Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak to this important and worthy resolution raised by the member for Cowan. As far back as October last year, I raised security concerns that Australian citizens were fighting overseas in radical groups and could pose a threat to national security on their return. My public analysis was prompted by a report in the French newspaper Le Monde which said there were hundreds of Australians fighting in Syria with what was then considered the most extreme Sunni al-Qaeda-linked group, al-Nusra, or with the Shiite Hezbollah. Le Monde reported that Australians were being increasingly involved in fighting with terrorist groups abroad, so their return is of great concern to us.

The French know exactly how dangerous these radicalised, trained fighters from Syria can be. French-Syrian dual national, Mehdi Nemmouche, murdered three people in the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels just a few weeks ago when he opened fire with a Kalashnikov. He was only arrested by chance and good police work hours later in Marseille when a random check found he was carrying the murder weapon. Ominously, Nemmouche had also been training in our region of the world. A map published in Time magazine shows that immediately after fighting with ISIS he travelled to Turkey and then to Malaysia, Bangkok and Singapore.

In an ABC report in March, following the death of a former Australian soldier who was fighting—as identified by the member for Cowan—with the extremist Sunni group, ISIS, in Saraqeb just south of Aleppo, there was a report of a rising number of Australians being killed in the Syrian conflict—many of them giving support to these organisations that we designate by a nonpartisan decision here in this parliament as terrorist organisations, as do many of our allies. We do not want a Brussels to occur here, which is why the government should face this rising threat by carefully keeping track of these activities, including, in my view, introducing legislation framed along the lines of the excellent nonpartisan report of the member for Holt, my colleague here, who was asked to conduct a public inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. He did a very fine report and there are many nonpartisan recommendations in it which could easily be put into legislation that would make Australians safer. I think the government is contemplating it—and they should.

Unfortunately, this government has been influenced by the unilateral libertarians at the Institute of Public Affairs who have ridiculed the idea that the main game is that the security services need some adjustments under law, under protection of warrant and under protection of the normal kinds of liberties ensured to all Australian citizens, that have come about with changes in technology. In my view, this is the main game. We have kept Australia safe from these terrorist activities for the period since 9/11, since the remarkable upsurge in jihadist activity around the world. And we want it to stay that way. I think the excellent report from the member for Holt is the way to go.

Claims by the Institute of Public Affairs, particularly their luminary, Mr Berg, on The Drumthat we—ha, ha, ha—should not be concerned about things like pressure-cooker bombs, invented by these crazy security agencies to scare Australians and scare people in the Western world, looked very foolish a few months later when at the Boston Marathon that was the very thing that the jihadists used. And they picked this up—and this is public record information, so I am not revealing anything—from the Al Qaeda magazine, Inspire, which you can get online.

And so I think the suggestion by the member for Cowan is something that should be considered. Of course, dual nationals raise different issues to those people who are Australian citizens. The real problem for Australia is that we have Australian citizens who have no other nationality and who are going over and participating in these causes. A program of deradicalisation and monitoring of these people, particularly in places where they are active in Australia, needs to be considered. I am not against taking strong measures against dual nationals but it is the original citizens who are the real problem. (Time expired)

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