Australian foreign affairs officials can’t — or won’t — say how many Australians have been evacuated or killed as a result of the last 12 months of war in the Middle East.
Crikey asked the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for the information on Friday, October 11, and what followed was a protracted back-and-forth of emails, which ended with the department declining to give an answer and refusing to put its reasoning on the record.
Crikey asked how many Australians have died in Israel, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the preceding 12 months, and how many had been evacuated from those places in the same period.
The one bit of information that the department decided to provide was this, in the words of a department spokesperson: “As of today [October 15], a total of 3,170 Australians and their immediate family members have departed Lebanon on assisted departure flights.”
It’s understood the department’s reasoning for not answering the other questions was informed by worries that the privacy of individual families could potentially be affected, and concerns that collecting the information for publication in the media would impact consular resources. It’s further understood the department doesn’t track the number of Australians located overseas. DFAT did not respond to a request to put its reasoning for refusing to answer the questions on the record.
DFAT reports on its work assisting Australians in crisis situations abroad in its annual Consular State of Play report, with the most recent issue covering the 2022-23 financial year. It’s understood the next report is due before the end of the month.
Crikey is not alone in struggling to get information out of DFAT — last week, it was revealed the department failed to answer on time any of the questions it had taken on notice during the last round of Senate estimates.
“DFAT undertook to answer 264 questions on notice. Zero were tabled by the due date,” Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Trade Minister Don Farrell wrote in a reply to their Senate colleagues dated October 17.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Simon Birmingham said DFAT’s responses were “true to form for the Albanese government”.
“Despite talking a big game of greater transparency and accountability before the last election, the performance of this Labor government has been pitiful,” he told Crikey.
“Australians deserve better, in fact, Minister Wong has been one of the worst offenders, with DFAT responses to Senate estimates questions on notice routinely being used to hide information that Australians have a right to know.”
Greens immigration spokesperson David Shoebridge said the government had taken a “head in the sand” approach to the conflicts.
“With such prominent global conflict zones it is astounding the government says it doesn’t even try to track the whereabouts, or even the deaths, of Australian citizens,” he told Crikey. “This statement is hard to accept at face value given the information the government has previously released on Australians abroad when it suits them.
“Figures on Australians overseas are readily available for ministers when they need a speech in Parliament, but are refused to reporters or the public for accountability measures. This shows a lack of respect for both transparency and the public, it erodes trust in the government.”
A handful of Australian casualties have been revealed publicly, including a woman who was murdered by Hamas terrorists in the October 7 attacks on Israel, a man killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon in December, a man killed in an ambush while serving with the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza in December, and an aid worker killed in an Israeli strike on a car convoy in April.
