According to The Australian, government officials are in negotiations with a “handful” of ISIS jihadis and their families who wish to return to Australia after the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate.

The Department of Justice is also preparing for a possible influx of jihadi families and is set to hold a two-day conference aimed at developing protocols for reintegration. The workshop will be aimed at “bureaucrats from the departments of health, education, corrections and social services, as well as counter-terrorism police.”

This comes a day after The Australian revealed “the wife of an Islamic State terrorist and her three-year-old child were secretly returned to Australia last year…”

In what authorities fear could be the beginning of a wave of ­returning foreign fighters and their families, The Australian can reveal that the woman and her child arrived in Australia in the middle of last year, having lived in the so-called Islamic State caliphate since late 2015.

Cory Bernardi appeared on Sky News yesterday, stating: “We’ve got enough Islamic nutcases at work in this country… they should’ve left her stateless. If she’s back in Australia, I think she should be in prison and her child should be put into the care of people who will foster Australian values rather than these barbaric, medieval values that Islamic State and Islamic fundamentalism espouses.”