Laws to strip dual national terrorists of their Australian citizenship are a big step closer with a bipartisan committee of MPs calling for the bill to be passed, though with significant changes.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Under the amendments called for, citizenship could only be stripped without a conviction if the terrorist suspect is already overseas.
But provisions to strip the citizenship of people who have been convicted would be made retrospective up to 10 years before the proposals become law, meaning notorious terrorists such as Abdul Nacer Benbrika and Mohamed Ali Elomar could be deported when their jail terms end.
The high-powered Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security handed down its report on the contentious laws on Friday, calling for 26 changes but ultimately recommending the bill be passed.
The bipartisan report of Coalition and Labor MPs calls for the immigration minister to have discretion on whether a person convicted of terrorism-related offences should have their citizenship revoked – rather than this being automatic for certain offences as originally envisaged by the government.
But the minister would have to be satisfied the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia and that it is not in the public interest for them to remain an Australian. They would have to have been sentenced to more than six years' jail.
And the list of offences has been narrowed to exclude relatively light crimes such as "damaging or destroying Commonwealth property" – an inclusion that was widely criticised by legal experts.
But the basic principles of the bill have been backed by the committee. Dual nationals would be regarded as having renounced their own citizenship – even without a court conviction – if they engage in terrorism activity and either did so overseas or fled overseas afterwards.
They can have their citizenship stripped if they are convicted of a range of terrorism-related offences.
Crucially, the conviction-related revocations would be retrospective under the proposed changes, but only where the person has been sentenced to more than 10 years' jail and excluding cases more than 10 years old when the bill becomes law.
The changes include other safeguards, such as that the main elements of the laws should not apply to a child under 14 years, and a child would not be stripped of their citizenship because of the conduct of their parents.
