ISIS brides: Tony Burke had confidential meetings with Save the Children over women returning to Australia

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke held confidential discussions with Save the Children prior to the September return of ISIS brides to Australia, directing a senior public servant to exit the room for a “frank” exchange with advocates pushing for their return.

Meeting minutes obtained by Coalition senators, indicate Mr Burke declined formal aid requests for Australians stuck in northern Syria from the charity’s executives driving the effort.

The notes, drafted by an official who attended the June meeting, record Mr Burke noting “there may be a way to achieve the same outcome without government undertakings”.

“The thinking is if people are able to get out, there are no ­blockages to them returning,” the official noted on Mr Burke’s initial remarks.

The typed summary captured Mr Burke stressing the “government doesn’t want to be perceived to have been paying to have them smuggled out” and expressing gratitude for the group’s media silence on repatriation plans.

The official recounted being excluded from the private talks among Mr Burke, Save the Children reps and campaigner Kamalle Dabboussy, father of an earlier repatriated ISIS bride.

“Kamalle asked to speak frankly, given with was (sic) a small delegation and provided an undertaking that anything discussed would not be shared unless agreed to by the minister,” the email stated.

“At this stage, I was asked to leave by the minister to enable a frank discussion to take place.”

This comes after Save the Children told The Nightly in late October that it “did not have any involvement with this group’s preparation or plans to return to Australia”.

A spokesperson said Save the Children did not provide any support to help the group of six women and children travel to Lebanon in June or return to Australia in September.

Save the Children also denied having any communication with Australian authorities about this group’s planned return to Australia.

“While we welcome the safe return of the four Australian children and their mothers who came back from al Hol camp, we remain deeply concerned for the innocent Australian children still stranded in Roj camp after more than six years,” said CEO Mat Tinkler in a statement to The Nightly.

“Every child deserves a life free of violence and fear, and we continue to call on the Federal Government to safely repatriate these children, and their mothers, home to Australia.”

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says Mr Burke has serious questions to answer about what had happened while the departmental note taker was out of the room.

“Were secret deals being done between the minister and the third party in that meeting?” she told a press conference on Thursday morning.

“Our Senate estimates process and the great work of our senators has revealed a secret meeting, maybe more than one secret meeting, we don’t know.

“What we do know is that we have a Prime Minister and a Home Affairs Minister who denied that this government was providing assistance to members of ISIS to return to Australia. So we urgently need answers to this question: what help was provided?”

After the meeting, Mr Dabboussy and Save the Children CEO Mat Tinkler penned a letter to Mr Burke seeking assurance for passports for brides exiting Syria. This is despite Mr Burke’s stance in June, when he said the government was not considering providing assurances to the Kurds, running the camps in Syria, that it would issue passports to those Australians trying to flee.

In October, it was revealed a group of six Australians, two women and four children, quietly returned to Australia from Syria in late September.

The two women – believed to be sisters – fled the notorious Al-Hawl detention camp in north-east Syria with their four children in early June.

The group of six quickly made it to Lebanon, more than 500km away, where they were reportedly detained trying to cross the border before arriving at the Australian Embassy in Beirut on June 6.

They underwent identity and security screenings before being issued Australian passports.

Home Affairs has revealed that two of the four children were born in Syria and had to apply for Australian citizenship by descent.

The group then flew on a commercial flight from Beirut to Melbourne on September 26.

Despite allegations of a cover-up, the Australian Government said it did not repatriate or help the group return to Australia, insisting they made their own personal travel arrangements.

But Greg Barton, a Professor of Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University, told The Nightly while the Government did not extract the Australians itself, it would have provided “a lot of help”.

“I think that there would have been quiet negotiations,” he said.

“This planning and negotiation would have gone on for many months.

“I’m sure there would have been a lot of coordination.”