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

This is not correct. To the best of my knowledge and understanding, all of the foreign fighters who are currently overseas have had any welfare payments that they were receiving well and truly cancelled, as you would expect. The last thing we want is to see Australian taxpayers funding terrorism. We are now looking at whether we can cancel the welfare payments of people engaging in terrorist activities here in Australia. The legislation passed late last year, with the support of both sides of this parliament, certainly does give us that power. We intend to use that power where it is in the best interests of our country to do so. There will be some situations—and maybe quite a few situations—where for all sorts of reasons it is best not to exercise that power because we may not want to alert people to the fact that we are onto them or we may not want to endanger people who are providing us with information about them, but I do want to give the shadow minister who asked the question this categorical assurance: this government has the will, and increasingly has the power, to keep our country as safe as we humanly can be in these difficult and perilous times.

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