Australia's Coalition opposition has signalled it will support a bill introduced by One Nation senator Pauline Hanson that would prevent Australian citizens linked to overseas terrorist groups from returning home, with the legislation set to be introduced to the Senate on Wednesday.
Australian Coalition signals support for One Nation bill to bar citizens with terrorist links from returning
Australia's Coalition opposition has signalled it will support a bill introduced by One Nation senator Pauline Hanson that would prevent Australian citizens linked to overseas terrorist groups from returning home, with the legislation set to be introduced to the Senate on Wednesday.
Opposition leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan both indicated their backing for the bill ahead of its Senate introduction. Key frontbench members, including shadow foreign minister Ted O'Brien and shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duniam, have offered to work with Hanson on the legislation.
Duniam said the Coalition wanted the bill referred to a Senate committee so that legal experts could assess its robustness. 'We want to shut the door on terrorists, we've been trying for years to do this,' he said.
Hanson's bill would allow Australian passports to be cancelled more easily, create new penalties for anyone assisting the return of individuals with links to terrorist groups, and establish a 'foreign terrorist fighter exclusion order' regime, to be imposed by the federal court at the request of the home affairs minister.
The Albanese government previously used existing exclusion orders to temporarily bar one Australian woman linked to Islamic State from returning to the country, but acknowledged it lacked powers to permanently block citizens from entering.
Home affairs minister Tony Burke said last month that Hanson's proposal 'would last about 30 seconds in the high court.' Burke has also argued that citizens blocked from returning could pose a greater danger if left overseas and beyond the reach of Australian security agencies, and that countries bear responsibilities to other nations to manage their own citizens.
Even with Coalition support, the bill cannot be debated in the House of Representatives without Labor facilitating its progress, which both sources describe as extremely unlikely given the government's position.
Canavan said the Coalition had sought to take similar action as far back as the Abbott government era. 'I'm happy to work with anyone in parliament to make our country better, in this case, safer and more secure,' he said.
Taylor also has a separate proposal targeting charities and community groups that work to assist Australians with alleged terrorist links in returning home.
The Coalition's support for the One Nation bill is notable given that both Taylor and Canavan had previously pledged to contest Hanson's rising support in the polls.
- The precise legal basis or constitutional analysis underpinning the bill has not been detailed by any source beyond Burke's assertion of High Court vulnerability.
- No response from Pauline Hanson or One Nation directly commenting on the Coalition's offer of support has been provided.
- The scope or details of Taylor's separate plan targeting charities and community groups have not been elaborated upon.
- No independent legal experts are quoted assessing the bill's constitutional validity.
- It is not established whether any Senate committee has been formally agreed upon or scheduled to review the legislation.