The Opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson Simon Birmingham has doubled down on calls for Australians fleeing Lebanon to pay for their flights home, saying those who ignored travel warnings shouldn’t expect a “free ride”.
Birmingham’s comments came as Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced the final scheduled evacuation flights out of Lebanon would leave on Sunday.
Almost 2,300 Australian citizens, permanent residents and immediate family members have already left Lebanon on, with the costs covered by taxpayers.
But Birmingham said they shouldn’t be “rewarded with a free ride out of the trouble they chose to stay in”.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Simin Birmingham has argued taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the flight bill for Australians who ignored warnings to leave Lebanon until the “missiles started exploding”. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
He noted Wong had said last October after the beginning of the Hamas-Israel war that Australians in Lebanon “should consider leaving now” — and the travel advice had only hardened since.
“I respect the free choice of those who choose to stay, as long as they are willing to accept responsibility for their choice,” he wrote in an opinion piece for digital newspaper The Nightly, published on Thursday,
“For too many, they ignored all warnings. But when the missiles started exploding, they were on the phone to DFAT calling for the Australian government to get them out.”
Birmingham reiterated his position on Friday morning, saying he didn’t think it was “fair or reasonable” for the evacuees to not pay for their tickets back to Australia.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s Lebanon or Israel or anywhere else around the world, we should be making sure that Australians understand when the Australian government gives out travel warnings and says, ‘You shouldn’t go to a country, and if you are there, you should leave that country’ and then you ignore those travel warnings day after day, week after week, month after month, then don’t expect to get a free ride home at the end of thumbing your nose on that,” he told Sky News.
“Of course, there need to be considerations for compassionate circumstances … but for the bulk of people who are overseas, who are outside of Australia and who would in any other circumstance have to pay their way back to Australia, it’s not unreasonable to expect that they make a contribution equivalent of a commercial airfare or the like to come back under whatever repatriation arrangements are put in place.”
The Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire for nearly a year in fallout from the war in Gaza. But since 23 September, .
Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the past few weeks, and forced 1.2 million from their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
Nearly 4,000 Australians and their families have registered to leave Lebanon, with vulnerable and displaced passengers being prioritised.
Wong defended the government’s decision to fund the flights, saying it was taking the same approach it took in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks.
But she emphasised that any Australians wanting to flee Lebanon “should leave now”.
“We have a flight scheduled for Sunday, that’s October 13. There are no further flights scheduled beyond that,” Wong told reporters in Adelaide on Friday.
“You should leave now if you wish to leave.”
With reporting by the Australian Associated Press and Reuters.
