Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has suggested children stranded in a Syrian refugee camp are "ISIS sympathisers", before snapping at a journalist who questioned whether Australia should do more to bring the group home.
The coalition has ramped up attacks on the government over the group of so-called "ISIS brides", who have been seeking a way home to Australia after travelling to the Middle East in support of Islamic State fighters.
The group is reportedly made up of 23 children and 11 women, but Mr Taylor said the entire cohort were effectively terrorist supporters.
Asked if he also viewed the children as terrorist sympathisers, Mr Taylor was blunt.
"They are ISIS sympathisers, let's be clear... there's no ambiguity about that," he told a Canberra press conference on Monday.
Mr Taylor's home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam doubled down, questioning how old the children really were.
"I don't know how many of the cohort's so-called children are below the age of 17," he said.
"If people in their minds think this is a bunch of two- and three-year-olds who are still learning to walk and talk, this is not the cohort we're talking about."
The opposition leader and senior frontbenchers met with members of Australia's Yazidi community on Monday.
Mostly of Kurdish descent, the Yazidis faced a genocide at the hands of IS between 2014 and 2017.
Asked repeatedly why another country should take responsibility for Australian citizens, Mr Taylor snapped at the reporter asking the question.
"Are you an activist or a journalist? You need to make up your mind," he said.
Mr Taylor took the fight into question time, quizzing the prime minister and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke about their involvement in the IS brides' attempt to return to Australia.
Anthony Albanese said the cohort were entitled to enter the country because they are Australian citizens, but avoided questions about whether he or his ministers attempted to speed up the issuing of passports.
Mr Taylor also came in for criticism for failing to condemn a vile letter to a Sydney mosque which threatened to kill Muslims.
Multiculturalism Minister Anne Aly - the only Muslim minister in the federal cabinet - accused the Liberals of spurring anti-Muslim sentiment in the community, by not adequately condemning Islamophobic incidents.
AAP has contacted Mr Taylor's office for comment on the threat.
"This does speak to the very fact that the opposition is playing into a normalising of anti-Muslim rhetoric, of anti-Muslim hatred that has seen a rise in Islamophobia and an increase in the number of Islamophobic incidents, including direct violent threats against mosques," Dr Aly told AAP.
"It is absolutely abhorrent but speaks volumes about the Liberal Party and about Angus Taylor."
