A majority of Australian voters support Pauline Hanson’s proposal to prevent foreign terrorist fighters and terrorist sympathisers from returning to Australia, new polling shows, giving One Nation significant public backing for one of its most prominent national-security policies.
The latest News24 Pulse/YouGov polling found 51 per cent supported the proposal, compared with 29 per cent who opposed it.
The finding comes after Hanson formally introduced the Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill 2026 into the Senate, transforming what had been a political demand into a detailed piece of proposed federal legislation.
The bill has also achieved something increasingly significant in Australia’s fractured political landscape: support from the federal Coalition, even as Labor and constitutional experts raise serious questions about whether its central provisions could survive a High Court challenge.
51 per cent support the proposal
The latest polling asked voters whether they supported One Nation’s proposal to ban foreign fighters and terrorist sympathisers originally from Australia from returning to the country.
Support stood at 51 per cent.
Opposition was 29 per cent.
The remaining respondents did not select either position.
That represents a clear majority among all respondents and a 22-point advantage for the proposal over opposition.
But it is not accurate to call it an overwhelming majority
One Nation has characterised public support for its position as overwhelming.
The polling certainly demonstrates majority backing, but the distinction matters.
Fifty-one per cent is a majority of all respondents; it is not an overwhelming majority of the electorate.
The strongest evidence-based conclusion is therefore that Hanson’s proposal currently attracts substantially more support than opposition.
The proposal is now an actual bill before Parliament
This is no longer merely a campaign promise.
Hanson introduced the Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill 2026 into the Senate on August 12.
It is a private senator’s bill sponsored by the One Nation leader.
The first reading took place that day and Hanson moved the second reading.
The Senate has sent it to committee
On August 13, the Senate referred the legislation to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for examination.
Public submissions closed on August 27.
The committee is scheduled to report on September 7.
The bill remains before the Senate.
It has not passed Parliament and is not Australian law.
What would Hanson’s bill actually do?
The legislation proposes a new legal mechanism known as a foreign terrorist fighter exclusion order.
Under Hanson’s proposal, the Home Affairs Minister could seek such an order through the Federal Court where a person linked to an overseas terrorist organisation was considered an unacceptable risk.
The proposed regime would operate alongside Australia’s existing temporary exclusion-order system.
The Federal Court would have a central role
This judicial component is important because the proposal is not simply to give a minister unrestricted power to permanently exclude a citizen.
Hanson told the Senate the new mechanism would allow the minister to go to the Federal Court and seek an exclusion order based on security-agency advice.
One Nation argues this judicial oversight makes the proposed system more robust.
Whether it is sufficient to overcome the constitutional problems identified by critics is one of the central questions now facing the Senate committee.
The bill goes beyond exclusion orders
The legislation contains several additional counter-terrorism measures.
It proposes stronger powers surrounding Australian passports.
It would also toughen bail arrangements for people charged with terrorism offences and create criminal penalties for people who unlawfully organise or facilitate the return of certain terrorism-linked individuals.
Four pieces of Commonwealth legislation would be affected
The package proposes amendments across Australia’s existing counter-terrorism framework rather than establishing an entirely separate system.
According to the bill’s explanatory material, it would amend legislation including the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Act, the Crimes Act, the Australian Passports Act and the Criminal Code.
That makes the proposal considerably broader than the shorthand description of simply banning “ISIS brides”.
Hanson says existing law is inadequate
One Nation’s central argument is straightforward.
If existing Australian law prevents the government from permanently excluding citizens who joined or materially supported terrorist organisations overseas, Hanson argues Parliament should change the law.
She made that position explicit during the Senate debate.
Hanson argued that protecting Australians should take priority and that Parliament should legislate rather than treat constitutional uncertainty as a reason for inaction.
ISIS fighters are at the centre of the debate
The political controversy has been driven particularly by Australians who travelled to the Middle East during the rise of Islamic State.
Some joined ISIS or became associated with people who did.
Others entered territory controlled by the terrorist organisation under widely varying circumstances.
Those distinctions matter legally because association, marriage, presence in ISIS territory, material support and active participation in terrorism are not interchangeable concepts.
‘ISIS brides’ are legally more complicated than the slogan
Hanson has repeatedly included women associated with Islamic State fighters in her political argument.
But a blanket description of all such women as terrorists would go beyond the evidence available for every individual case.
Some may be accused of serious offences or material support for a terrorist organisation.
Others may not have been convicted or even charged with terrorism offences.
Any legislation designed to restrict a citizen’s right to return therefore has to define precisely what conduct triggers exclusion.
The bill targets more than convicted terrorists
One of the important aspects of the proposal is that its potential operation is not limited simply to people already convicted in an Australian court of terrorism offences.
