Cabinet will sign off on the plan for the RAAF to join bombing raids on Isis but will find it harder to agree on a humanitarian response to the refugee crisis

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The Abbott government is set to confirm Australia will extend airstrikes into Syria and announce a response to the region’s refugee crisis – an issue that has divided the Coalition as it faces rapidly shifting public opinion.



The national security committee of cabinet met on Tuesday night to sign off on the plan to give Australian fighter-bombers permission to undertake limited strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria that are used to launch attacks into Iraq.

The defence minister, Kevin Andrews, has already said he backs the long-mooted shift and the attorney general, George Brandis, said strikes would be legal because “Isil conducts aggressive attacks on Iraq from bases within Syria ... and we are at war with Isil on behalf of the people and constitutional government of Iraq”.

But while the extension of airstrikes appears certain, the nature of the government’s response to the growing number of refugees seeking asylum in Europe from fighting in Syria and Iraq divided the Coalition on Tuesday.

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Abbott said on Sunday that Australia would take more Syrian and Iraqi refugees as part of the existing humanitarian quota, but immediately came under pressure from within his own ministry, and from state premiers and backbenchers to respond more generously.

Backbenchers – watching the outpouring of compassion at vigils around the nation – warned him at Tuesday’s closed-door party meeting of MPs and senators that public opinion was shifting decisively and quickly on the asylum issue.

Victorian backbencher Sarah Henderson said it was not just “the ABC and organisations of the left” that are calling on the government to do more to help refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict, but that those who had “stood by the government” on their hardline immigration policies also wanted greater action. A clear majority of the 17 Coalition MPs who spoke supported that view.

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But others, like Queensland senator Ian Macdonald, who on Monday told the chamber that he wished the Syrian people would “sort out their own problems”, urged the party room not to “overreact” to the refugee crisis because the party was not ruled “by the ABC or charities”.

The government has indicated it will prioritise minority groups and women and children and some are urging that Christians also be preferenced.

Abbott promised the meeting the Coalition would respond to the crisis with “decency and force” and that it would be ruled “by our heads and not just our hearts”.

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, told ABC Radio that persecuted minorities may never be able to return to their homelands.

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“That includes Maronites, it includes Yazidis, there are Druze. There are a whole range of ethnic and religious minorities that make up the populations in both Syria and Iraq and we’ll be focussing our attention particularly on the families who are in refugee camps along the borders of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey,” she said.

But government Senate leader Eric Abetz said Christians in the Middle East were “the most persecuted group in the world” and should be given priority.

“Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, and especially in the Middle East, I think it stands to reason that they would be pretty high up on the priority list for resettlement,” Abetz said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eric Abetz says he thinks ‘most Australians would welcome’ a refugee policy focusing Christians. Link to video

The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, also highlighted the plight of Christian communities in Syria.

“They are a minority, they survived in Syria, they’ve been there for thousands of years, literally since the time of Christ,” he said.

“But in an increasingly sectarian Middle East, you have to ask whether the gaps, the spaces that they were able to live and survive in will any longer be available.”

Labor is urging the government to make 10,000 permanent places available through the humanitarian resettlement scheme for Syrian and Iraqi refugees, with the makeup determined by the United Nations refugee agency. The Greens say Australia’s intake should be 20,000.

Labor wants the government to provide an additional $100m in humanitarian assistance. Abbott said that “over the last 12 months, this government has provided some $100m all up in humanitarian assistance to the Middle East, mostly to agencies dealing with Syria, but also to some agencies dealing with Iraq and other parts of that troubled region.”

Some Liberals publicly rebuked backbencher Cory Bernardi for saying people fleeing to Europe were doing so not for their own safety, but for economic reasons.

“Many of these people have been very safely ensconced, working and housed in places like Turkey for many years,” Bernardi told the Senate on Monday. “This seems to me to be becoming an opportunistic cycle which is masking the true humanitarian need that is the responsibility of all western nations.”

“Good on you, Cory,” fellow backbencher Ewen Jones said. “What do you expect from someone like Cory? He plays to his constituency and that’s the hard part.”

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was to brief the national security committee on Tuesday night after talks in Paris and Geneva about Australia’s best response. Cabinet was scheduled to sign off on the decisions Wednesday before the prime minister travels to Papua New Guinea to attend the Pacific Islands Forum.