The children of notorious Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf may be allowed to return to Australia but the government has warned their parents will face the full force of the law if they try to come home.

Fairfax Media understands the family of Sharrouf's wife, Tara Nettleton, is trying to help her and the couple's five children return to Sydney.

Sharrouf's young son made global headlines last year when he was photographed holding a severed human head.

Agencies recently traced Ms Nettleton's mother, Karen, on a trip to Malaysia in what police suspect was an effort to arrange the repatriation of Sharrouf's wife and children.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Wednesday the image depicted an "act of savagery" and showed the parents had "destroyed" their lives.

"We are a compassionate country that provides support to children in particular who are in need," Mr Dutton told Sky.

One government MP on Wednesday called for the children to taken from their parents, while Opposition Leader Bill Shorten likened the situation to "child abuse".

It is a serious offence to fight with the Islamic State. Jihadists who return to Australia face up to 25 years in jail.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott suggested that minors caught up in fighting abroad could also face Australia's terror laws.

"Well the point I make is that crime is crime is crime," Mr Abbott said.

"If a minor commits a crime, again there are standard provisions for dealing with that. Criminals will be punished, whether they're young, whether they're old, whether they're male, whether they're female, whether they're criminals abroad or criminals or at home."

But Mr Abbott also said the children of jihadists would be treated no differently to other children of criminals.

"There are criminals who go to jail all the time and the children of these particular criminals will be dealt in the same way that the children of criminals are normally dealt with," he said.

Mr Shorten told Seven's Sunrise program he would request a briefing from the government.

"I think those children are probably the victims of effectively child abuse," he said.

When asked how he would feel if Sharrouf's children went to the same playground as his own, Mr Shorten replied: "Well, that's really tough, isn't it?"

"We need to get to the facts. They will be scarred. I can't understand any parent who would take their children to these war zones and subject them to those things that we saw in the photos. That is so far away removed from what parents who love their kids would do. I just don't understand what would be in the mind of these people - this parent, this father to do this. It defies all parenting, love and logic, doesn't it?"

Liberal backbencher Alex Hawke said Sharrouf and Nettleton's decision to join Islamic State and take his children to a war zone should result in their "immediate disqualification for parenthood".

He said the children should come back to Australia and rehabilitated but their parents stripped of their citizenship and never allowed back into the country.

"You can't go over and seek to support this and then try and come back when you realise its not all that great," he told Fairfax Media.

It is understood Sharrouf's three young boys and two teenage daughters are viewed by some senior security sources as victims of their father's extremism. However, the case of Nettleton is more vexed.

She is suspected of helping to spirit her children to Syria via Malaysia after Sharrouf flew out of Sydney in December 2013 using his brother's passport.

- with Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Nick Ralston

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