36 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 41(2):Adv decrease the likelihood that terrorist activity will eventuate.193 As Whealy J noted in R v Elomar, [t]he broad purpose of the creation of offences of the kind involved in the present sentencing exercises is to prevent the emergence of circumstances which may render more likely the carrying out of a serious terrorist act. … The legislation is designed to bite early, long before the preparatory acts mature into circumstances of deadly or dangerous consequence for the community.194 It has been noted that where an Australian citizen commits an offence in foreign territory, gathering enough admissible evidence to secure a conviction can be very challenging.195 To the extent that this weakens the national security value of the criminal law, it is mitigated by div 104 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). Division 104 creates a ‘control order’ regime, in which individuals not suspected of any criminal offence may be subject to a wide range of restrictions (potentially amounting to house arrest) if those restrictions are ‘reasonably necessary, and reasonably appropriate and adapted, for the purpose of … protecting the public from a terrorist act’.196 Collectively, these factors operate to circumvent the risk of terrorist attacks and to reduce the risk to national security posed by citizens and non-citizens who seek to harm Australia, irrespective of whether or not a conviction has been secured. In this context, as in the UK and Canada, it is difficult to see how Australia’s new citizenship-revocation laws will be of more than marginal practical utility from a security perspective. This is reinforced by the fact that, during the debate over the legislation, no clear case was made that it was needed to fill a particular gap in Australian law. The Australian denationalisation laws may have greater utility as a symbolic statement that disloyalty or lack of allegiance will be met with exclusion from the Australian citizenry. This casts Australian citizenship as a conditional status, contingent upon good behaviour. As with the UK and Canadian laws, however, aspects of the Australian denationalisation legislation dilute the clarity of this symbolic statement. First, the fact that denationalisation only applies to Australian citizens with dual citizenship means that disloyal conduct attracts different consequences for different citizens. This casts doubt over the 193 See Keiran Hardy and George Williams, ‘Australian Legal Responses to Foreign Fighters’ (2016) 40 Criminal Law Journal 196, 197, 201. 194 (2010) 264 ALR 759, 779 [79]. 195 See, eg, Bret Walker, Annual Report (Report, Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Australian Government, 28 March 2014) 31–6. 196 Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) s 104.4(1)(d). Advance Copy