Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has dismissed concerns about new anti-terror laws, saying he'll take advice from a legal team before stripping the citizenship of suspects.
The Law Council of Australia says the laws, which will go to parliament on Wednesday, won't comply with the constitution unless they contain judicial safeguards.
The bill would be challenged in the High Court if it did not contain either the requirement for a conviction or other satisfactory proof, or a right of judicial review, council president Duncan McConnel told ABC radio.
Mr Dutton and Prime Minister Tony Abbott say it would be hard to secure convictions in many cases because evidence gathered in the Middle East may not be admissible in Australian courts.
"What happens if they get off? That's the problem," Mr Abbott told reporters in Cairns on Friday.
"We all know that there are evidentiary issues with prosecutions of people for offences abroad."
Mr Dutton said any decision he made about stripping citizenship would involve advice from intelligence agencies ASIO and ASIS, Defence and "legal chiefs".
"There will be a team of people including some of the best lawyers in the country who will scrutinise the evidence," Mr Dutton told Fairfax radio.
Asked whether that would make him a quasi-judge, he said: "There must be a decision-maker and there must be the ability for the courts to look at part of the process".
While in some cases it may mean not getting a criminal prosecution, he said it would save lives by stopping trained terrorists returning to Australia.
Under existing citizenship laws a person automatically ceases to be an Australian citizen if they "serve in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia".
This citizenship ceases at the time the person starts their service.
The new laws, which have yet to be made public, are expected to extend this to cover someone who fights for a terrorist organisation such as Islamic State.
Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the opposition supported such a simple change to the law but was still waiting for a briefing.
"The only thing we have seen from the government is a leaked question time brief ... for Tony Abbott this is all about the politics," he told reporters in Melbourne.
"We support an updating of the Citizenship Act but we just want to have a mature conversation with a grown up partner about how we can do that."
Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull says he is working with Mr Dutton and Attorney-General George Brandis to ensure the laws conform to the constitution.
"What is the point of passing a law if it's going to get knocked out in the High Court?" he told ABC TV on Friday.
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