But he repeated the long-held concern of police and security agencies that increasingly younger children were adopting violent Islamic extremist views. Asked whether the age limit may have to be dropped even further, he declined to rule the possibility out. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "Well, these are judgments that have to be made and it's a judgment that will be made by the Parliament as to whether they accept the case for 14-year-olds," he said. "I can't make a prediction on what ages we're going to need to deal with. What I'm saying is that the threat is starting to emanate … in children who are younger and younger and that's concerning." Control orders impose bail-like conditions such as curfews, tracking devices, regular reporting to police and curbs on communications including phone and internet use.

The new laws state that courts considering control order applications for 14 to 17-year-olds must take into account the best interests of the child including their schooling, their relationship with their family and their right to practice religion. AFP counter-terrorism national manager Neil Gaughan said police would be unlikely to use, for instance, a visible tracking device for a child who was going to school. "Just because we've applied for a control order doesn't mean that all the actual controls can be used," he said. "It's highly unlikely that we'd actually apply for ankle bracelets and monitor someone's movements [in such an instance]. We would use other ways and other means to keep that person under observation." Thursday's laws also create a new offence of advocating genocide and allow courts to keep some evidence from suspects in control order application hearings on national security grounds.

And they allow police to obtain warrants to more easily check whether suspects are complying with control orders by using telecommunications intercepts, home searches and surveillance devices. Parliament also began debating on Thursday the controversial law to strip Australian citizenship from dual national terrorists. Labor has officially backed the legislation after the government tightened the bill in line with recommendations from a cross-party committee of MPs. But Labor MPs continued to warn the citizenship law may not survive a High Court challenge – a view expressed by legal experts. If the High Court decides that stripping citizenship is effectively a criminal penalty, the government would be usurping the role of the justice system, breaching the constitution's demand for the separation of powers.