UPDATE: THE Federal Government will appoint a new counter-terrorism boss, as its revealed more than 30 foreign fighters have returned to Australia amid the rising threat of lone-wolf attacks.

There are at least 90 Australians fighting with and supporting terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria and at least 140 people in Australia supporting extremist groups, a review of Australia’s counterterrorism co-ordination has found.

A National Counter Terrorism Co-ordinator will be appointed to improve co-ordination of the various government agencies, Mr Abbott will announce in a National Security Statement to Parliament today.

“Australia has entered a new, long-term era of heightened terrorism threat, with a much more significant ‘home grown’ element,” Mr Abbott said.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that welfare payments to fighters have continued because security agencies have not handed names to Centrelink.

Mr Abbott will also reveal that 20 people have been ­arrested within the space of six months, accounting for one-third of all terrorism-related arrests since 2001.

“The number of foreign fighters is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing, and the number of potential terrorists, including many who live in our midst, is rising as well,” he will say in his address.

The PM’s address follows the release of a report into the Sydney siege which found that Australia’s National Security Hotline was contacted 18 times about Martin Place gunman Man Haron Monis in the days leading up to the siege.

But ASIO found Monis’s activities did not “indicate a desire or intent to engage in terrorism”.

The latest details about the deadly attack, which claimed the lives of Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, were ­released as part of a joint federal and NSW Government review into Monis’s interaction with Australian agencies and departments during his 18 years in Australia

Over nearly two decades in Australia, NSW police, Australian Federal Police, NSW Joint Counter-Terrorism Team, INTERPOL Tehran and the US Secret Service all raised ­concerns about Monis’s ­behaviour.

He was even identified as a “person of interest” by the AFP ahead of a visit by the Queen for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and in the lead-up to a visit by Pope Benedict XVI for World Youth Day.

But the review found that despite being subject to ­repeated security reviews — including four separate ASIO investigations — “law enforcement agencies never found any information to indicate Monis had the intent or desire to commit a terrorist act”.

It also found that Monis would likely be granted a visa and citizenship if he arrived in 2015, indicating there is “scope to improve existing Australian visa and citizenship processes”.

Mr Abbott said the system “let us down”.

“Plainly, this monster should not have been in our community. He shouldn’t have been allowed into the country. He shouldn’t have been out on bail. He shouldn’t have been with a gun and he shouldn’t have ­become radicalised,” he said.

“We cherish the fact that we are a free and open and welcoming society, as we must always be, but what’s pretty obvious from this report is that at every stage this individual was given the benefit of the doubt and plainly, the cumulative effect of the benefit of the doubt being given to him time and time again is that he was able to wreak havoc on our community.”

The review, which was commissioned and prepared by the Commonwealth and New South Wales’ cabinets, recommended a raft of “modest changes” to laws and government processes including:

IMPROVEMENTS to information sharing within the Department­ of Immigration;

STRONGER laws to grant or revoke visas and citizenship;

STRICTER bail conditions for terrorists;

AN URGENT review of firearms data by all states and territories­; and

A REVIEW of laws around privacy and health to allow ASIO to access information.

— with Simon Benson

annika.smethurst@news.com.au