It is designed to address people who served with, participated in the activities of or materially supported listed terrorist organisations overseas and who are assessed as presenting an unacceptable risk.
That wider scope is one reason judicial oversight and constitutional scrutiny are central to the debate.
The Coalition has decided to work with Hanson
The most consequential political development surrounding the legislation may be the Coalition’s response.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan have both signalled support for measures designed to prevent Australians associated with overseas terrorist groups from returning.
Senior Coalition figures have said they are willing to work with One Nation on the legislation.
Jonno Duniam says the legislation must be legally sound
Shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duniam said the Coalition would work with One Nation but emphasised that the legislation needed to be properly constructed.
The Coalition’s position has been to support parliamentary consideration while subjecting the proposal to committee scrutiny.
That is important because political agreement on the objective does not necessarily mean agreement that every clause of Hanson’s bill is constitutionally workable.
James Paterson also wants scrutiny
Coalition frontbencher James Paterson has argued a Senate inquiry is necessary to determine the legal viability of the proposal.
His position reflects the opposition’s broader approach: support stronger measures against returning terrorism-linked Australians while testing whether Hanson’s specific mechanism can withstand constitutional challenge.
Labor says there is a fundamental constitutional problem
The Albanese government has taken a markedly different view of Hanson’s legislation.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has argued that the bill would face severe constitutional difficulties.
He has been particularly dismissive of the proposition that Parliament should pass legislation first and leave the High Court to determine whether it is valid later.
Labor’s objection is therefore not necessarily that terrorism-linked returnees pose no security risk.
The dispute is principally over what Parliament can constitutionally do to Australian citizens.
Burke predicts a High Court defeat
Burke has argued the bill would be extremely vulnerable if challenged in the High Court.
That position is shared by some constitutional experts who question whether an Australian citizen can lawfully be permanently excluded from the country in the manner proposed.
This creates the central legal fault line in the debate.
One Nation argues Parliament should legislate as strongly as possible and allow the courts to test the boundaries.
Labor argues Parliament should not knowingly enact legislation it believes is constitutionally defective.
Professor Anne Twomey has questioned the bill
Constitutional law expert Professor Anne Twomey has raised doubts about the proposal’s capacity to achieve a permanent exclusion.
She has suggested the mechanism may ultimately function more as a delaying device than a permanent legal barrier to an Australian citizen’s return.
That does not amount to a High Court ruling against the bill.
No such ruling exists because the legislation has not passed.
But it illustrates the legal uncertainty the Senate inquiry must examine.
Australia already has temporary exclusion orders
The Commonwealth is not currently powerless when dealing with Australians overseas who present terrorism-related risks.
Australia already operates a temporary exclusion-order regime.
Those powers can delay a person’s return and impose conditions around how and when they come back.
Hanson’s argument is that temporary management is insufficient for individuals who continue to present an unacceptable terrorist threat.
The argument is over permanent exclusion
This distinction is crucial.
There is broad political agreement that genuine foreign terrorist fighters can pose serious security risks.
The more difficult legal question is whether an Australian citizen can be kept outside Australia permanently and, if so, under what constitutional mechanism and evidentiary standard.
That question sits at the intersection of national security, citizenship and constitutional law.
The bill also proposes tougher passport powers
Passports are another tool targeted by the legislation.
The proposal seeks to strengthen the Commonwealth’s ability to cancel or refuse Australian passports in terrorism-related circumstances.
Restricting travel documents can make it more difficult for individuals associated with terrorist organisations to move internationally.
But passport powers alone do not necessarily resolve the separate constitutional question of an Australian citizen’s entitlement to return.
Terrorism bail laws would also be tightened
The legislation proposes amendments affecting bail for terrorism offences.
One Nation argues people facing serious terrorism allegations should be subject to a stronger presumption against release where public safety is at stake.
This element of the bill is separate from the foreign-fighter exclusion mechanism but forms part of Hanson’s broader national-security package.
Facilitating an unlawful return could become an offence
The bill would also insert a new provision into the Commonwealth Criminal Code targeting people who organise or facilitate the entry of specified terrorism-linked individuals.
Exceptions would apply where entry was facilitated by a Commonwealth authority or authorised by the relevant federal minister.
The objective is to create penalties not merely for the excluded person but for people who deliberately circumvent the exclusion system.
The polling gives Hanson political leverage
The legal questions are unresolved, but the political numbers are much clearer.
By 51 to 29 per cent, voters supported the proposition put to them about preventing foreign fighters and terrorist sympathisers originally from Australia from returning.
