2016] The Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness in Australia 489 the new provisions extend far beyond this. As Sangeetha Pillai has observed, the Allegiance to Australia Act ‘represents the most significant expansion of the grounds for citizenship loss in Australia since Australian citizenship legislation first entered into force in 1949.’186 Although representing a radical shift in Australian citizenship law, the amendments reflect a recent legislative trend to introduce or widen powers of denationalisation in other common law countries, such as the UK,187 Canada,188 Israel,189 and some European states190 in response to concerns about the threat to national security posed by so-called ‘foreign fighters’.191 However, in many respects Australia’s provisions extend beyond both the enacted and proposed measures in other comparable states.192 Moreover, recent developments ---- including the withdrawal of a 186 Sangeetha Pillai, ‘Citizenship-Stripping Reforms Open to Challenge in Spite of Safeguards’ (2016) 3(19) LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal 74, 74. 187 See Guy S Goodwin-Gill, Deprivation of Citizenship Resulting in Statelessness and Its Implications in International Law: Further Comments (6 April 2014) <http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/gsgg%203deprivationcitizenshipfurthercommentfinal.pdf>; Guy S Goodwin-Gill, Deprivation of Citizenship, Statelessness, and International Law: More Authority (If It Were Needed…) (5 May 2014) <http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/gsgg%204deprivationcitizenship-moreauthority.pdf>; Guy S Goodwin-Gill, Deprivation of Citizenship Resulting in Statelessness and its Implications in International Law: Opinion (12 March 2014) <http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/gsgg%202deprivationcitizenshipintlawfinal.pdf>. The British Nationality Act 1981 (UK) c 61, s 40(4A), now contains an express exception to the general rule that an order to withdraw citizenship may not be made if the Secretary of State is satisfied that it would make a person stateless. The provision was inserted by the Immigration Act 2014 (UK) c 22, s 66(1): see Michelle Foster and Hélène Lambert, ‘Statelessness as a Human Rights Issue: A Concept Whose Time Has Come’ (2016) 28 International Journal of Refugee Law 564, 581--2. 188 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Parliament of Australia, Advisory Report on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 (2015) 19 [2.41]--[2.42]. The report also canvasses similar legislation in New Zealand, the UK, the United States and France: at 19--21 [2.43]--[2.51]. 189 Shai Lavi, ‘Punishment and the Revocation of Citizenship in the United Kingdom, United States, and Israel’ (2010) 13 New Criminal Law Review 404, 405. 190 Patrick Wautelet, ‘Deprivation of Citizenship for ‘‘Jihadists’’: Analysis of Belgian and French Practice and Policy in Light of the Principle of Equal Treatment’ (2016) Social Science Research Network <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2713742>. 191 The term ‘foreign fighters’ is not included in the Allegiance to Australia Act itself, but denotes citizens who go abroad to fight with groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Syria. 192 Sangeetha Pillai, ‘Proposals to Strip Citizenship Take Australia a Step Further than Most’ (2015) 2(13) LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal 22.