Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill 2026

Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (09:36): Please don't tell me I have to spend another five years listening to this nonsense. The Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill 2026 exists because the Albanese government failed in the first duty of any government: keeping Australians safe. They failed to stop people who attached themselves to Islamic State from coming back to this country.

That's pretty important, I think. They failed to act on the so-called ISIS brides, they built a pathway for their return and they told this chamber they were providing no assistance to this cohort. But, lo and behold, the women, these terrorists, are back.

Then the conversation changed. Suddenly, it was not about assistance. It was about documents.

It was about the obligations of the government and how hamstrung they were. These are not victims. They are hateful people who went to fight for, live under or support a terrorist caliphate.

If you are the government and the law says that you must accommodate them, the law is deficient. You are the government; change the law. This government would not.

That is why One Nation brought this bill. Labor's line was always the same: no repatriation, no assistance and no government operation. I asked Minister Watt again and again what assistance was being provided.

He kept deflecting and playing semantic games. He kept deliberately obscuring the issue in this chamber. The Prime Minister said nobody in the government was in contact with the cohort.

The home affairs minister said the same. Then they were back in the country. Two women and four children came in quietly in September 2025.

Later waves followed. In May 2026, groups landed in Sydney and Melbourne. In June, the last Australian woman held in the Syrian camps, previously stopped by a temporary exclusion order, was told a return permit would be issued because her lawyers had applied and the minister said the law required it.

What a disgrace this government has become. Watch the language shift. First, we are not helping; the government is providing no assistance to this cohort.

Then we have to provide them with the documents—passports, citizenship by descent for the children born in Syria, processing at the airport. That is a pathway. Meeting notes obtained under freedom of information and placed before estimates record the home affairs minister telling Save the Children there may be a way to achieve the same outcome without government undertakings, thanking the group in connection with media silence and asking a departmental official to leave so a frank discussion could continue without a record.

The dissenting report to the inquiry on this bill sets that out. It is not a courtroom verdict; it's the government's own paper trail. A government that conducts that kind of a meeting, then tells the public it is doing nothing and then watches the cohort walk into Sydney and Melbourne has no right to talk about the protection and safety of Australians—not that these folks will ever be placed in their backyards.

The government failed to act. It failed to change the law. Why will it not protect Australians?

It is time that Labor took Islamic extremism with the seriousness that it deserves. But look at the farcical way they've handled the royal commission. The Prime Minister and Minister Burke can't even bear to face themselves—not very brave.

If you fight for ISIS, you should not come back. That is not complicated. That is the expectation of the people who pay the taxes.

It's the expectation of the veterans we sent to fight this regime and of the families that feared for their safety while they were deployed. Labor did not stop them. On the public record, Labor issued the documents that made the last legs of the journey possible and then called it 'absence of assistance'.

Australians can hear the difference. Some will say it is ugly to ask whether electoral arithmetic played a part. The question will be asked anyway.

Watson, the Home Affairs Minister's own electorate, has one of the highest Muslim populations in any seat in the country, around a quarter on the most recent census figures and higher a more recent counts used in the last election campaign. Do I think Minister Burke has the moral fortitude to put his job on the line to do the right thing? Sadly, his actions answer that question.

It is a complete failure of this government in its solemn duty to keep Australians safe. One Nation will keep Australia safe. One Nation will keep terrorists out.

This isn't a tagline for us; we've done the work to make it a reality despite our restricted resourcing. The government has hundreds of ministerial staffers. The Department of Home Affairs is a vast machine.

One Nation, by contrast, is critically understaffed. We grew in this parliament. We doubled our Senate numbers after the 2025 election, and the party room grew further, with no extra personal staff allocation to match—four personal staff across six parliamentarians.

We represent a large and growing portion of this country without the resources the majors take for granted. Yet with those resources we have done the work the government could not do or refused to do. We've developed a robust mechanism for a Home Affairs minister who actually wants to keep these people out.

Let's look at this bill. Schedule 1 does not repeal temporary exclusion orders. It adds a court based foreign terrorist fighter exclusion order.

The minister may determine that an application should go to the Federal Court only if a temporary exclusion order or an existing court order is already in force, and only if the minister suspects on reasonable grounds that the person, while outside Australia, voluntarily served with, participated in or materially supported a listed terrorist organisation. 'Voluntarily' is there to exclude coercion, duress and trafficking.

The determination is personal to the minister. It cannot be delegated. Return permit obligations are suspended but only for 90 days unless an application is filed.

