Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton set to be accused of 'Islamophobia'

Peter Dutton (centre) is the Home Affairs Minister for Australia

Thursday 25 July - Australia is set to pass laws as early as Wednesday that would allow the government to prevent suspected Islamic extremists from returning home for up to two years, while Australian supporters of the Islamic State terror group are demanding to be repatriated from crowded refugee camps in Syria.

The bills, based on British law, are scheduled for debate in the Senate on Wednesday after they were passed Tuesday night in the House of Representatives, where the conservative government holds a majority.

'The Exclusion Order is designed to ensure that authorities can manage these returns in a way that keeps the Australian community safe.'

The center-left Labor Party opposition wants the legislation made more consistent with the British model, with amendments that would allow a judge rather than Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to decide which Australians are banished. But the opposition supported the legislation in the House, indicating that their misgivings were not sufficient to attempt to block its passage.

Dutton argues he needs the flexibility to act quickly to prevent jihadists returning.

He also argues that some of Labor’s proposed amendments set the threshold for preventing Australians from returning too high.

The so-called Temporary Exclusion Order was 'designed to ensure that authorities can manage these returns in a way that keeps the Australian community safe,' Dutton told Parliament.

Author's comment: This is just common sense. Every free society should enact similar laws. Would Britain have allowed British Nazis to return home in 1943? It wouldn’t even have been a question. But today, the idea of protecting one’s own citizens against dangerous jihadis is 'racist' and 'Islamophobic.'