Australia to 'strip' terrorists of citizenship

The move will be made after new counter-terrorism laws are moved to the country's parliament this week.

"I flagged some change in my national security speech back in February. It’s long been the case that if you serve with the armed forces of a country at war with Australia you automatically lose your citizenship and what we flagged back then is extending that to people who are working with terrorist groups that are effectively at war with Australia," Abbott told media.

The Daesh death cult in the Middle East plainly is at war with our country. It’s at war with our values, it’s at war with our allies, it’s killing people indiscriminately as we see every day in the Middle East and while we Australians are reluctant to reach out to conflicts abroad, this particular conflict, as we have seen, is reaching out to the heart of our country," he said.

Abbott further said: "I am not going to go into detail because we will have more to say on this within a few days, but what we have long had in the Citizenship Act since, as I understand it, 1948 is a provision that people lose their citizenship if they have taken up arms against the Commonwealth of Australia. People who are serving with terrorist groups overseas, people who are fighting with terrorist groups overseas or who are engaged in terrorist activities here in Australia are effectively taking up arms against us. It’s very hard to imagine that we should allow to remain in the bosom of our country people who are trying to destroy us."