An Australian man claimed he was taken off a commercial flight on Saturday after doodles he was making in a notebook were deemed to represent a terrorist threat.

Fairfax Media reported that Tiger Airways staff escorted Oliver Buckworth, a 28-year-old Melbourne-based interior designer, from a flight bound for the Gold Coast after a passenger reported the doodles.

Australian Federal Police said they had “responded to a request for assistance” from Tiger Airways. The Herald said it had seen a page of the notebook in question, which contained the sentence: “In a land of melting ice-creams, sandy feet and fluffy bears, how could anyone be fearful of terrorism.”

The threat of terrorist attacks has been under discussion in Australia this week. On Thursday, police carried out dawn raids in Sydney and Brisbane which the country’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, said were necessary to prevent imminent and random “demonstration killings” by Islamic militants.

Abbott has been an active and vocal supporter of US air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq. The extent of the international threat posed by Isis or individuals or groups inspired by them has been the subject of intense world debate.

On Friday, Abbott told Australian TV that possible attacks might not be complex or involve great planning. He said: “The regrettable reality is that to mount the kind of attacks which [Isis] in Syria and in Iraq has in mind for Australia, all you need is a determined individual who will kill without compunction, a knife, an iPhone, and a victim.

“So, it is difficult to entirely protect our community from this kind of act, but we do have extremely professional, very thorough, very capable police and security agencies, and I am confident that we have the wherewithal to do what we need to do to keep our community safe.”

On Saturday, the country’s justice minister said bills giving authorities greater powers to deal with terrorism would be introduced into parliament next week.

Other doodles in Buckworth’s notebook seen by the Herald included a sketch of a chandelier; the phrase “Terrorismadeup”; and a cartoon of a child clutching his head with a thought bubble saying: “Tyrannosaurus Rex. Terodactyl. Tarantula. Terrorist.”

Buckworth said: “The irony is, I was writing a sentence about the absurdity of the fear-mongering, when we live in such a happy country of ice-cream and beaches and fluffy things.”