Government-chartered evacuation flights out of Lebanon to end on Sunday, October 13

Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham says Australians in Lebanon should be charged for government-chartered flights out of the conflict zone in order to not “incentivise” bad behaviour.

His comments follow the announcement that the government will be stopping flights out of Beirut from Sunday due to the declining take-up, with six flights scheduled from Friday.

Two flights between Beirut to Larnaca, Cyprus on Thursday were less than half full, with only 292 of the available 660 seats filled.

On Friday, Senator Birmingham said people fleeing all conflict zones should be required to pay the equivalent of a commercial flight, noting the provision would be applied to Israel as well.

Despite this, individual circumstances that warranted genuine compassions would still exist, he said.

“It’s not unreasonable to expect that they make a contribution equivalent of a commercial airfare or the like to come back under whatever repatriation arrangements are put in place,” he told Sky News.

“The key point there is it’s about trying to incentivise better behaviour.”

While warnings for Australians to return from Lebanon have been ongoing since the October 7 attacks in 2023, Senator Birmingham said they had largely been ignored, with the impetus to leave only increasing once Israel began to strike the area with missiles.

“They had ignored the warnings up till then, and now they expect Australian government officials to put themselves in harm’s way to get them out and other Australian taxpayers to subsidise them in getting out and being brought back to Australia,” he said.

“Well, I don’t think that is fair or reasonable.”

Asked for her response to Senator Birmingham’s comments, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the government would continue its call for Australians wishing to leave Lebanon to do so immediately.

“We have a flight scheduled for Sunday, that’s October 13, there are no further flights scheduled beyond that,” she said.

“You should leave now if you wish to leave.”

The government said it was forced to reassess the viability of future flights out of Beirut due to the declining take-up.

Two government-chartered flights leaving Cyprus on Wednesday were just over half occupied, with 364 of the 660 available seats taken up. This is despite 3350 Australians and their immediate family members registering their desire to leave Lebanon and saying they were available to leave the city.

The figures were down from the day before when 409 of the available 660 seats were filled.