If you think that jihadi bride that the Australians are dumping on us is an isolated case, think again. 

There are probably another 11 where she came from. 

Cast you mind back to 2015/2016 and you might remember John Key warning us about the jihadi brides problem.  Back then our spies confirmed that there were 12 kiwi women who had headed off to ISIS to become brides.  All 12 women had left from Australia.  

We don’t know that all those women have Australian citizenship but it’s got to be a possibility given they were living there. 

Which means we may have the same problem playing out 12 times over. We could have Australia stripping the citizenship of more women and dumping them here in New Zealand. 

My understanding is that our government was hoping we could do a you-take-one, we-take-one deal with Australia.  The hope was we could split the group of, however-many of these jihadi brides are still alive, according to how long they’d lived in Australia. 

So for example, if they’d spent most of their lives in Australia, then Australia would take them. If they hadn’t been there very long, then we’d take them. 

We don’t know how many of them have had their Australian citizenship revoked, but I’m guessing it’s not good news for us. Given that this woman should’ve gone to Australia in a sharing arrangement because she’d been there from age six, and given Jacinda Ardern’s fury, I’m guessing there’s a chance we could get the lot.  

Which brings me to this question: Should we do what Australia is doing?  Should we be revoking the New Zealand citizenship of these women first, if Australia hasn’t already? 

We are already able to do that.  The Minister of Internal affairs can revoke citizenship under the Citizenship Act 1977, for two reasons: If the person has another citizenship or they have voluntarily acted against the interests of New Zealand. 

Dunno about you, but fighting for ISIS against the side that includes NZ feels like acting against the interests of the country.  

And actually, why haven’t already done it?  We’ve known about these women since at least 2015, so why are sitting here waiting to be underarm- bowled by Australia again?

The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour and by now we must realise Australia is not going to tolerate our criminals. They will send them to us. 

We have two options. Either we take these women and stop whinging, or we cut them off first, if it’s not too late already.