Daily News Roundup

Tuesday, Oct 22

A new Newspoll has revealed that a majority of Australian voters don’t want Australian jihadi brides and their children returning Down Under.

There are currently 20 women and 46 children held in detention camps in northern Syria and a political battle has raged about what to do with them.

The Newspoll conducted from last Friday to Sunday for The Australian showed 59 per cent of the more than 1600 eligible voters polled strongly opposed the women and children being allowed to return to Australia.

Only 39 per cent reported they were strongly in favour of them being returned home.

Labor voters were more likely to want the women and children returned with 50 per cent in favour compared to 45 per cent against.

Kurdish authorities have asked the Australian Government to repatriate the group, but Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said they will not be removed.

“We’ve been able to bring back some orphans, as you know, but we’re not in a position where we’re able to go into those camps,” he previously said.

“But we have been very clear — we’re not going to put Australian defence, foreign affairs, or home affairs personnel or other agencies’ staff at risk.”

Labor’s Home Affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally has argued the group should be brought home despite their links to foreign fighters.

“Australians would expect the government to be making the right decisions, both in terms of our national security and morally,” Ms Keneally said.

“That is where I think Minister (Peter) Dutton and the Prime Minister need to be more clear with the Australian people.

Meanwhile, angry residents of towns in northeast Syria threw vegetables at American soldiers, and accused them of “betrayal”, as troops withdrew from Kurdish-controlled areas amid a controversial Turkish invasion there.

According to The Independent, the awkward scenes were filmed by locals in the border town of Qamishli as dozens of armoured vehicles travelled through northern Syria overnight and crossed the Iraqi border on Monday morning (local time).

###

Prince William is worried about his brother after Prince Harry and wife, Meghan, spoke out about their struggle to live under a global spotlight, the BBC reported.

The BBC quoted a “palace source” as saying there was a view the couple were “in a fragile place”.

William was “worried” about his younger brother and hoping that Meghan and Harry “are all right”, the source said.

On Sunday the ITV television channel broadcast a documentary filmed during the couple’s recent tour of Africa.

In it Harry said he would not be bullied into “playing the game” with the media that he believed killed his mother, Diana.

Princess Diana became one of the most photographed women on the planet after she married Prince Charles. She died in a car crash in 1997 after being followed through the streets of Paris by photographers.

Harry spoke to ITV about his mental health, saying it needed “constant management”.

“I thought I was out of the woods and then suddenly it all came back,” he said.

In the same documentary Meghan said the last year had been hard, admitting the media scrutiny was “a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes”.

Meghan said friends had warned her not to marry Harry because of the conduct of the British tabloid press.

“I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair, and that is the part that is really hard to reconcile,” she said.

“When people are saying things that are just untrue and they have been told they are untrue, but they are allowed to still say them, I don’t know anybody in the world that would feel like that is OK, and that is different from just scrutiny.”

Both Harry and Meghan have launched legal proceedings against Britain’s biggest tabloids.

###

An elite private school has apologised after a group of its students were filmed performing an “offensive” and “misogynistic” chant on a Melbourne tram, reports the ABC.

The headmaster of St Kevin’s College in Toorak has confirmed students have been disciplined over the incident, which took place on Saturday morning as they travelled to watch an inter-school athletics carnival.

The footage was recorded by a female passenger in South Melbourne, and shows boys in school uniform singing a chant called “I wish all the ladies”.

The chant includes the lines:

I wish that all the ladies

Were holes in the road

And if I was a dump truck

I’d fill them with my load

In a statement, headmaster Stephen F. Russell said the school offered an unreserved apology for the group’s actions, describing them as “offensive”.

“Students upset by the behaviour have already come to me and we have been following through in both a disciplinary and pastoral manner today,” he said.

The woman who filmed the vision, who identified herself as Melanie, said the behaviour occurred in front of other elderly passengers, young women and children.

“I thought it was disgusting,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

“You felt there was no respect for women. You felt that you couldn’t say anything and if you did, I think you’d be really concerned about what might happen next.”

Two years ago, students from St Kevin’s attracted controversy when they set off flares inside the Lakeside Stadium in Albert Park at the same athletics event.