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By evening, the Prime Minister had canceled all public engagements and retreated to the Lodge. His office issued a second statement insisting that the repatriations were “limited, closely monitored, and fully compliant with law,” yet offered no detailed rebuttal to the documents now circulating publicly.
As night descended over Canberra, the political landscape had shifted irrevocably. Pauline Hanson—once often dismissed as a fringe figure—had emerged as the unlikely standard-bearer of national security outrage. Robert Gregory, a relatively obscure backbencher just 48 hours earlier, was now a household name. And Anthony Albanese, who had started the day defending a humanitarian policy, ended it scrambling to protect both his reputation and his political future amid credible accusations of negligence, secrecy, and mismanagement.