That gives Hanson a powerful argument that the objective of her legislation reaches well beyond One Nation’s existing voter base.
One Nation itself polls at about a quarter of the electorate
This distinction is particularly revealing because support for the foreign-fighter proposal is substantially higher than One Nation’s own primary vote.
The latest Roy Morgan survey, conducted from August 17 to 23, put One Nation at 27 per cent of the primary vote, level with Labor and ahead of the Coalition on 21 per cent.
A proposal receiving 51 per cent support therefore necessarily reaches far beyond voters currently intending to give Hanson their first preference.
That does not prove the media is disconnected
Hanson’s political framing goes further, arguing the result demonstrates establishment politicians and the media are disconnected from ordinary Australians.
The poll itself cannot establish that conclusion.
It measures voter attitudes towards the proposal.
It does not measure media attitudes, nor does it establish that journalists collectively oppose the policy.
The evidence supports a narrower but still politically significant conclusion: more Australians surveyed supported the proposal than opposed it.
Nor does the poll validate every provision in the bill
There is another important distinction.
Respondents expressed support for the broad proposal of preventing foreign fighters and terrorist sympathisers from returning.
That does not necessarily mean 51 per cent have examined and endorsed every legal mechanism contained in Hanson’s 22-page bill.
Public support for an objective and public support for a particular legislative drafting solution are not necessarily identical.
This is exactly why the Senate inquiry matters
The parliamentary committee now has to examine questions that cannot be answered by opinion polling.
Would the exclusion-order mechanism be constitutional?
What evidentiary threshold should apply?
How should “material support” for a terrorist organisation be established?
What rights of review should an affected Australian have?
How should Australia deal with citizens whom another country wants removed from its territory?
And what happens if a court concludes that a citizen ultimately has a constitutional entitlement to return?
September 7 is the next major date
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee is scheduled to report on September 7.
Its findings will be important because they should provide a more detailed assessment of the legal architecture and evidence surrounding the proposal.
Committee scrutiny could also result in recommendations for amendments rather than a simple choice between passing or rejecting the legislation exactly as introduced.
The Coalition’s support could become decisive
One Nation cannot enact federal legislation by itself.
Coalition support therefore gives the proposal considerably greater parliamentary significance than a private senator’s bill would ordinarily possess.
But passing the Senate would still not be enough.
The legislation would also need to pass the House of Representatives, where Labor holds government.
Without government support or a major change in Labor’s position, the bill faces a formidable parliamentary obstacle even before any constitutional challenge.
Labor now faces a difficult political argument
The government can point to genuine constitutional concerns.
But Hanson can point to majority public support for the objective of her proposal.
That means Labor must do more than say the bill is legally flawed.
It also needs to explain what existing law can do, where those powers end and what alternative measures the government believes can safely manage Australians who have participated in overseas terrorist organisations.
The debate is broader than Pauline Hanson
The polling demonstrates why this issue is unlikely to disappear even if Hanson’s bill ultimately fails.
A majority of respondents supported stronger exclusion of foreign fighters and terrorist sympathisers.
The Coalition has also moved towards Hanson’s position on the policy objective.
The argument is therefore becoming less about whether terrorism-linked returnees require special controls and more about how far Australian law can constitutionally go.
Citizenship makes this extraordinarily difficult
Governments possess extensive powers to deny entry to non-citizens.
Australian citizens present a fundamentally different legal problem.
Citizenship carries legal rights and constitutional implications that cannot simply be treated as equivalent to cancelling a foreign national’s visa.
That is why apparently straightforward political language — “do not let them back” — becomes substantially more complicated when converted into legislation.
National security and constitutional government must coexist
The strongest possible counter-terrorism policy is not necessarily the policy containing the broadest powers.
For legislation to remain effective, those powers also need to survive judicial scrutiny.
A law struck down by the High Court cannot protect Australians.
Equally, constitutional complexity does not remove Parliament’s responsibility to examine whether existing national-security laws are adequate.
The Senate committee now has the task of testing both sides of that equation.
The political momentum is currently with Hanson
For One Nation, however, the immediate political result is favourable.
Hanson has introduced a complete legislative proposal.
The Coalition has agreed to work with her on it.
The Senate has sent it for formal examination.
And polling shows the underlying objective receives considerably more public support than opposition.
That does not establish that every clause of the Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill is constitutional, necessary or workable. Those questions remain unresolved.
What the polling does establish is politically significant enough on its own: by 51 to 29 per cent, Australians surveyed backed the proposition of stopping foreign fighters and terrorist sympathisers originally from Australia from returning. The next question is whether Parliament can devise a law capable of delivering that objective while surviving the constitutional test that inevitably follows.
