Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney died in a firefight in Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The 28-year-old's wife, Beckie, pregnant with the couple's second child, said Lance Corporal MacKinney had been looking forward to meeting ''his little man''.

''Jared was a very loving dad, a doting father, and nothing meant more to him than family,'' Mrs MacKinney said in a statement issued yesterday.

Mrs MacKinney said the couple's first child, three-year-old Annabell, was her father's ''little princess''.

Lance Corporal MacKinney died the same day that two fellow members of the Brisbane-based 6th Battalion began their final journey home.

Last Friday, Privates Grant Kirby, 35, and Tomas Dale, 21, died in the blast of an improvised explosive device.

All three were members of the Mentoring Task Force, responsible for training the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott expressed their condolences while backing the Afghanistan mission but both Labor and the Coalition gave a tentative green light yesterday to the idea of a parliamentary debate on the war.

Defence Minister John Faulkner, who will retire from the ministry once the election outcome is known, believed a debate was the right approach for the nation. 'I very much commend that approach to whoever succeeds me as minister for defence,'' he said yesterday.

''I also believe it is appropriate for the parliament to give full consideration to this matter. It is appropriate when a country is involved in a war for parliamentary discussion to take place.''

The Greens, set to hold the balance of power in the Senate, want Australia out of Afghanistan and Tasmanian Andrew Wilkie, likely to be one of four Independents determining who governs in the lower house, also urged a national debate on the war.

For more on this story, including an update on international casualties this year, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.