Former PM says the Crimes Act allows for treachery charge with maximum penalty life imprisonment

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has called on the government to use a little known part of the Crimes Act which allows for Australians to be charged with treachery for fighting with overseas forces and attracts a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.



Fraser said laws were introduced in the 1960s allowing any Australian fighting with overseas rebel forces to be charged with treachery. The former attorney general Sir Garfield Barwick made the changes to add to the previously longstanding offence of treason. At the time, the offence of treason attracted the death penalty. Treachery was punished with life imprisonment.

In the case of alleged jihadists fighting in Middle East conflicts, Fraser said the government would need to “proclaim” Iraq and Syria to ensure Australians fighting in those countries could be charged with treachery. The approval of both houses of parliament would be required as an important “human rights safeguard”, Fraser said.

Fraser also suggested dual citizens who fought with overseas forces should be stripped of their Australian citizenship and he called on the government to “do all in its power” to bring alleged jihadists before the international court of justice.

On Monday, Tony Abbott met Muslim leaders to garner their support for counter-terrorism laws which widen the powers of agencies such as the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio).

“Everyone has got to be on team Australia,” the prime minister warned. “Everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first, and you don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team,” Tony Abbott told radio 2GB on Monday.

The government’s $630m counter-terrorism package gives Asio new powers to carry out surveillance on multiple computers, including whole networks; allows Asio agents (as well as police) to use force in operations; allows more coordination between spy agencies; and creates significantly tougher penalties for the disclosure of intelligence material.

All main media companies have been critical of the disclosure changes.

The Sydney Muslim leader Keysar Trad, who met Abbott, said the meeting was “very constructive”. The leaders stressed Australia’s national security was important to the Muslim community but they were concerned with all Australians’ civil liberties.

“We aired a number of concerns and one concern that stands out is that we don’t want to see the actions of a few lunatics to be used to take away our hard-earned civil liberties as a nation,” Trad said.

The government was trying to build bridges with ethnic minorities after Abbott dumped planned changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in order to win support for increased security measures.

In the past week, a Sydney teenager has left Australia using his brother’s passport and was believed to be heading to the Middle East to fight with the Islamic State (Isis). He was arrested in the United Arab Emirates and deported back to Australia. The Sydney man, Khaled Sharrouf, successfully used his brother’s passport in December to travel to Syria to fight. Last week Sharrouf’s seven-year-old son was seen holding a severed head in a shocking image posted on social media.

On Monday, a 19-year-old Sydney man, known under the Islamic alias Abu Bakr, was reportedly arrested after a religious attack on a 43-year-old cleaner at the Bankstown Central shopping centre on 10 August. The man was vocal in his support for Isis during an appearance on the SBS television show Insight last week before he walked off the set.

Fraser said even though the government had referred the problem of returning jihadis to the United Nations, it was “ludicrous” to wait for international action.

“It is already within Australia’s power to protect Australians absolutely against jihadis and their friends from learning arts of terrorism and coming home again,” Fraser said.

And he dismissed the government’s plans to stop welfare payments for suspected terrorist supporters as a “minor step”.

“The question of denying social service benefits to friends of terrorism is a minor step,” Fraser said. “It also raises a number of questions.

“Are people to lose rights to any social security merely on the say-so of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation without any rights of appeal?

“That, however, is irrelevant to the much more important problem of returning jihadis. The impact of the Barwick legislation with the extra-territorial extension of the very serious crime of treachery would see anybody who came back from fighting overseas subject to that charge.”

Abbott said under the counter-terrorism package, the government would be introducing biometric screening at Australian airports, which uses facial recognition technology. He blamed the former Labor government for not implementing such technology sooner.

“The problem is that we don’t have biometric screening at the airports and we should. The former government fiffed and faffed around over this,” Abbott said.

Asked by radio host Ray Hadley whether the government could act against people flying terrorist flags, Abbott said: “Frankly, the only flag that should be flying is the Australian national flag. If people want to fly other flags – a corporate flag for instance – fine, but the Australian national flag should always be part of it.”

Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said while it was important for the government to be “on heightened vigilance” due to the conflict in Syria and Iraq, such vigilance needed to be balanced as “it’s also important to recognise that our threat assessment hasn’t changed since the September 11 attacks in New York”.

“We are happy to support greater powers for our national security agencies if they come with stronger safeguards and stronger oversight,” Plibersek said.

Fraser urged western leaders to minimise the possibility of providing material which any clerics can use to “preach terrorism”.

He described the second Iraq war, in which Australia was involved, as providing “enough fodder for the fundamentalists”.

“We wouldn’t be in this position without George Bush junior,” he said. “His father was a very sensible man who understood international affairs. The son was advised by naive neo-cons and fundamentalist Christians.”

He said suggestions that terrorism was only a problem within Islam were very wrong.

“In my knowledge, Islamic leaders in Australia almost universally condemn terrorism. Islamic people have been here for several generations from as early as 1840 and they are very loyal and honourable Australian citizens,” Fraser said.

“Not so long ago Catholics, through the IRA, and Protestants in Northern Ireland were both involved in ghastly acts of terror. In today’s world, there are problems in Myanmar [Burma], which are caused by fundamentalist Buddhists, which many may be surprised to know.”