Attorney general strikes calming note on national security, telling conference: ‘One of Australia’s greatest strengths is its tolerance and its diversity’

The attorney general, George Brandis, has warned that the “great Australian achievement” of tolerance is at risk of being lost in the debate about terrorism.

While Tony Abbott has previously called on Muslim leaders to more frequently describe Islam as a religion of peace “and mean it”, Brandis sought to promote community harmony in a nuanced speech about the national security situation on Thursday.

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The attorney general said it was critical that every Australian felt proud of the country’s cultural diversity. He declared that “radical, or unpopular, thinking has often transformed our country’s political and social landscape for the better” but added that supporting violence to achieve political change was never acceptable.

Over the past year, the Coalition government has increased the powers and funding of the nation’s police, intelligence and security agencies and raised the terrorism alert level in response to the threat from Islamic State, which Abbott has described as a “wretched death cult” and more shameless than the Nazis.

In a speech in Canberra, Brandis said only “the most wilfully ignorant” could deny the dangers posed by the “evil death cult that has declared war on the world”. Australia, he said, should be prepared for the risk of “lone wolf” attacks.

But Brandis also emphasised the importance of cultural diversity. “Let me close these remarks by saying a few words about a virtue that is always at risk of being lost in the discussion of this topic – that is the virtue of tolerance – for it must be said that one of Australia’s greatest strengths is its tolerance and its diversity,” Brandis said at a conference focused on countering improvised explosive devices.

“This is the great Australian success story, the great Australian achievement, shared with many other lands I know, and it must be preserved and protected as we face the terrorist threat. More should be done to better define what separates us from those who would seek to do our societies harm. Where we have created a liberal democracy, our foes would prefer to drag humanity back into a new dark age.

“Where our society values peace, tolerance and the liberal democratic ideals of the enlightenment, our opponents would prefer ignorance, squalor, enforced by depraved violence and looking forward only to the apocalypse.”

Strength and tenacity in upholding the freedoms upon which Australian society was based, Brandis argued, were “in a sense the ultimate act of defiance against those who would seek to do us harm”.

“So it is critical that every Australian feels proud of our cultural diversity and of the spectacular privilege our citizenship affords us. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech and religious freedom are cherished rights and radical, or unpopular, thinking has often transformed our country’s political and social landscape for the better,” he said.

“Indeed, espousing a belief in freedom of thought would be meaningless if it did not extend to those ideas we might find offensive or disagreeable, but advocating extremism, or supporting violence to achieve political change, is not an expression of freedom of belief, it is the articulation and the incitement to violence and that can never be accepted.”

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Brandis sought to draw a line between freedom of speech and advocating violence, about 18 months after he attracted criticism for declaring that people had the right to be bigots in debate over the government’s now-shelved changes to the Racial Discrimination Act.

Abbott made the “leadership call” to dump those proposed changes in August 2014 in the interests of national unity before the government pressed ahead with a series of bills to toughen counter-terrorism laws and require telecommunications companies to store their customers’ metadata.

The attorney general acknowledged the tension in his dual responsibilities of defending liberty and protecting safety – a point that was mentioned in a review of counter-terrorism machinery earlier this year.

“As the attorney general in the Australian system, it is my job to deal with these difficult issues from two perspectives: as first law officer, to be jealous to protect the rule of law and defend our traditional freedoms; to approach these challenges with a presumption against any further incursions upon traditional rights and liberties,” he said.

“But as the minister responsible for national security, I have the obligation to protect public safety at a time when the threat of terrorist attack has never been greater.”

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On Friday the joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security is due to release its report on the government’s proposed bill to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if they are involved in terrorism. The report has already been delayed three times after the committee heard evidence from constitutional lawyers that the legislation could be vulnerable to a high court challenge and was too broadly drafted.

The government wants parliament to debate the legislation next week. Abbott has also indicated the government will make a decision next week on a proposal to join air strikes against Isis in Syria, expanding Australia’s existing activities in Iraq.

The prime minister received criticism from the Jewish community on Thursday for the way he had compared Isis to the Nazis. “I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it,” Abbott told 2GB. “These people [Isis] boast about their evil.”

Robert Goot, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said it was “injudicious and unfortunate” to suggest Isis was in some respects worse than the Nazis.

Abbott later defended his comments, saying he was “not going to get in to the business of trying to rank evil ... but I do make this point, that unlike previous evil-doers, whether we’re talking about Stalin or Hitler or whoever that tried to cover up their evil, this wretched death cult boasts about it”.

Ministers have previously debated the appropriate language to use to describe Isis, which some refer to by the pejorative term Daesh.

In July, the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said it was important not to overestimate the threat the group posed, nor to “say or do things which can be seen to add credibility to those delusions”.

“Daesh is not Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan or Stalin’s Russia,” Turnbull said in a speech to the Sydney Institute.