The Hon Tony Burke MP

TONY BURKE: The laws that we have that Comments on calls for citizens to be denied entry to Australiawe use and that I have used are the laws that were put in place by the previous government that had already been decided went right to the limit of what you could do constitutionally, right to the limit. Every Australian, me, included, doesn't want these individuals back.

You know, when people have made a decision to join something as horrific as that, you don't want them back. The reality is every country in the world has to take back its own citizens. And I would just say people should be very wary of letting go of the principle that countries have to take their citizens back.

I get that there are people we don't want back, but can I say there are about 750 people every year who I make leave? About 750 people where I make sure that their countries have to take them back. And I would not want to go down a path where somehow we started a principle that countries don't have to take their citizens back.

The people who I get rid of have been involved in child exploitation. They've been involved in drugs. They've been involved, some of them are murderers.

Some of them are rapists. People have been involved in horrific crimes and the countries of their citizenship, I'll tell you, they don't want them back and I make sure they take them back. It is absolutely in the interests of Australian national security that we keep to the principle that countries have to take their own citizens back.

And anyone who wants to depart from that principle needs to explain why they think it would be okay for the 750 people every year who I make leave, for them to have to stay here because I don't think Australians would cop it.