The Hon Tony Burke MP

​​​​​SUBJECTS: ISIS-linked cohort, digital passenger cards MATT SHIRVINGTON: We've been getting so much feedback on this issue over the past few weeks. The Home Affairs Minister says he won't lift a finger to assist 13 suspected Australian ISIS detainees in Iraq who could soon be freed from prison before making a bid to return to this country. NATALIE BARR: But as those concerns grow, Tony Burke insists the government will offer absolutely zero assistance to those men.

For more, the Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, joins us now live. Good morning to you. TONY BURKE: Good to be back.

Will you put exclusion orders on on all of those suspected ISIS fighters if they are freed from prison? It's a really tough threshold to meet legally. Certainly, I've only had one time when the Department said that the threshold was met, and I was able to put an exclusion order in, I did that straight away.

Effectively, the problem with the exclusion orders is in the word "temporary". You know, if someone's a citizen eventually they can come back, but at the moment every single one of these people is locked up, and I've got no problem with that being the status quo. SHIRVINGTON: Okay.

So outside the exclusion order which, you know, legally difficult to deal with, if these 13 men are freed, will they get Australian passports; can you deny them that? If an Australian citizen turns up to an Embassy seeking a passport, then passports are issued. The only time that you can temporarily suspend one is if somebody's about to engage in an act of violence at that point in time.

It's very tight for citizens, but what you can be guaranteed of look, let's not forget, even before we came to office 45 men who'd gone there to fight had returned to Australia. And what happens is that our agencies, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, they're watching individuals, they're on them, the surveillance and the restrictions that people would want is what we deal with, and as I say, even before we came to government there were 45 men who'​​​d gone there to fight who had already returned, and all the surveillance that the Australian people would expect is what happens.

Okay. So you say it's hard to put the exclusion orders in place. We understand that, particularly for the ISIS brides.

If these men had been involved in beheadings, would that qualify for an exclusion order? Oh, well, you would hope so, you would hope so. The claims in the media at the moment are that their history's a bit different to that, but my view is anybody at all, anybody at all who decided to get on a plane to be part of ISIS, my view is anything we can do to restrict your return, if I get that legal option, I take it.

And if you do find your way to Australia, then if we can charge you, you get locked up, and if we're not in a position with the evidence to be able to charge you, then the surveillance that happens on you needs to occur to keep Australians safe. But that's why I say, you know, there are times when people are locked up around the world and the Australian Government, you know, takes steps to try to get them returned home.

Not with this crew, absolutely not. SHIRVINGTON: So you're not going to allow it to happen? Well, as I've said, I won't lift a finger to help them, and wherever we've got a legal power to be able to keep them away for longer, we'll take it.

Okay. Moving on, passenger declaration cards when arriving to our airports are said to go digital nationwide. Do you fill these out before you leave on the plane, or when you land?

So the way the trials have been working, what most people have been doing is you check in and while you're waiting for your flight you get out the it's been a trial with Qantas so far you get out the Qantas app and you just do it online before you get on the plane, and then you've got your QR code ready to go when you land. That's what most people have been doing.

And so that will keep rolling out across the country now that we've gone beyond the trial stage. I mean the thing that will end, which I'm so happy about is, you know, the number of times anyone has travelled, and you get to the end of the flight, you might not be at your best by then, you're scrambling to try to find a pen, you're trying to work out what on earth is the address of the hotel that you're meant to be staying at, what's the phone number of your next-of-kin, like years ago we all remembered people's phone numbers, now remembering all of that, you know, it's an extra hassle just before you land, and the other thing is the paper system then slows everything down.

We want people, the moment they land in Australia, to be straight out enjoying the best place in the world, and this will make it much faster when people land. SHIRVINGTON: Just quickly, Minister, to Jeff on our text line, said, "What if we're not good at technology, what if we don't have a phone?" Oh, look, if you don't have a phone, if you're not good at technology, you'll be able to at the airport have someone to assist you, either with the device there, or to be able to use a paper thing if that's required, but for almost every passenger now, they arrive with their devices and they'll be able to have it already done, go straight through, and the pencil/pen scramble at the end of the flight will be a thing of the past.

Okay. That sounds good news. Tony Burke, thank you for your time.