The new minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, has confirmed he is looking at ways to allow Palestinians who fled to Australia to stay longer, saying no country should send people back to Gaza right now.
Burke said it was understandable that the government used visitor visas as its first response to the crisis, but acknowledged action was needed because the visas were expiring and the Israeli offensive was continuing.
“Certainly no country in the world would send people back to Gaza at the moment … so we have to work through what happens as the visas that people are currently on expire,” Burke told Sky News on Sunday.
“You’ve got lots of people who have experienced serious trauma, they’ve suffered great loss of family and friends with the killings that have occurred over there, and they’re also in a situation where for many of them the homes where they used to live are now rubble.”
The Palestinian community, refugee advocacy groups and the Greens are urging Burke to offer those fleeing Gaza a special humanitarian pathway like those offered to Afghans in 2021 and Ukrainians in 2022.
The Nine newspapers reported that a special visa pathway would be created for Palestinians, but Burke declined to reveal the details on Sunday on the basis that the government had yet to make the decision.
Burke, a veteran Labor frontbencher who was appointed to the combined portfolio of home affairs and immigration last week, said he was committed to security checks for visa applicants.
He said he would not put any other issue ahead of community safety.
But the Coalition’s defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, said the idea “looks quite reflexive from the government, it looks hurried”.
Hastie said Burke and some of his Labor colleagues in western Sydney were “under immense pressure” over the government’s response to the war in Gaza.
“He could have a pro-Gaza independent run against him and so I think this is where this has come from,” Hastie told Sky News.
“I think it’s right for the Australian people to have transparency and accountability on this issue. And we want to see as much detail as possible. We don’t want to see hurried visas issued out of political expediency.”
Hastie said it was “very important” that the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had travelled to Israel last week to “affirm our important bilateral relationship”.
When asked directly whether there was “any aspect of the way the Netanyahu administration has conducted this war that makes you uncomfortable”, Hastie refrained from any specific criticism of the Israeli government.
Hastie said war was “very, very messy” and no one wanted to see deaths of civilians “on both sides”.
“No one wants to see the death of innocents and that’s why this tragedy could have been avoided if Hamas had not raised the sword on October 7 in the first place,” Hastie said.
At least 39,550 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
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The offensive was launched in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October in which about 1,200 people were killed.
In newly published comments, the federal Labor minister Ed Husic said Australia “should be open to” levelling sanctions against the Israeli government, including its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Husic told the Sunday Telegraph the Israeli prime minister would “need to be held to account for the conduct of the conflict”.
“The tenor in the campaign is set from above,” the minister for industry and science told the paper in an extended interview.
“People will have to be held to account for the scale of that killing.”
Husic added that he was firm in the need to hold Hamas to account for its actions, including killing and hostage-taking.
“I’ve always put myself in the shoes of Israeli parents who can never see their kids again after what Hamas did,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.
“But equally, I don’t think Palestinian mums and dads and particularly kids should cop the brunt of the retribution.”
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, has repeatedly said Australia is “not a central player in the Middle East”, but is using its “respected voice” to push for peace.
Burke, when asked about Husic’s calls for sanctions on Sunday, said he believed the most important priorities were “to make sure that we get an immediate ceasefire, that civilians are protected, that the dire humanitarian crisis is dealt with, and that international humanitarian law [is] be kept to and respected”.