Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I would have thought that all members of this place would be concerned about appropriate actions to deal with the threat of terrorism at home and abroad, but it seems that those opposite find this in part a laughing matter; the government does not. On too many occasions my own predecessors in this position have stood in the parliament to mourn the deaths of Australians who have perished as victims of terrorism. As a nation we mourned the murder of 88 innocent Australians in the Bali bombing in 2002. We mourned also those who died in subsequent attacks in New York, in Riyadh, in Jakarta, in London and in Mumbai. These attacks have taken away the lives of far too many innocent Australians and cut down far too many Australians in their prime. Each of these individual stories is a human tragedy for their families and for those who have survived them. Our thoughts are again with them today.

The threat of terrorism has not gone away. The threat comes in the main from adherence to the distorted and militant interpretation of Islam that is espoused by groups such as al-Qaeda. Prior to the rise of jihadist terrorism, Australia was not a specific target of terrorist organisations. Now Australia is such a target. That is why, as part of our national security reform agenda, we have placed particular priority on combating terrorism. In a key milestone in that effort today the government is releasing the counterterrorism white paper, Securing Australia: protecting our community. It is the first white paper on counterterrorism to integrate the domestic and the foreign elements of the terrorist threat and the government’s response. Increasingly, this becomes a seamless threat.

The white paper outlines two key shifts in the terrorist threat to Australia. Firstly, there has been some counterterrorism success in South and South-East Asia, but these have been offset by new areas of concern, such as Somalia and Yemen, where a new generation of terrorists inspired by the message of al-Qaeda are taking root. Secondly—and I would have thought this is of particular significance to this House and the country—Australia now faces an increased terrorist threat from people born or raised in Australia who take inspiration from international Jihadist narratives. The bombings in London in July 2005 brought that starkly home to us. Home-grown terrorism is now a reality in many Western democracies. I note reports in the last two days. The United States Secretary of Homeland Security has commented on the rise of home-grown terrorist threats in the United States of America. It is an increasing feature of the threat landscape in Australia, and it is something of which the nation must take note.

The government is committed to concrete action to combat terrorism. No government can guarantee that Australia will be free from the threat of terrorism, but the government can guarantee that we will take all necessary and practical measures to combat the threat of terrorism. I am concerned that those opposite continue to find action against terrorism a laughing matter. There are four key elements to our strategy encapsulated in the words ‘analysis’, ‘protection’, ‘response’ and ‘resilience’.

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