Attorney general says it is too early to be definitive about gunman’s motives after search fails to find Islamist-related material

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The attorney general, George Brandis, is urging calm after the Munich mass shooting, saying the word “terrorism” should not be used too loosely.

He said it was too early to be definitive about the motives of the German gunman, especially when a search of the man’s home did not find any Islamist-related material, or any other political, religious or ideological material.

German police say an 18-year-old man who killed nine people at a Munich shopping centre on Friday night did not seem to be radicalised by religion.



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He was obsessed with mass killings, owned a book on US school shootings and played computer shooting games. Most of his victims were fellow teenagers, five of them under 16.

The incoming senator Pauline Hanson was quick to take to her Facebook page on Saturday morning – just hours after the Munich shooting – to suggest that religion was a motivating factor.

“We’re waking up again to what appears to be another terrorism attack in Munich, Germany,” she wrote. “Let’s see which ‘peace loving’ religion is behind this latest attack.”

“It’s very important to be careful in our use of language,” Brandis told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday. “Not every mass casualty attack is an act of terrorism. Not every premeditated act of violence is an act of terrorism.

“Our law has a very specific definition of terrorism. Terrorism is an act of violence or a threat of violence perpetrated for a political, religious or ideological cause, to coerce government or to intimidate the public.

“If we’re going to understand this problem we have to anatomise it correctly. We must be very careful in our use of language so that we don’t spray the word terrorism around too loosely.”



Brandis also said events such as the shooting in Munich were very difficult to predict and lone gunman who self-radicalise are “the most difficult people to pick up.”

“One of the phenomena that we have seen develop more recently is the development of lone actors who self-radicalise, often very quickly, most commonly online,” he said. “Very frequently these are young men with psychological disturbances, they don’t fit into the conventional or traditional understanding of a terrorism network.”



When asked about the intelligence community’s attempts to stop the radicalisation of young Australians, Brandis said parents in the Muslim community had been coming to Asio, and the government, if they had concerns about their children.

“The engagement with the Muslim community by federal and state police, and by the intelligence community as well, has been a successful and a productive engagement,” he said.

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But he also said it would be wrong to silence people like Pauline Hanson.

“What we have to do is we have to engage her, we have to explain why the views that she expresses about, for example, the Muslim community are unhelpful and frankly wrong,” he said.

“I have always believed that it is absolutely the wrong idea to try and silence such people, to silence that point of view because it’s a point of view that exists in the community. Half a million people voted for Pauline Hanson or her candidates in the Senate.”

Brandis said it was no longer the government’s intention to reform 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, despite incoming senators such as Derryn Hinch and Hanson saying they would like to abolish it or wind it back.

“That’s not the government’s intention,” he said. “In September of 2014 the then prime minister, Mr Abbott, made a decision to take reform of section 18C off the table,” he said. “That remains the government’s position.”

