Australian citizens and their children remain stranded in Syrian camps as political fear eclipses care, responsibility and legal obligation – with damaging consequences for public decency.

Last week Anthony Albanese made some truly remarkable statements about a group of Australian women and their children who are stranded in the Al-Roj refugee camp in Syria and can’t get home. He blamed the women for their plight (“ I have nothing but contempt for them”) and cited the old adage about having to lie in the bed one has made.

His words flew in the face of many things – recent history and our sense of decency, in particular.

Let’s take the history first. A decade ago some girls and young women, swept up in an ideology most Australians would abhor, travelled to the Middle East to join their ISIS husbands or to marry ISIS men. They became caught up in a dreadful conflict and finished in tents in refugee camps. Years later, they remain in the camps still.

They appear to be desperate to get out, but Australia has........

© Pearls and Irritations