ISIS Brides: Video emerges of Tony Burke hugging Dr Jamal Rifi, Sydney man leading push repatriate ISIS brides

Video has emerged of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke hugging the Sydney doctor leading the mission to repatriate so-called ISIS brides from Syria during his election night victory party last year.

The vision recorded in the Sydney suburb of Punchbowl shows Dr Jamal Rifi, who is a known close friend of the Minister, dancing with the initials ‘TB’ spray-painted on his head while wearing a red Labor party T-shirt at the May 3 celebration.

SEE THE VIDEO IN THE PLAYER ABOVE

Last week The Nightly revealed Dr Rifi had travelled to the Middle East with Australian passports for the 34 terrorist-linked women and children trying to escape from a detention camp in northeast Syria.

Mr Burke has repeatedly insisted that the Albanese Government is not involved in the private effort being coordinated by Dr Rifi and had no knowledge of his friend’s overseas travel until it was revealed by The Nightly.

Dr Rifi has now broken his silence about the mission, to rescue the 11 families saying: telling Nine Newspapers “I’d do it 1000 times…. the children shouldn’t suffer from the sins of fathers or mothers and Australian children”.

“We’re making some inroads, but the biggest obstacle is the prime minister’s statements,” Rifi said. “The Syrian side is asking if he doesn’t want them, we don’t have anything from them, why should we help them?”

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has bristled at suggestions his push to remove the disgraced former Prince Andrew from the line of Royal succession is a deliberate distraction from the growing controversy over so-called ISIS brides trying to return to Australia.

On Tuesday, an exasperated Anthony Albanese rejected suggestions he could simply cancel passports for the terrorist-linked families in Syria, as a former Labor MP joined calls for the government to take urgent steps to block them coming home.

When asked to respond to accusations he only penned a letter to the UK PM about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a distraction to “move the story on from the ISIS brides”, the PM responded to interviewer Karl Stefanovic with “oh, for goodness sake”.

Mr Albanese insisted he acted separately and in response to the issues unfolding in the UK, to “encourage” his British counterparts to take actions.

Again asked about why Australia couldn’t just use its powers under the passport Act to block the suspected ISIS linked group from returning to Australia.

“That’s not right. If it was that simple, then you would have done it,” he claimed.

“There are constitutional issues and legal rights that people have.”

He then again asserted that the previous Morrision-led Coalition Government had allowed 40 people, including fighters, to return from Syria following the rise of Islamic State.

“Forty people came back … on the former government, including ISIS fighters. People who were actual fighters came back,” he said.

Despite “absolutely” acknowledging the assertion that the group travelled to what Stefanovic called “Disneyland for terrorists”, the PM insisted that the threshold for blocking Australian citizens couldn’t bar the group.

“Sure but it’s called the law,” he said, admitting the current laws had limitations.

“The advice is very clear that it has to be a much higher threshold. It stipulates the sense of an immediate threat.

“The law that is in place is the law that was there under the former government, so these aren’t our laws, they’re the former government’s laws.

“Even the temporary extension orders — when a permit is applied for that will stop at least one individual coming back for 12 months, that is all it will do.”

Labor State premiers have since been pulled into the Albanese Government’s controversy over the group, with NSW Premier Chris Minns revealing on Monday that authorities had raised resettlement possibly with him as early as last year.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, however, appeared combative and tight-lipped when peppered with almost a dozen questions about the ISIS brides at a Tuesday press conference.

Mr Minns had said he expected a third of the cohort to return to his State, while it’s understood the remainder will likely settle in Victoria.

However, Ms Allan insisted she has had no discussions with the Home Affairs Minister about ISIS brides returning to her State.

“I will leave it appropriately to the Prime Minister in the Home of Affairs Minister to talk to the process that they are responsible for,” she said, repeatedly attempting to shift responsibility to the Federal Government.

“Should there be a consideration of where these individuals will come and settle in Australia or in terms of that engagement with officials, I want to be absolutely clear that my program for those discussions is the safety of the Victorian,” she said.

Former Liberal PM Tony Abbott and former treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the two-day Aspire Conference in Sydney on Tuesday that Australia needed an urgent immigration shake-up.

Mr Frydenberg declared Australia needed an “immigration policy which does discriminate” and should be treated as “a matter of self-defence”.

“I do believe we need to move to a immigration policy which does discriminate. It discriminates on the basis of what’s in the national interest, and that is the type of person that we want in this country,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“It’s not a right to come to this country. It’s a privilege. We need to emphasise that. We overplay diversity and we underplay unity.”

Mr Abbott said migrants needed to “honestly subscribe to the Australian citizenship oath” and claimed Australia had “imported division”.

Shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duniam seized on Dr Rifi’s comment saying “the premise of self-managed returns doesn’t work — without active authorisation from Australia”.

“Dr Jamal Rifi, a close personal and political supporter of Minister Tony Burke, travelled to the Middle East to support efforts to repatriate these terrorist sympathisers,” he said.

“Serious questions remain about secret meetings and communications regarding the ISIS brides cohort.”