With the return of parliament, the government is making yet another push for laws preventing Australian citizens with terrorist links from returning to Australia from war zones. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is planning to push the Counter Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Bill 2019 through both houses of parliament this week.
Haven’t we been here before?
The topic of what to do with foreign fighters attempting to return to Australia was a long-term preoccupation of former prime minister Tony Abbott following the spread of ISIS across Iraq and Syria in 2013 and 2014. In 2015, he moved to strip Australian citizenship from foreign fighters with dual citizenship, saying that the rising threat of foreign fighters “requires a modern form of banishment”.
By the time the bill passed, Abbott had been replaced by Malcolm Turnbull. Under these laws, according to Dutton, nine dual nationals had their citizenship revoked due to conflict-related activities in Syria and Iraq.
Abbott stayed on the topic, pushing for harsher and harsher penalties in the years since. He argued in 2017 for special courts “that can hear evidence that may not normally be admissible”. He went a step further in February 2018, writing in The Australian that the government should follow Britain’s lead in temporarily banning foreign fighters (including full citizens) from returning:
This is what now needs to be put in place: a way to stop terrorists returning even though they are solely Australian citizens with a normal right to be here. And there is a readily available overseas precedent. Since early 2015, the British government has been able to make court-supervised “temporary exclusion orders” against sole-citizens who have left the country to fight with terrorists and would pose a menace to the public if they returned.
In the aftermath of the Bourke Street attack in Melbourne late last year, Abbott got his wish. Prime Minister Scott Morrison pushed for two updates to the Australian Citizenship Act: increasing the existing power to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals, and a period of exclusion from reentry of foreign fighters returning to Australia.
The proposal allowed the Home Affairs Minister to impose an exclusion order for up two years on people who have been to conflict zones, making it a criminal offence to return to Australia unless given a “permit with other controls”. The measure stalled, and Dutton tried again in February and July this year.
What does the law provide for?
A temporary exclusion order (TEO) can be imposed on an Australian citizen overseas if they are 14 years or older, and:
- The minister reasonably suspects that issuing the TEO would substantially help prevent terrorism-related acts, or;
- ASIO has assessed the person to be a direct or indirect risk to security, for reasons related to political violence. ASIO doesn’t need to be satisfied to any standard of proof when making this assessment.
As Sangeetha Pillai points out in The Conversation, neither of these criteria “actually requires a TEO candidate to have engaged in any wrongdoing”.
The law would increase the already remarkable levels of discretion available to the Home Affairs Minister, allowing Dutton to decide if “reasonable grounds” exist to conclude allowing an Australian to return to Australia would assist a terrorist organisation. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security reviewed the legislation and made 18 recommendations increasing oversight, transparency and safeguards. The government has largely ignored them; proposing a right of review of any decision to bar an Australian from returning — but a decision could only be overturned if it is “legally flawed”.
Is it constitutional?
There have been persistent questions about whether exclusion orders are constitutional. The right to return to the country of which one is a citizen is commonly regarded as a core aspect of citizenship. The Law Council of Australia have argued this right is constitutionally protected in Australia.
Is it even effective?
Pillai argues the government hasn’t explained “why Australia’s extensive suite of existing anti-terrorism mechanisms doesn’t already adequately protect against threats posed by Australians returning from conflict zones”. She cites the “significant international legal concerns” around the exclusion, which Susan Hutchinson argued in Interpreter will make actual prosecutions harder:
It is well documented that ISIS perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including the egregious use of sexual violence are notoriously under-prosecuted. As a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Australia is obliged to investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators of these crimes. The exclusion described in these amendments would only make it more difficult to detain such perpetrators for prosecution.
Allow them back? Fuck no. They can rot in the paradise of their own making.
Are you saying MikeB, that a woman and her children who were tricked into going into a war zone, by her A..ehole husband can not return to her country and her children’s country of birth?
All because she trusted her husband?
What if he’s dead, is that good enough for you?
Are you saying that the orphan children of other Australians can’t come home to their grandparents?
This legislation has so many holes in it for Peter Dutton and Mikey Pezzullo to slide through and just act like the B……ds they are.
Yeah pretty much. Maybe it will make future glory-seekers think a bit harder before transferring their “Call of Duty” battle “experience” into the real thing.
Such a simple minded view. So what happens after 2 years then? Do you think they might have relatives here that will see this as another example of their people being treated badly, differently from other Australians. You want the people holding them captive to pay for their upkeep? Or maybe you think they should expose themselves to the risk of being held responsible for the inevitable bad outcomes for this failure of the Australian government to look after their own. People who think like this are the ones who allowed Howard to get us inolved in this stupid war in the first place. If only people would think a little more deeply we would all be better off. A forlorn hope unfortunately.
Big assumption that the woman was ‘tricked’ into anything.
People is weird and god botherers the worst of all.
Especially ones with access to things that go bang.
The interview with the Sharroof children, “Dad said we were going on holiday to Turkey”, his family were from around there.
Ans yes, there are a lot more.
As most females who fall under the spell of a cult, they learn to be subservient and obedient. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be rehabilitated and reintroduced to their own society.
In the right hands, Australian security forces can gain valuable information.
I realize that Australia is poor, I mean we only gave the politicians a 10% pay rise, but, currently we are bludging on the Kurds, instead of taking responsibility for our own citizens.
Allow them back? Fuck no. They can rot in the paradise of their own making.
While notionally it means more power for Dutton, the reality is more power for Pezzullo.
There are some quite fundamental legal issues at stake here and the Australian government, in what is now a common stance, is ignoring them. It is a point to bear in mind when next you here some Minister rabbiting on about “the rules based international Order” usually in the context of criticising another country for their alleged infringements. The hypocrisy is sickening.
If Peter Dutton spent most of his time searching for individual returnees he might actually achieve something. Instead, every time he winds up for a massive display of Blitzkrieg revealing a porcine visage and a mental vacuum.
He’s too busy organizing AU Pairs into the country on compassionate grounds and helping the 40,000 per year of trafficked people apply for asylum, so that they can be exploited here, and then deported before they can take their “employers ” to WorkFair Australia and court for the missing wages.