Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney update the House on how the government is ensuring Australian laws protect the Australian community from foreign fighters and terrorists, and how do alternative approaches compare?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The Minister for Home Affairs has already pointed out how critical and necessary this bill before the House—the temporary exclusion orders bill—is. What our agencies tell us is that the many Australians who have fought or otherwise supported Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq are self-evidently radicalised, skilled in terror techniques and very, very dangerous people. They present a serious national security challenge that needs solving. That's why I was astonished at what was said by the member for Cowan this morning in the debate on the temporary exclusion orders bill: 'This is not effective and not impactful legislation.'

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yep!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cowan will not interject.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Yep' was the answer; 'yep' was the interjection from the member for Cowan. She stands by those words, and why would she not? She said them clearly: 'This is not effective and not impactful legislation.' This is not a technical argument about whether an amendment from a committee was adopted in part or in full. This is a fulsome rejection of the critical importance of this bill. And what was even more astonishing was the reason given as to why this bill is not effective or impactful—

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Read the whole sentence out!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will just pause for a second. The member for Cowan cannot interject. If the member for Cowan feels that, in some way, what's being said is not representative of what she said, there are other forms of the House where she can address it. As frustrated as she is, she cannot do that in question time by repeatedly interjecting.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reasons given by the member for Cowan as to why this was not effective or impactful legislation are—again, in her words—that the people we are trying control have a 'migratory nature' and:

… they will go from one theatre of war to the next theatre of war

The fact they are migratory is the point of this legislation. This government has, as its first priority, the protection of the Australian people. The one place, as an absolute priority, where we will invest every effort and every resource to prevent migratory extremists turning it into a theatre of war is Australia. That is why this legislation is necessary.

Compare those words—that is, that it is not effective or impactful legislation—to this submission from our agencies:

Australia's previous experiences with Australians returning from conflict zones demonstrates the threat they can pose. Of the 30 Australians who fought or trained with extremist groups in conflict zones between 1990 and 2010, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, 25 returned; of those, eight were convicted of terrorism-related offences …

The Commonwealth's Counter-Terrorism Coordinator put it very simply when she said:

… the risk is that they could come back into Australia and conduct a terrorist attack on our soil and kill or injure Australians.

This is some of the most impactful, effective and critically necessary legislation this parliament will see in this term. The description of it from the member for Cowan elucidates precisely what they think over there on that side.