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Government says Syria situation ‘distressing’ for children, but lays blame on parents

Murray Watt, the federal environment minister, also spoke to RN, saying the government understands the situation as “distressing” for the children in Syria.

It’s a distressing situation that they’ve been placed in as a result of very bad decisions by their parents. We, of course, from a government perspective, you know, focus more than anything on the safety of Australians, and that explains the basis of our decisions that we’ve made about this group.

I do have sympathy for those children, and our government has sympathy for those children. But the decision to put the children in these situations was made by their parents. That’s something that we can’t change.

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