Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Albanese Labor government's ongoing collusion with activists and fundamentalists to offer a welcome mat to terrorists and terrorist sympathisers. The first duty of any government—its most basic responsibility—is to protect its people and protect its country, not to manage headlines or appease activists. A government must, first and foremost, keep Australians safe. Everything else is secondary.

This government needs to stop treating those Australians who travelled overseas to join ISIS as just a political issue or another humanitarian dilemma. These are women who made a choice: to side with terrorists over their fellow Australians. They weren't dragged out of Australia in chains or tricked into going on a holiday. They consciously chose to repudiate Australia and its values and join a terrorist organisation hell-bent on subjecting everyone to their particularly nasty brand of religious fundamentalism. In doing so, these women supported an organisation that beheaded civilians, enslaved women and glorified mass murder. By making that choice, they didn't just travel overseas; these women rejected Australia. They rejected our laws, they rejected our values, and they rejected the idea that disputes are settled through democratic processes rather than through violence.

Australian citizenship should not be a one-way transaction. It is not something you can opt in and out of depending on convenience. Citizenship is a commitment. It is an agreement that says, 'We might disagree, we might argue, but we accept the same basic rules: the rule of law, democracy and equality before the law, including equality between men and women.' If you fundamentally reject those principles, then you're rejecting the foundation of society itself.

We keep hearing from Labor's activist friends that Australia has an obligation to bring these people back so that they can be dealt with here, and I understand that argument. But I don't accept that it overrides the government's responsibility to protect the public. This isn't about punishment or revenge; it's about risk—real risk. No amount of screening or monitoring can eliminate it. No-one can honestly guarantee that someone who once embraced a violent extremism has truly abandoned it. Hope is not a security policy, and good intentions are not a safeguard.

This debate raises an even broader issue we've been avoiding for too long. Australia works as a diverse society because we insist on a shared civic culture—not a shared ancestry and not a shared religion. We share values: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and equality. Those values are the glue that holds everything together. Acceptance of those values should be the non-negotiable requirement for anyone seeking Australian citizenship or seeking to keep the full protections of it—not vague statements or carefully worded promises made under pressure but genuine acceptance. If someone rejects democracy, they should not expect to benefit from it. If they reject the rule of law, they should not demand its protection.

This is not about race, and it is not about peaceful religious belief. Millions of Australians of all faiths live within our laws, respect our institutions and contribute enormously to this country. They are not the problem; the problem is Islamic extremism and the refusal to accept the basic rules of a liberal democracy.

This is where the government need to stop fooling themselves. Social harmony doesn't come from pandering to fundamentalists who openly reject Australian values. It doesn't come from endless concessions or pretending that all belief systems are compatible with a democratic society. It comes from clarity, firmness and a willingness to say no. If this government is serious about cohesion, it needs to put Australians' interests first without apology; it needs to defend our values clearly, not nervously; and it needs to accept that protecting a society sometimes means drawing hard lines. Australia can be fair without being foolish, and it can be compassionate without being reckless. That's not extremism; that's responsibility, and we expect to see that from this Labor government.