One of the Australian women being held in a Syrian refugee camp has been barred from returning home after being given a temporary exclusion order \u2014 but the ban may not be as temporary as the name implies.<\/p>\n
The legislation also grants Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke power to block a person’s return for a further 12 months, an option the government did not pursue.<\/p>\n
“We received the final advice yesterday that we can no longer have an exclusion condition available for her,” Mr Burke said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
That means Ms Abby is now free to return to Australia when she chooses<\/a>, provided she can get out of Syria.<\/p>\n Mr Burke insisted police and security agencies “are ready”, and that Ms Abby would be subject to strict surveillance conditions that go “absolutely to the legal limit of what we’re able to do” \u2014 including requiring her to seek permission to use a phone or the internet.<\/p>\n The orders are intended to enable authorities to plan for and manage the return of ‘Australians of counterterrorism interest’ and mitigate risks to the community.<\/p>\n Temporary exclusion order not tested in courts<\/p>\n Australian National University international law professor Donald Rothwell argued while Ms Abby technically could be been barred from Australia for a further 12 months, such a move may have triggered a High Court challenge.<\/p>\n Don Rothwell says a citizen’s right to enter their home country is an “implied” constitutional right under human rights law. (Supplied)<\/p>\n If the government lost such a case, it could remove the option of using TEOs altogether to manage citizens’ returns.<\/p>\n “We have no definitive decision by the High Court as to whether citizens have a right of entry into Australia, it has not been tested before the high court,” Mr Rothwell said.<\/p>\n “Given the grey area when it comes to TEO’s \u2026 government lawyers would no doubt be advising the minister that there’s every possibility that a temporary exclusion order could be challenged in the High Court on constitutional grounds.”<\/p>\n Mr Rothwell said while a citizen’s right to enter their home country is not enshrined in the Constitution, it was a clear tenet of international human rights law and considered an “implied” constitutional right.<\/p>\n “It’s been speculated by constitutional scholars for some time that Australian citizens do have a right of entry into the country,” he said.<\/p>\n “Constitutional scholars have sought to advance that argument, based on the international law principles, but also because of the way the High Court of Australia has been prepared to read implied rights into the constitution over the last 30 or 40 years.”<\/p>\n In 2023, the High Court ruled indefinite immigration detention \u2014 a regime set up to protect the community from potentially dangerous non-citizens \u2014 was unlawful.<\/p>\n![\"Close-up](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/d6c56ca945515825ae8c7478afc0699d.jpeg\")
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