More so-called “ISIS brides” could fly back to Australia within days, as tensions grow between the Albanese government and the country’s domestic spy agency ASIO over counter-terrorism funding levels before last year’s Bondi massacre.

Negotiations are underway for seven Australian women, their children and grandchildren to travel to Damascus, after reportedly departing the Al Roj refugee camp in northeast Syria by bus.

Home Affairs Minister Tony ⁠Burke said Australia’s security and intelligence agencies had been preparing for the return of women linked to ISIS for more than a decade.

“This is not a coherent group, there is a spectrum in terms of the actions of the individuals while they have been away from Australia,” Minister Burke said in a statement, but did not provide details about the group’s travel home.

The Albanese government has previously ruled out providing direct assistance for the return of Australian families linked to the terror group but has acknowledged “very serious limits” to ‌preventing ⁠citizens from re-entering the country.

Earlier this month four women and nine children also linked to the former caliphate flew into Sydney and Melbourne after spending almost two weeks in the Syrian capital, with Australian Border Force arresting three of the women.

Two are facing charges relating to slavery, and the other has been charged with joining a terrorist organisation and travelling to a declared conflict zone. All three remain in custody.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on Friday demanded the government take action to prevent the latest cohort of women and children from entering Australia.

“The government should be doing everything in its power to prevent these people from coming because they turned their back on our country to support a terrorist organisation, one that has been guilty of extraordinary atrocities including on Australians”.

The pending arrival of the remaining Australian women and children from Syria’s Al Roj camp comes as the Home Affairs Minister again appeared to blame ASIO for not prioritising counter-terrorism efforts in the months before December’s Bondi massacre.

Last month an interim report from the anti-Semitism Royal Commission revealed the proportion of resources that security agencies dedicated to counter-terrorism had “significantly” declined in recent years, before 15 innocent people were murdered at Bondi in December.

“The threats facing our nation are increasing and converging,” a government spokesperson told The Nightly in response to renewed suggestions that intelligence agencies had reduced the proportion of funding for counter-terrorism efforts.

“Our government backs our agencies’ judgement about how to allocate resources to deal with these threats.”

“The funding for each of our national security agencies has increased every single year we have been in government”.

Senior national security officials have bristled at the latest comments, insisting the government signs off on the Australian Intelligence Missions, which is a classified priority setting document for the country’s intelligence community.

“The political strategy is being noticed with the national intelligence community. Most of us are not impressed,” one veteran figure told The Nightly, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this month ASIO boss Mike Burgess insisted his agency’s priority remained preventing deadly attacks on Australians, following the finding from the anti-Semitism Royal Commission that the proportion of resources put towards counter-terrorism had fallen.

“If you’re referring to the Royal Commission talking about the overall investment by the National Intelligence Community, in a thing called terrorism and violent extremism. Yes, that had reduced over the years,” Mr Burgess said.

He also stressed that ASIO’s overall funding “had not reduced over a number of years” and noted that he would also be required to answer questions about the matter to the Royal Commission.

“ASIO’s job is to identify the threat and follow the threat so it can be understood and through the actions of my agency and our partners, the Australian Federal Police, State and Territory police, or policy actions of government, that threat is dealt with.”

On Friday the Prime Minister again insisted his government had “increased funding for ASIO, as we have for all the national security agencies”, when asked if he had spoken to the agency about resources following the Bondi attack.