Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has warned that Australians have become complacent about the risk of a domestic terrorist attack, as the Government's foreign fighters bill heads to the Senate.

Key points: The Senate is set to pass new laws to prevent foreign fighters from returning to Australia for up to two years

The Senate is set to pass new laws to prevent foreign fighters from returning to Australia for up to two years Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warns Australians have become too complacent about the threat of domestic terrorism

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warns Australians have become too complacent about the threat of domestic terrorism The Opposition will push for amendments, but have said they will back the bill

The legislation to prevent people considered a security risk from returning home for up to two years passed the House of Representatives last night.

"I think there's a level of complacency in our country at the moment, that people think it can't happen, what took place in Christchurch or Sri Lanka recently, it can't happen in our country," Mr Dutton told the ABC's AM program.

"It can and we're dealing with that threat every day."

Mr Dutton went further in an interview with Sky News, where he warned of the risk of returnees donning suicide vests to carry out terror attacks.

"Even if this legislation applied to one case, where we stopped one person from coming back, that otherwise would have strapped on a suicide vest and blown up 100 Australians, then that is obviously worth the effort," he said.

Labor will push for amendments in the Senate, as it did in the Lower House, to try to force the Government to implement changes proposed by Parliament's bipartisan security and intelligence committee.

However, if it failed, the Opposition said it would back the bill.

The committee's recommendations included a call for a retired or serving judge to be given the power to make decisions about whether to apply the temporary exclusion orders, rather than the Minister.

Mr Dutton said that would slow the process down.

"Our judgement is that, particularly in some cases where you need to make an urgent decision, that that case is best considered by the minister and then reviewed," he told the ABC.

"Every decision is then reviewed by either a retired judge or a senior member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT).

"So there is that process in place, there's also the ability for matters to be referred or to be heard right up to the High Court, but the Federal Court to start with. So there are checks and balances in place now."

Women and children could pose a risk: Dutton

A temporary exclusion order (TEO) would be issued against an Australian citizen if the Government believed there was a chance it could stop a terrorist attack.

In introducing the legislation, Mr Dutton said of the 230 Australians known to have travelled to Syria and Iraq, 40 had returned.

The Government is aware of 80 Australians remaining in those countries, although Mr Dutton would not say how many of those people were children.

"We've got people beyond the 80 that we have suspicions about but we don't know the location of," he told Sky News.

"And there's no sense in those people turning up asking for travel documents at an embassy and we're obliged to send those people back to Australia, we need to manage the return and we need to deal with the very real threat that many of these people pose."

Mr Dutton said while he had sympathy for the children involved, some of them could be considered dangerous.

"By the time you start to get up to children of 14 years of age for example, and if they've been in Syria or Iraq for the last six years, then they pose a very significant threat potentially to us.

"And we can't just take those children back, plonk them into school, expect that everything's going to be OK."

Mr Dutton said the bill would also allow the Government to manage the return of women who travelled to Iraq and Syria.

"As we've seen in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, women can pose a very significant threat where they've been radicalised by ISIL, so that's why we need to look at each individual case," he said.