The Martin Place siege was about “criminals doing terrible things” and is not an issue for Islam or Australia’s Muslim community, the federal police commissioner, Andrew Colvin, has said in his first official speech.



Colvin, who was appointed commissioner of the force in October last year, also denied the AFP had “blood on its hands” over the so-called Bali Nine drug smugglers, two of whom are currently awaiting news of their execution date.

Nor had the AFP given up the nine Australians in order to secure better co-operation with Indonesian police, as some media reports have suggested. “I find those comments misinformed and misguided,” he told Sydney’s Lowy Institute on Thursday.

Colvin said the AFP had been “doing what it can” to support the government’s efforts to spare the lives of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, including lobbying police contacts in Indonesia.

He said criticism of the police, who alerted Indonesia authorities to the plot in 2005, “ignores the findings of several reviews and judicial hearings that have scrutinised the AFP’s actions”.

He would answer questions about the AFP’s role again, he said, but “while the government’s efforts are continuing, now is not the time for me to go into that”.

Colvin spoke about the need to future-proof the agency for threats that might one day “wipe terrorism off the front pages”, nominating cyber attacks, investment fraud, corruption and natural disasters.



“What we need our police forces to look like in the future is highly unlikely to be what they look like now,” he said.



A future police unit might consist of computer experts, accountants, lawyers and even psychologists, he said, with a sworn officer acting as “the captain who marshals the knowledge and expertise of those who are best placed to understand ... the vulnerabilities that are being exploited”.

He would not elaborate on whether the AFP was engaging with disillusioned Australians jihadis who might wish to leave Islamic State, saying only that it was a “very active policy consideration” and the police were “very interested in talking to anyone” who reached out.

He expressed reluctance to talk about Australia’s Muslim communities in relation to terrorism, saying “they often felt understandably targeted”, but “we could not have had success in stopping attacks without them.”

Attacks on Muslims in the wake of the Martin Place siege were “a terrible indictment on this country and this society”, he added.