Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wannon for his question. He chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. He does an excellent job, as indeed does his deputy. I want to thank the chairman and the deputy chairman for the work that that committee has done. Obviously the first priority of government is the safety of our community. Equally obviously, this country faces a very serious terrorist threat from people who have been influenced by the Islamist death cult, from people who have left this country to fight with various terrorist armies in the Middle East. The latest advice I have is that some 120 Australians are known to be fighting with the death cult in the Middle East, some 160 Australians are known to be supporting them with recruitment and financing, and we think about 30 Australians have so far been killed while fighting with terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Our priority is to stop people becoming terrorists in the first place. But, if people do fall prey to the arguments of the death cult, if they do leave this country to fight with a terrorist army overseas, our determination is to stop them coming back to this country, because the last thing we need in this country is hardened, brutalised terrorists loose on our streets. We do not want terrorists in this country. People who have left our country to fight with terrorist armies overseas have committed the modern form of treason. That is what they have done. Tomorrow we will be introducing into the parliament legislation to deal with this. We will be introducing legislation into the parliament to strip citizenship from terrorists who are dual nationals. This will obviously be referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Our previous legislation in this area has benefited from the scrutiny of that committee. I look forward to the benefit of that scrutiny, particularly the consideration of potential retrospective operation of the new law. I want to conclude on this point: this government will never surrender the freedoms that we Australians hold precious but we will fight for them. We will fight to preserve our freedom. That is what this legislation is about.

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