The family of five arriving in Perth were from Homs, in western Syria.
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Australia says it’s hand picking the 12,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled here to limit any risk of importing terrorists.
Australia has pledged to take 12,000 genuine refugees, but Mr Dutton said he would not be compromising the nation’s security by doing so, even if delays meant the “program timeline is blown out”.
“We have generally expected that the arrivals would start in earnest in December”, he said.
“(The Paris attacks) demonstrates why we do need a tough border setting but at the same time we can bring in people such as the Syrians who are fleeing a murderous regime”, DM Dutton said on Monday.
Mr Porter said the family – consisting of a couple with three children – had gone through rigorous processing before their transfer from the Jordan refugee camp was approved.
“It has all the level of stringency that occurs for all humanitarian and refugee arrivals… the family has been through a great deal”.
Federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has shut down a call from a New South Wales State Government MP for Australia to stop accepting Middle Eastern refugees.
And Porter said he expected no difficulty for the Syrian family, who would be met by officials at the airport.
“There has been nothing other than huge generosity and positively from the Australian people”.
“We’re going to have an orderly process I think, rightly, assisting people who have been affected by the humanitarian disaster that is Syria”, Mr Keenan said.
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“If we can’t verify a person’s identity or if we believe that they have false documents then that application is to be discarded and we move on to the next application”.
