The elites would welcome terrorists back with open arms and empty heads
New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern may have rose-coloured glasses on when it comes to illegal migration, but our Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton should be commended on his attempts to carefully manage the return of jihadis, writes Piers Akerman.
NSW
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Forty years ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Brian “Piggy” Muldoon loudly protested to NSW Premier Neville Wran that an Australian criminal being held in one of his country’s prisons should be repatriated to serve his sentence in Sydney’s Long Bay.
Over many drinks in his new office, Premier Wran, almost exhausting the usual Labor compendium of expletives, told me why it wouldn’t happen.
“F. k,” he said, “if I had to swap one f.....g bloke in New Zealand for all the f.....g Kiwi c … s I’ve got down at the Bay, I’d have to charter the f.....g Ark Royal!”
HMS Ark Royal was a British aircraft carrier of the time.
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Current New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern now wants Australia to stop sending Kiwi criminals home from Australia after they’ve served their sentences.
Ms Ardern, whose party didn’t command a majority of votes at the 2017 election, governs with political chancer Winston Peters and the Greens.
Her response to the shootings in two Christchurch mosques thrust her on to the world stage, where she has lectured everyone about everything ever since.
Well-meaning but naive, she has tried to tell our government how to deal with people attempting to enter Australia illegally.
Fortunately, she doesn’t appear to be taken seriously in Canberra, and nor should she be. It would be like listening to a 15-year-old Swedish child rabbit on about global warming or Bob Brown demand more wind turbines — except when they’re in his backyard.
Ms Ardern, Dr Brown and Greta Thunberg have one thing in common — they believe in a utopian world where wishes come true.
Illegal migration is a major problem globally, but not in Ms Ardern’s eyes or those of her Australian fans who are at the forefront of the idiots demanding that Australia repatriate foreign terrorist fighters to our shores.
That is those Australian citizens who burnt or tore up their Australian passports and bought one-way tickets to Turkey to enable them to support or join the murderous ISIS terrorists.
This week the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Bill will be before parliament and it will provide a test for those, like the Labor Party and the Greens, who put virtue signalling before national security.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who has a clear-eyed approach to security, says around 230 Australians travelled to those two blighted nations since 2012 to throw their lot in with the terrorists. Around 80 are believed to be still active in the conflict zones.
According to Mr Dutton, our national security agencies believe that many of those who boasted of their enlistment in the terrorist forces are likely to seek to return to Australia.
The bill before the House would give law enforcement agencies the tools to effectively manage these returns in a way which will reduce the threat to the Australian community through the application of temporary exclusion orders (TEO).
There is a review process and TEOs would not apply to children younger than 14. For those aged from 14 to 17, the best interests of the minor would have to be a primary consideration.
The second component, the return permit, would be conditional to permit the security agencies ensuring the returnees do not pose a risk to the community.
Putting the brakes on returning jihadis should be a no-brainer.
They turned their back on Australia, they claimed to hate everything our nation stands for and they cheered as people were beheaded or executed by firing squad.
Now that the caliphate has been dismantled, now that Western forces are freeing the slave women that ISIS murderers bought and sold in the market, now that they’re languishing in refugee camps, they suddenly want to return to the West where food is available and medical care is on hand — and they are claiming the protections of the Western laws and culture that so recently they declared to be abomination.
The soft-headed elites say we should roll out the red carpet for these monsters, we should send ships, planes and ambulances, doctors and nurses and people from the welfare agencies to ease them back into Australia.
Mercy, yes, to a degree but any return to Australia must be calibrated and conditional.
We have finite resources and many, many worthy people deserving of a handful of hard-won taxpayers’ dollars before we start opening the purse for those who would have celebrated had their wish to see us suffer and perish been fulfilled.
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