The Albanese government has joined the Greens and key crossbench senators to vote down a One Nation bill that would have created a court-based mechanism to block terrorist fighters from returning to Australia, prompting a furious response from Pauline Hanson in the Senate.
The Albanese government has voted against a One Nation bill that sought to prevent terrorist fighters from returning to Australia, drawing a fierce response from Pauline Hanson. Labor was joined by the Greens and key crossbench senators in voting down the Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill in the Senate on Thursday. The bill, introduced by Hanson on 12 August 2026, would have allowed the Home Affairs Minister to apply to the Federal Court for orders blocking the return of Australians found to have voluntarily served, participated in, or materially supported a listed terrorist organisation overseas.
What the bill proposed
Under Hanson’s proposal, an exclusion order could have been sought against an Australian citizen who had voluntarily travelled overseas and engaged with a listed terrorist organisation, with the Federal Court ultimately determining whether that person should be prevented from returning to Australia. The regime was deliberately structured as a court-based process, rather than granting the Home Affairs Minister an unrestricted personal power to permanently exclude a citizen.
Beyond the exclusion order mechanism, the bill also proposed tougher bail rules for terrorism offenders, including provisions requiring courts to consider the risk posed by terrorism suspects when determining bail applications, alongside expanded passport cancellation powers and a new criminal offence covering the facilitation of a suspected terrorist fighter’s return.
Hanson’s response in the Senate
During the Senate debate, Hanson criticised the Albanese government for what she described as a failure of its “first responsibility” to keep the country safe. “The first responsibility of any government is to keep Australians safe,” she told the Senate. “Australians rightfully expect this government to put their safety and our national security above all else.”
Hanson accused the government of enabling the return of women linked to Islamic State, and argued that existing laws were too weak to adequately protect the Australian community. She added: “If the minister genuinely believes the law stops him from keeping Australians safe, his job is not to shrug and accept it. His job and the parliament’s job is to come into this place and change it.”
The catalyst: return of the ‘ISIS brides’
The legislation was primarily driven by One Nation’s opposition to the return of 19 Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps in May, a group dubbed the “ISIS brides” by media, who had travelled to Islamic State-controlled territory during the group’s rise across Iraq and Syria. One Nation argued the women had willingly supported the terrorist organisation and should be permanently barred from returning to Australia, while the government has maintained it is legally required to allow citizens to return under existing national security and counter-terrorism law. The Albanese government has denied that it assisted in repatriating the group.
Australian authorities have previously drawn a distinction between the women and children who were repatriated and individuals against whom sufficient evidence exists to pursue terrorism offences, stressing that citizenship carries legal obligations regarding Australians stranded overseas, while national security agencies retain the ability to investigate and prosecute where sufficient evidence of criminal conduct is available.
Committee scrutiny raised legal concerns
The bill was referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on 13 August, with the committee’s report tabled on 7 September, just days before the Senate vote took place. The inquiry attracted submissions from a range of organisations and individuals concerned about the proposed foreign terrorist fighter exclusion regime, meaning senators had access to detailed evidence of the scheme’s constitutional and practical problems before the vote.
The committee’s report specifically raised concerns about how the proposed exclusion orders would interact with Australia’s constitutional protection against the executive government permanently preventing citizens from entering the country. Evidence presented to the inquiry questioned whether the scheme would survive a constitutional challenge, particularly in cases where an Australian citizen could effectively be barred from returning indefinitely. The committee also heard concerns about the breadth of the proposed definition of conduct that could trigger an exclusion order, with witnesses noting that people could potentially be captured even where their overseas conduct fell short of directly committing a terrorist offence. Critics separately noted the undefined phrase “protect the Australian community” within the bill, along with broader uncertainty about what conduct would actually trigger an order.
How the bill compares to existing powers
Opponents of the bill argued it was unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny, and that it largely duplicated powers that already exist under Australia’s temporary exclusion order regime. Australia currently operates a Temporary Exclusion Order (TEO) system, under which eligible citizens can be temporarily prevented from returning to the country for a specified period. That existing regime was introduced specifically to address Australians suspected of travelling overseas to engage in terrorism-related activity, particularly those who travelled to areas controlled by Islamic State.
The key distinction between the two systems is duration: a TEO is temporary in nature, whereas Hanson’s proposed exclusion mechanism was designed to provide a considerably stronger and potentially long-term barrier against a person’s return to Australia.
The government’s own counter-terrorism agenda
The vote against Hanson’s bill does not reflect a government reluctant to legislate on counter-terrorism more broadly. On the same day Hanson’s bill was introduced, 12 August 2026, the government introduced its own Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 in the House of Representatives. That legislation remains before Parliament and forms part of the Albanese government’s separate counter-terrorism agenda, suggesting the government’s objection centred specifically on Hanson’s proposed mechanism for excluding Australians linked to overseas terrorist organisations, rather than opposition to strengthening counter-terrorism laws in general.
