Finally, a plan to banish dangerous terrorists

For more than two years I’ve argued we should legislate for a form of exile for Australian former terrorists considered still-dangerous, writes Peta Credlin. Peter Dutton has finally delivered.

What’s to be done about Australians who’ve gone overseas to fight in terrorist groups and who now want to come home?

Of about 25 Australians who fought with the Taliban a couple of decades back and then returned, 19 were subsequently involved in terror plots here.

And on top of the 50 or so former Islamic State terrorists thought to have already returned to Australia, up to 100 still in the Middle East are still seeking to come home.

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Even though they’re Australian citizens, they have taken up arms against our way of life and the values that the rest of us largely take for granted. We can’t assume that people who were killers abroad will be innocents at home, and I’ve yet to see evidence that deradicalisation programs work.

The fact that we have avoided a large-scale terror attack in Australia is a credit to our security agencies but we can’t assume a continuing near-perfect record, given the 16 serious attacks that have been planned but fortunately detected and prevented.

There are various options for former terrorists seeking to return.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is calling for bipartisan support for a temporary exclusion order bill. Picture: Gary Ramage

As things stand, they can be kept under surveillance; but that is a huge drain on security resources and there’s just no way we can effectively monitor
all of them.

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They can be locked up, but that’s expensive, too, and requires a successful prosecution to an Australian standard of proof based on hard-to-get overseas evidence (notwithstanding the fact that some of our jails are breeding grounds for radical Islam).

If they’re dual citizens, they can be stripped of their Australian nationality and lose the right to come here.

But those with Australian-only citizenship have always proven a problem due to international laws on “statelessness”, the problem of permanently banning someone from their own country.

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For more than two years I’ve argued in this paper that we should legislate for UK-style temporary exclusion orders, a form of exile for Australian former terrorists considered still-dangerous that will keep them out.

On Thursday, Peter Dutton introduced exactly this into the parliament.

Thank God that GetUp! didn’t get him.

Peta Credlin is a News Corp Australia columnist and Sky News presenter.

Originally published as Finally, a plan to banish dangerous terrorists