundreds of millimetres of rain, but the big wet is not all bad news, AAP reports.
A low-pressure system sitting over central Australia is brewing a significant rain event expected to drag into the middle of the week, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned.
Across the four days until Wednesday, Sarah Scully, a BoM meteorologist, said the heaviest rainfall totals of between 150mm and more than 300mm were expected throughout central Australia, South Australia’s border district, Queensland and NSW.
But a “bull’s eye” around central Melbourne, with possible falls of more than 75mm, could potentially put out fires burning in Victoria, she said.
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are likely in central parts of Australia and north-west NSW on Monday, with flood warnings in place from northern Australia to northern parts of South Australia, extending into Queensland.
Severe Weather Update: Multi-day heavy rainfall event across large parts of Aus.
Video current as of 2:30pm AEDT 22 February 2026.
Know your weather. Know your risk.
For the latest forecasts and warnings, go to our website https://t.co/4W35o8iFmh or the BOM Weather app. pic.twitter.com/zFRxfYVg5i
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) February 22, 2026
Coalition details plan to criminalise assisting people with links to Islamic State
Ted O’Brien, the shadow minister for foreign affairs, is speaking this morning about a new opposition plan to make it a criminal offence to help Australians with links to the Islamic State to return home.
The proposal comes as lawmakers wrangle over the future of 34 women and children stuck in Syria with links to dead or detained Islamic State fighters.
The Albanese government said the country will not assist in repatriation efforts, but those in the group have been issued passports and travel documents as is required by law.
O’Brien told RN Breakfast the plan would close a loophole in the law, saying it would bar the government from “outsourcing the repatriation of terror sympathisers back to Australia”.
He said the proposal should apply “across the board”. When pressed if a new law would include barring anyone from helping children come home to Australia, O’Brien said there would be no “automatic exemption” for kids.
The shadow minister also said the law could penalise non-governmental organisations like Save the Children if they were “assisting foreign fighters, families or sympathisers of terrorists”.
Victoria warns residents to be on alert for measles
Victorian health officials are warning of an increased risk of measles in the state, especially metropolitan Melbourne, after local transmission of the virus in the city among people with no recent travel or known public exposure.
Vaccination remains the best way to protect yourself against measles.
Victoria’s acting chief health officer has pointed to a long list of public exposure sites, saying anyone who visited one during the times listed should monitor for symptoms for up to 18 days. Measles usually starts with fever, cough, a runny nose, sore eyes and a general feeling of being unwell. That’s usually followed by a rash that often starts on the face before spreading around the body.
A spate of summer international travel and a decline in childhood vaccination rates has seen cases rise around the country. Read more here:
Good morning
Nick Visser
Good morning, and happy Monday. Nick Visser here to get things started this week. Here’s what’s on deck:
Victoria is warning residents of an increased risk of measles in the state after local transmission of the virus in Melbourne among people with no recent travel or public exposure. Health officials have published a long list of exposure sites, warning people to monitor for symptoms.
Communities could be cut off and large parts of Australia disrupted by severe thunderstorms forecast to dump large amounts of rain. A weather system sitting over central Australia is expected to drag into the middle of the week, the Bureau of Meteorology warns.
The East West rail line, a major outback transport network, is currently closed after 24 hours of heavy rain and flooding caused track washaways of up to 100 metres in some places. The rail corridor connects South Australia with Western Australia and provides a rail link between WA with the eastern states.
Stick with us.
