Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Pauline Hanson’s push to block Australian citizens with terror links from returning to the country “would last about 30 seconds in the High Court” and set a dangerous precedent that would jeopardise Australia’s own deportation regime.
One Nation has unveiled its first substantial legislative proposal since the populist party began to surge in the polls, drawing level with Labor and leaving the official opposition languishing in third place. Hanson will introduce The Protecting Australians From Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill when parliament returns in August to toughen powers to cancel or refuse passports, create a new exclusion order for fighters, and strengthen bail laws for terrorism charges.
Burke said the nation’s terror laws were already at the limit of what was possible under the Constitution.
“On all the advice that I’ve had, something like what’s being proposed here would last about 30 seconds in the High Court,” Burke told ABC Sydney radio on Thursday.
“Every country in the world has to accept back its own citizens. Sometimes you can delay them for a bit, but ultimately, you have to accept your own citizens.”
Burke said if One Nation’s move succeeded, it would make Australia less safe because it set a precedent for other nations to block the return of their citizens. He said about 750 people a year were deported from Australia after committing serious crimes.
“They’re child sex offenders, they’re murderers, they’re perpetrators of family and domestic violence. They’re people who are here on a visa, who have broken the law, who should not be able to stay, and their country of origin doesn’t want them either, but they have to take them back,” Burke said.
“Australia has an interest in that principle because of the people we want to kick out.”
One Nation’s proposed legislation would allow the minister to refuse or cancel the passport of a person subject to an exclusion order – who must be deemed to “pose an unacceptable risk to Australians, and could not be safely managed by a less restrictive measure” – or had been charged with or convicted of a terrorism offence.
While One Nation’s bill will fail without Labor support, it signals the party’s priorities in an area traditionally viewed as a Coalition strength.
Hanson laid down a challenge to Opposition Leader Angus Taylor last week after it was reported that an Australian ISIS recruit, the presumed-dead “Dr Jihad” Tareq Kamleh, was alive in an Iraqi prison. Hanson said opposition parties needed to work together to block Kamleh and other foreign fighters from returning.
“Let’s work together to draft these bills. We will back them. I do not care whose name is on the paper. I care that it passes before the gates of that Baghdad prison open,” she said.
The changes proposed in her counter-terror bill would also criminalise those who assisted people with terror links in returning to Australia.
Taylor made a similar attempt when he first became opposition leader that would have penalised charities and NGOs that facilitated the return of Islamic State-linked women and children who had been detained in the al-Roj camp in Syria. Countries in the region still hold dozens of fighters and their families following the fall of the so-called caliphate and are trying to return them to their country of origin.
Burke on Thursday dismissed the proposal to criminalise associates as talking points meant to start a debate, and warned it would have unintended consequences.
“I’ve only seen one legal attempt at this, and it also criminalised the flight crew, it criminalised members of the United States military that have been trying to get people out of those camps,” Burke said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said no one had any sympathy for those who had left to fight for terrorist organisation, but citizens had rights that Australia would uphold.
“One of the things that define us as a country is we support the rule of law. Forty-five men who fought with ISIS returned before we came to government to Australia, and that’s because citizenship does bring certain rights under the Constitution,” he told ABC TV on Thursday.
“We will do everything we can, of course, within the law though, and will also, of course, provide no support for any of these people to return to Australia.”
The government has denied giving support to the so-called ISIS bride cohort, arguing the issuing of passports was legally required.
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Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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