(AAP) Foreign fighters seeking to return home to Australia could soon be banned from doing so for up to two years.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton introduced legislation to the lower house on Thursday which would temporarily ban any citizen suspected of extremism from returning to Australia until protections are in place.
“That is why we have introduced a bill into the parliament today — to temporarily exclude for up to a two-year period some of those Australian citizens that have been working with ISIL and now have the capacity to come back, to put together an IED (bomb) or to walk into a food court or other place of mass gathering and cause serious death and carnage,” Mr Dutton said.
He said the bill would deliver “adequate forewarning” so that Australians of counter-terrorism concern would only return “into the waiting arms of authorities.”
