Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wasn't it great today to see Lieutenant General Peter Leahy entering this debate on dual citizens engaged in that odious and rabid group called Daesh trying to find their way home and get back onto welfare payments again? Good on you, Peter Leahy, for saying, quite clearly, 'Rip the passports off them.' But I would also ask both sides of this chamber where we stand on sole nationals doing precisely the same thing.

I commend the multiagency approach that we have over in that part of the world. We need to be absolutely sure, before they land on this soil, that we know precisely what they have been up to in those prohibited areas of Iraq and Syria. We need to know exactly what ex-combatants and witnesses are saying, what those host nations think about these individuals and whether they should face charges in those countries. This multiagency approach is vital. Of course, children in these circumstances must be spared and protected and given safety wherever possible, but I have no problem in using time, before we issue the laissez-passers and those limited validity passports, to be utterly sure whom we are repatriating and what their background is.

If they chose this path and walked away from Australia and our values and held them in such contempt that they elected to even fight, kill and harm Australians who are serving in such a self-sacrificing way in our armed forces, then we must defend the legacy of those in our armed forces. Australians who call themselves that deserve no easy passage of return till we know precisely what they have done over in Iraq and Syria. (Time expired)