Prime Minister Tony Abbott to simplify terror warnings and appoint counter-terrorism coordinator as part of a new anti-extremism strategy

Updated

The Federal Government will develop a new anti-extremism strategy, appoint a national terrorism coordinator and change Australia's system of terror threat alerts in response to a review of counter-terrorism measures.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will announce the changes in a speech on national security today, based on the recommendations of a counter-terrorism review commissioned in August.

"Australia has entered a new, long-term era of heightened terrorism threat, with a much more significant home-grown element," Mr Abbott will say.

Mr Abbott will also quote an increase in the number of Australians returning from conflicts in Syria and Iraq to back up his argument that "the number of potential terrorists ... who may live in our midst is rising".

"Over 30 foreign fighters have returned to Australia and at least 140 people in Australia are actively supporting extremist groups," he will say.

The Prime Minister's office also confirmed Australia's spy agency ASIO was currently investigating several thousand "leads and persons of concern".

"The number of serious investigations also continues to rise," Mr Abbott will say.

"Roughly 400 of these are high priority cases, more than double a year ago."

Mr Abbott will use his speech to explain the difficulties in combating terrorism.

"Extremists' slick online messages are grooming the socially isolated.

"Low-tech terrorism, needing little more than a camera-phone, social media account and a knife, means that it is becoming harder to for police and security agencies to anticipate and disrupt attacks.

"Thousands of young and vulnerable people in the community are susceptible to radicalisation."

The Government had previously said there were 90 Australians fighting in Syria and northern Iraq.

Mr Abbott will also accept a recommendation that Australia simplify the current system of terror alert warnings, which classifies threats as low, medium, high or extreme.

Recommendations dealing with the long-term funding for security agencies will be considered separately.

Personal freedom and community safety need to balance: Abbott

In response to a joint Commonwealth and New South Wales report into last December's Sydney siege, Mr Abbott yesterday warned that an "era of terror" meant Australia would need to reconsider "where it draws the balance" between personal freedom and community safety.

"Precisely where we draw the line in the era of terrorism will need to be reconsidered," he said.

"We need to ask ourselves, at what stage do we need to change the tipping point from protection of the individual to the safety of the community?"

That report, released yesterday, found the decisions of various government agencies which dealt with siege gunman Man Haron Monis were "reasonable".

But Mr Abbott said the community had been let down by the system which allowed Monis to remain at large, despite the serious criminal charges he was facing.

"Plainly, this monster should not have been in our community," he said.

Our immigration system needs to work with our national security agencies to ensure that it is doing everything it can to weed out people that might pose a threat to our community security in Australia. Justice Minister Michael Keenan

Mr Abbott foreshadowed tougher visa, citizenship and immigration laws as well as measures to combat the spread of illegal firearms, promising he would have more to say about those measures in today's speech.

The Prime Minister recently said people who might be a threat to Australia had been getting the benefit of the doubt for too long.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan expanded on the Government's view this morning.

"What we need to do is to make sure that we've got robust systems so that [if] we extend the hand of friendship to somebody by giving them permanent residence or citizenship in Australia, we know they are going to be part of our team - not pose a threat to national security," Mr Keenan said.

"In the past I think people have been given too generous interpretations of their motives, and I think [it] has been said, they get the benefit of the doubt," he said.

"Our immigration system needs to work with our national security agencies to ensure that it is doing everything it can to weed out people that might pose a threat to our community security in Australia."

Immigration Department secretary Mike Pezzullo said he wanted his staff to be able to reject visa applications more often.

"We will empower our officers to say no more often, where circumstances warrant and within the law, through better use of information, intelligence and data analytics, as well as ensuring that our staff have the training and support to make defensible adverse decisions," he told a Senate estimates hearing this morning.

Labor and Liberals are in this together: Shorten

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Labor was keen to work with the Government and would accept its offer of a briefing on intended changes.

"When it comes to keeping Australians safe, Labor and Liberal are in this together and we will work together in a considered way," Mr Shorten said.

The Opposition Leader said he would be happy to examine the Prime Minister's proposals but cautioned against going too far.

"I don't believe our nation can only be safe if we get rid of the liberties of people, nor do I believe that the liberties of people in every sense should trump national security," Mr Shorten said.

Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm warned against using the threat of terror to justify laws which might restrict ordinary people's freedoms.

Senator Leyonhjelm said restricting people's rights would not make them safer.

"Law enforcement and the risk to Australia should be targeted at individuals, not at groups," he said.

"Taking away the rights of all the rest of us, sacrificing a little liberty amongst all of us in the interests of safety, it's never worked.

"I'm just a bit worried that our national security and Tony Abbott's job security are, kind of, linked a little bit too closely. I hope that's not the case, but it does concern me."

The head of Parliament's Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Dan Tehan, said his regional Victorian community was particularly concerned about cracking down on foreign fighters.

"If people are going to go over and fight overseas for these terrorist organisations why do we let them back in, that's just the sort of the commonsense approach that people on the street, that's the message that they deliver to me," he said.



Burnside questions Abbott's motives

Leading human rights lawyer Julian Burnside QC said Mr Abbott's call for tighter immigration and citizenship laws in the wake of the Sydney siege were unwarranted.

"I'm not even sure you can say it's a bad judgment," he said.

"We simply do not know what facts were known by Immigration when they assessed [Monis] as a refugee in 1996, but to say that the system failed because 20 years later he turns out to be a bad egg, I think is just ludicrous."

A system doesn't fail because it did not predict something which was not reasonably predictable and that's really what the departmental conclusions found. Human rights lawyer Julian Burnside

Mr Burnside questioned the Prime Minister's motivation.

"If politicians can make a country fearful and make them think that they are being protected from something fearful, they will gain political support," he said.

"So yes I think there's a real risk that he's doing this in order to play on community fears and thereby gain a bit of political popularity."

The former national security legislation monitor Bret Walker said there was no system failure in the lead up to the Sydney siege.

"A system doesn't fail because it did not predict something which was not reasonably predictable and that's really what the departmental conclusions found," he said.

Mr Walker also had concerns the Government was framing the terror threat as being at crisis point.

"This is not anything in the nature of a so-called crisis, the point about counter terrorism [is] it's going to be continuing effort," Mr Walker said.

"There are not peak occasions where we can, for a very short time, trade away liberties for short-term protections, this is a permanent state of affairs and that's why the Prime Minister correctly says the debate about where to strike the balance has to be ongoing and is inevitable."

Topics: defence-and-national-security, federal-government, terrorism, abbott-tony, australia

First posted