The court may make an order only if satisfied of three things: first, on the balance of probabilities that the person, while outside Australia, voluntarily served with, took part in the activities of or materially supported a listed terrorist organisation; second, that the person would pose an unacceptable risk to the safety of Australian communities if permitted to enter; and third, that no less restrictive measure would be effective, including a conditional return permit or monitoring after entry.

Community protection is paramount, as it should be. The court must consider any ASIO assessment and security agency advice provided. An order cannot exceed two years and can only be extended with a new case brought before the court.

Entering Australia while an order is in force is an offence carrying 10 years in prison. These are the powers that the minister didn't bother considering because he wasn't concerned with protecting Australians. Schedule 2 tightens the terrorism bill.

This bill requires the bail authority to treat community protection and national security as paramount and not to find exceptional circumstances unless satisfied that release would not pose an unacceptable risk of further terrorism offending. Family circumstances, housing, electronic monitoring and ordinary delay do not by themselves meet the test. Schedule 3 lets the minister refuse, cancel or suspend travel documents on four exhaustive grounds: a temporary exclusion order, a foreign terrorist fighter exclusion order, a ministerial determination is made that a foreign terrorist exclusion order application to the court could be made, or a terrorism charge or conviction.

Schedule 4 makes it an offence to organise or facilitate the entry of a person who has committed a terrorism offence or the declared-area offence, who is known to intend an offence before entry or who is, or has been, a member of a terrorist organisation, unless the actor is the Commonwealth or has written permission from both relevant ministers. This closes the Labor government's loophole, where they can claim that they aren't providing assistance while empowering third parties to do their dirty work.

Schedule 5 makes the protective orders capable of looking at precommencement conduct, because the question is present risk. It is to keep anyone who has been involved in terrorism out of Australia from right now. However, the facilitation offence is not retrospective.

That is the mechanism. It is robust and will stand up to judicial scrutiny. It has been to a committee.

The Labor chaired committee recommended that the Senate not pass the bill. Unbelievable. They've said, 'Existing temporary exclusion orders are enough,' which is a strange response considering the government just finished telling us how hamstrung the home affairs minister is.

Or do they mean that they are happy with the terrorists coming into Australia, so nothing needs to change? They claim it is unconstitutional. That's a bit rich coming from the party that just lost a constitutional challenge over the NZYQ cohort.

Labor love to lecture us on areas that they are completely clueless on. Just ask them about controlling inflation. On the court objection, Labor's talking point is that the bill will not last 30 seconds in the High Court.

Minister Watt told this place that any extension of temporary exclusion orders would be knocked over and would put Australians at greater risk. The Senate ordered the production of the advice behind the claim. The government produced an article from the Sydney Morning Herald—not departmental advice or the Solicitor-General but a paper clipping.

What utter disdain for the Australian people! Constitutional professor Anne Twomey has said publicly that the constitutional argument about whether an Australian citizen has a guaranteed right to enter and live in Australia has never been argued before the High Court, so we don't know the answer. That is not a 30-second knockout; that is an undecided question.

No submitter to this inquiry concluded that the High Court would strike the scheme down. The bill was written around judicial power, limited time, lesser-measure analysis and an onus on the minister, because these are the features the High Court has accepted in other protective regimes. If Labor has a better option, table it.

Until then, 'the High Court will smash it' is a political sentence, not a solution. What is the alternative? Say and do nothing?

Follow the Greens? Sneak them back in and call passports a technicality? They want to say the current exclusion powers are sufficient.

Then how did they get back in? How did the last woman on a temporary exclusion order move from exclusion to a permit the minister said he had to issue? If the tool works, use it to keep them out.

If the tool can't keep them out, the tool is not enough. That is the gap this bill fills. The existing scheme is a managed-return scheme.

The bill asks whether some people should be brought home at all. Those who fled ISIS to settle in Australia know just how necessary these powers are. Islamic State's crimes were committed against identifiable families now living here.

Survivors of genocide, sexual slavery and forced displacement should not have to share suburbs with the people that contributed to their displacement on the say-so of a minister who has reached their legal limit. One Nation is here to protect Australians. Terrorists who've fought against Australians should never be allowed to return as if nothing happened.

This place should be staunch in its defence of Australia. The country will not forgive a failure to act, and it should not. Labor had the numbers, the staff, the agency and the years.

It chose a form of words: 'no assistance'. Then it processed the paper that brought them home. The coalition, on this committee, unfortunately joined the recommendation to kill the bill.

This is how a uniparty behaves when the politics are uncomfortable and when their legal advice is the Sydney Morning Herald. One Nation is here to be the bulwark for Australia's needs. Pass the bill, put the question to a court, put community safety first, and stop telling Australians to watch people who chose Islamic State walk back through the arrival gates because nobody in this building would change the laws.