New push to outlaw any support for ISIS brides trying to return to Australia

Laws making it illegal to help people linked to terrorism from returning to Australia will be introduced to Parliament by the coalition as the Albanese government defends its handling of the so-called ISIS brides, insisting they have “rights” to come home.

The deepening political spat over the 34 ISIS-linked Australian women and children attempting to leave a Syrian detention camp comes as Kurdish authorities on Sunday confirmed the facility would soon be fully closed.

Local media reported that an official “who supervises refugee and Internally Displaced Person camps in Rojava, (said) that a joint decision has been made with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to empty the camp.”

New Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has now drawn up legislation that would make it a criminal offence to facilitate the re-entry to Australia of individuals linked to terrorist hotspots or terrorist organisations, or who have committed terror related offenses.

Last week The West Australian revealed prominent Sydney doctor Jamal Rifi, a close friend of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, had recently travelled to the Middle East to coordinate the return of the eleven stranded families in northeastern Syria.

Under the crackdown approved by the Mr Taylor’s Shadow National Security Committee, humanitarian or security-based repatriation would now only continue with the express permission of the Minister for Foreign Affairs or Home Affairs.

“A Coalition Government will strengthen our laws to protect Australia’s way of life. We will take action and refuse to let people come here who abandoned Australia to support Islamic extremist terror overseas,” Mr Taylor said.

“We must shut the door to people who do not share our values – and these people rejected our values in favour of terror. (Prime Minister) Anthony Albanese should come to the table and support these laws.”

“This legislation sends a very clear message: anyone who travels to a designated terrorist hotspot, such as Syria, to support a death cult like ISIS does not deserve to come back to Australia,” Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonno Duniam said.

“The Albanese Government’s reckless approach of issuing passports and allowing so-called ‘self-managed returns’ is not border protection — it’s an abdication of its responsibility to keep Australians safe.”

“The Coalition will always put national security and community safety first. We will not allow third parties to facilitate the return of individuals who chose to align themselves with ISIS.”

On Sunday the Home Affairs Minister said ASIO and other security agencies have detailed knowledge of the latest cohort trying to return to Australia, which had allowed them to identify that one woman posed a much bigger risk to national security.

He revealed the woman who had been slapped with a temporarily exclusion order (TEO) barring her return to Australia from Syria may hold dual citizenship, but that it was unlikely her country of birth would recognise it.

Tony Burke said the legal threshold needed to refuse Australian citizens passports – a key argument from the Opposition in terms of government failings – was far higher.

Last week the group of 11 women and 23 children escaped from the Al Roj camp in north-eastern Syria last week but were turned around by local authorities after making it only about 50km.

They have been issued Australian travel permits, but Mr Burke said on Sunday that if intelligence agencies found new information that meant any others in the group should also be subject to temporary exclusion orders, “they’d be issued straight away”.

“The cohort is not consistent. There are very different people within that cohort with different histories and different states of mind,” he told ABC’s Insiders.

“They are quite different, but our agencies have been following them, and following them for a long time.

“The fact that one person has been pulled out for saying that person meets the threshold for a temporary exclusion order is because, quite specifically, of what we know about that individual.

“I can give the complete confidence to the Australian community: we know the different individuals. We know the state of mind and the effective ideology of different individuals.”

He said that the woman had come to Australia and subsequently received citizenship when John Howard was prime minister and left for Syria while Tony Abbott was Prime Minister.

But “given the country that she came from … I’m not sure that they would actually recognise that (dual) citizenship”, although he refused to name the country.

The rest of the women “overwhelmingly” had been born in Australia, he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday also insisted that the so-called ISIS brides had “rights” to return to Australia, despite legal provisions that would allow the government to block their return.

“Well, Australian citizens have rights, and they also have responsibilities,” Mr Albanese told Sky News.

“Those responsibilities mean that the Australian government, like with anyone else, will apply the full force of the law to anyone who has broken any Australian laws.”

Shadow defence minister James Paterson questioned why the government hadn’t used provisions of the Passports Act to refuse to issue travel documents to the group.

“If they have advice to apply for a TEO, then they should also have the same advice to deny a passport,” he told Sky News.

“But frankly, if they think the law is not adequate, if they think there is not enough room for them to deny passports, well then we have already said we will work with them to strengthen the law.”

But Mr Burke said the legal threshold for a temporary exclusion order was lower than for refusing a passport because it wasn’t a permanent decision.

He said ASIO hadn’t provided any advice that a refusal under the Passport Act could be made, and the agency was “conscious of its specific legislative responsibilities”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the women would face the full force of the law if they did manage to return to Australia, reiterating that the Government was doing nothing to actively facilitate that return.

“I’m certainly not in contact with them, nor is anyone from the Australian Government,” he told Sky News.

“Australian citizens have rights, and they also have responsibilities, and those responsibilities mean that the Australian Government, like with anyone else, will apply the full force of the law to anyone who has broken any Australian laws.”

Senator Paterson said that “every one of them should face charges if they ever find their way back home” but the Government’s priority should be on keeping them offshore.