The Abbott government has blamed Labor for “policy settings” that remained in place when the convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf fled Australia on his brother’s passport three months after the election.



The office of the immigration and border protection minister, Scott Morrison, said the government was implementing “more rigorous processes to manage travellers subject to alerts” and revealed that $150m of the $630m extra national-security funding pledged last week would “specifically deal with foreign fighter threats at our airports”.

On Monday Australian political leaders expressed their outrage over a shocking image posted on Twitter depicting a young boy, reported to be Sharrouf’s son, holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier. The prime minister, Tony Abbott, said on Tuesday that the “absolutely hideous” photograph showed “a seven-year-old Australian – born and bred – in Syria, waving around a severed head as if it were a show bag at the Easter show”.

Labor called for an update on the progress of an investigation into how Sharrouf was able to board a plane from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur in December last year. In 2009 Sharrouf pleaded guilty in the New South Wales supreme court to possessing goods in preparation for a terrorist act and served almost four years in jail.

A spokeswoman for Morrison accused Labor of “playing partisan politics with national security” and said it should instead be “supporting the government’s efforts to ensure a unified response to the increasing terrorist threat”.

“Khaled Sharrouf departed Australia a few months after the 2013 election under the same policy settings that had been put in place by the previous Labor government,” she said in a written response to questions.

“Labor cut nearly 700 staff and introduced budgetary cuts to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service of over $700m during their six years in government.

“The Abbott government reversed these cuts in this year’s budget through the establishment of the Australian Border Force and further increased funding by $150m last week to specifically deal with foreign fighter threats at our airports.”

The May budget said the government would provide about $480m over four years, or $712m over six years, to “strengthen Australia’s border protection services”. But the budget indicated that the cost of this measure would be met from within the existing resources of the immigration and border protection portfolio and improved revenue collection.

Morrison’s spokeswoman said the government launched a review “following Sharrouf’s departure where he had successfully posed as his brother and used his brother’s passport”.

“The first review concluded that the human error of the primary line officer in this case was within reasonable tolerances based on the information available to the officer,” she said.

“In response to preliminary findings of the review, action has already been taken by the Australian government to strengthen arrangements underpinning passport control.”

She said these arrangements included implementing more rigorous processes to manage travellers subject to alerts, increasing engagement between law enforcement agencies to improve timely information sharing and action by frontline officers over alerts, and reversing the previous government’s policy settings “that placed a priority on passenger facilitation over more thorough checks”.

The comments followed comments by the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, on Tuesday that the government must explain what steps it had taken over the security lapse that allowed Sharrouf to flee the country. “[Morrison] needs to tell people how this can occur and to make sure that preventing other people with similar evil or twisted intent from joining in this terrible fight and indeed suborning their families into those terrible images we saw yesterday,” Shorten said.

The focus on Sharrouf coincides with the government’s push to toughen counter-terrorism legislation to deal with the risk posed by Australians who fought in Iraq and Syria and then sought to return home.

The proposed measures include the creation of a new offence of travelling to a designated area without a valid reason, which could be used to target those suspected of fighting with the group now known as Islamic State (Isis).

Labor has indicated it is predisposed towards cooperating with the government on national security legislation, but has expressed the need for scrutiny to ensure adequate checks and balances and the protection of liberty.

Abbott said last week that the terrorist threat level in Australia had “not changed” since the 11 September, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, but the issue of Australians being radicalised and militarised working with terrorists in Syria and northern Iraq had caused “heightened concern”.

The opposition immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, told Ten’s the Bolt Report on Sunday: “Can I make this point: we actually need to get the basics here right, as well. Khaled Sharrouf, a person on a no-fly list, was able to leave this country under this minister’s watch, on his brother’s passport.”

The attorney general, George Brandis, has previously told the Senate that Sharrouf “departed Australia in December of last year using his brother’s passport” with the assumed intention of travelling to Syria.

Sharrouf was under investigation by state and federal police “regarding both his departure under a false identity and his alleged involvement in offences against the Australian Criminal Code and the Foreign Incursions and Recruitment Act”, Brandis told the Senate in June.