The Abbott government is facing mounting concerns about the scope and legality of its proposed laws on stripping Australian citizenship after criticism by the Law Council, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Commission and almost every media company in the country.

Labor has given in principle support to the idea of extending current provisions to allow citizenship to be stripped from dual nationals who “take up arms against Australia”, but scores of organisations have criticised the proposed laws for going far beyond that aim, and for being potentially unconstitutional.

When Labor raised concerns during the last parliament, Tony Abbott accused them of being “weak on terror” and of seeking to “roll out the red carpet for terrorists.” The government has said the laws are essential to “stop terrorists being loose on our streets”.

But over the parliamentary break scores of organisations have raised concerns about the laws.

Media organisations including Fairfax, News Corp Australia, the ABC, AAP, Free TV – representing all the free-to-air television stations, the West Australian and SBS told the committee that journalists or media executives or advertising sellers now risked losing citizenship, as well as lengthy jail terms because the new citizenship laws would be imposed on top of “the overreach” in previous anti-terrorism laws. In a joint submission to the committee, the media companies point to possible unintended consequences of laws prohibiting the “publishing of recruitment advertisements” for terrorist groups, with no concessions for inadvertent publication of something not known to be terror-related at the time.

The government has said the law does not run counter to the constitutional separation of powers, but the commonwealth ombudsman, Colin Neave, says this is a “legal fiction” because officials would have to make a decision about who was covered by its provisions. “The legal fiction that the cessation of citizenship occurs by operation of the statute conceals administrative decision making that must logically occur for the bill to operate,” he writes.

Amnesty International calls on parliament to reject the bill, or at the very least amend it to require a criminal conviction in a court.

The Law Council of Australia also recommends a criminal conviction should be required “by an independent, impartial and competent court or tribunal” and after that a decision by the minister that the “person poses a substantial risk to Australia’s security”.

The Muslim Legal Network is also worried that alleged terrorist activity is not tested in a court before citizenship is revoked. “this contradicts the presumption of innocence and deprives the individual of his fundamental right to fair trial and fair hearing, or indeed, any trial or hearing.”

The Human Rights Commission also demands an a priori conviction before stripping citizenship.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance writes that the law leaves “a person is liable to having his her citizenship renounced simply on the basis of intelligence, hearsay and other forms of “evidence” that suffer from the risk of being unreliable. The removal of citizenship does not occur following a decision regarding the conduct in a court of law, but instead can occur after “engaging in conduct”. On the basis of such flimsy “evidence” the stripping of citizenship takes place immediately. To make matters worse and even more obscene, a child of that person also has their citizenship renounced.

The parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security will hear from many of the groups over the next two days.

The government had originally proposed that the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, would have discretion over the revocation of citizenship, but constitutional lawyers said this was almost certain to be struck down by the high court and it was also confirmed by a dramatic cabinet leak that many senior ministers had the same concern.

Dutton introduced the changes to the Citizenship Act to the House of Representatives in June. The bill lists three ways in which dual nationals can automatically lose their Australian citizenship. First, a person renounces their citizenship “by conduct” if they engage in terrorist activity. Second, if they go overseas to fight for foreign armies deemed enemies of Australia, or listed terrorist organisations. Third, if they are convicted of terrorism offences or “certain other offences” by an Australian court.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has said Labor supported “in principle” the idea of extending the revocation of citizenship to dual citizens who “take up arms against Australia”.