As if Australian Labor leader Anthony Albanese wasn’t in deep enough, he’s having to deal with the fallout from the factional deal that saw Labor’s Quota Queen Kristina Keneally parachuted into another job she never earned. Albanese has so far utterly failed to show that Labor have learned anything substantial from their election loss. He’s also struggled unsuccessfully to put the union bovver boys in their place over the CFMEU boss, John Setka.
Now, he’s got the Unflushable Krissy K queering his pitch even worse. Not content with loudly flogging every leftist dead horse Labor should have left in the ditch last May, Keneally has taken it on herself to nail Labor to the deeply unpopular policy of bringing home the jihadi brides who shuffled off to Syria for a head-chopping, sex-slaving holiday in the desert sun.
Which isn’t going to win hearts and minds for Labor.
The majority of voters are opposed to allowing Australian Islamic State brides and their children to be brought home from Syria following calls for them to be repatriated.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows little sympathy for the plight of 20 Australian women and 46 children now holed up in refugee camps caught in the crossfire between Turkish and Kurdish forces, following the withdrawal of US troops from the region.
The Australian government has remained firm in its refusal to bring home the wives of Islamic State fighters and their children, claiming that it is unsafe for Australian forces to enter the region to retrieve them…Attorney-General Christian Porter said on the weekend that the government was not willing to put the lives of Australian forces at risk in an effort to retrieve them.
The government has also argued that even if the ISIS wives were to be brought home, intelligence and security agencies would not have the resources to subject them to the necessary control orders that would be required to monitor their repatriation.
What’s particularly interesting in this poll is the breakdown by gender. Usually, with such “compassion” issues, it’s almost certain that there’ll be a marked difference of opinion between women and men.
Not this time.
The poll shows that reluctance to allow Islamic State wives and children to return was shared equally among men and women.
Only 15 per cent of people were strongly in favour of bringing them home. However, 39 per cent were strongly opposed to ever allowing them to return.
The only real difference is between Labor and Coalition voters. Keneally might be playing to the Labor peanut gallery in the inner cities, but she’s not winning any votes anywhere else.
Labor voters were more likely to be sympathetic, with 50 per cent agreeing they should be returned home compared with 45 per cent being opposed.
An overwhelming majority of Coalition voters were against the women and children being permitted to re-enter the country.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/voters-newspoll-verdict-dont-let-isis-wives-children-return