Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I listened carefully to the member for Isaacs and I must say that I agreed with much of what he said. I also note that the member for Isaacs conducted an extensive review of the deliberations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which he must be getting second hand because, of course, he is not a member of that committee. My recollection—and I will defer to the member for Berowra—was that what we engaged in was thoughtful, comprehensive and bipartisan discussion resulting in a unanimous report.

As a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I rise to speak in strong support of this bill, which is of great importance to Australia. What we discuss now and decide very soon will have flow-on effects well beyond our shores. In the very least, it will demonstrate both tangibly and practically to both friend and foe alike our national resolve to protect what we enjoy and value in Australia. This includes hard-won democratic freedoms, the rule of law and human rights. Ours is a fully functioning and even flourishing multicultural society which presents to the rest of the world as a model of what is both highly desirable and also socially attainable in the early 21st century. This priceless amalgam, itself somewhat rare, can also be too easily taken for granted.

Our consideration of this matter today is also unique in another way. Only occasionally does what we debate in this House mirror and complement that which has seized the world's attention. The last such occasion was perhaps the global financial crisis of 2008-09. We see that in the extent of leader representation at the 24 September meeting of the United Nations Security Council. As President Obama noted, it was only the sixth time in 70 years that the Security Council had met at such a level. And now this foreign fighters bill constitutes an important Australian domestic subset of our nation's support to, and for, the ongoing international global war on terror. As leaders, this challenge is a true test of our collective generational mettle.

It is most important that this parliament, and Australians in general, face the problem presented by brutal terrorism and that we face it squarely, no matter how unpalatable the facts. Only then can we define, as best we might, the actual full nature of the threat and give strong support to an appropriate international response to it. The unpalatable truth is this. The threat which the world now faces from Daesh is clear, present and pressing. I use the term 'Daesh' intentionally to describe the stateless and barbaric terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria. We must act urgently to stop Daesh, including its domestic and regional effects. Our need for constructive action is heightened now because the wider Western world was, frankly, late in identifying the true nature of the threat posed by the emergence of Daesh and its relatively rapid growth.

It is undoubtable that this murderous group is in the top tier of dangerous enemies that Australia has ever faced. Two factors lead me to this grim conclusion. Firstly, unlike other enemies we have confronted in the past, Daesh is not clearly definable in objective or absolute terms. Rather, this group is inchoate, or formless, in nature. This makes combating it very difficult indeed. Rather, ongoing containment, including significant force reduction, is a more practically achievable goal. It is true that Daesh does possess a range of diverse and even sophisticated military hardware and equipment, which a united global military coalition is now striking hard at every opportunity, with literally hundreds of aerial sorties already conducted. But military hardware is the lesser part of the Daesh threat. Its lifeblood is hate-filled ideology, a more powerful force than military formations that can be identified, engaged and destroyed.

Daesh's twisted ideology includes an innate and possibly long-lasting ability to draw disaffected and wayward individuals, both male and female, from around the globe to it and thereafter to potentially unleash these so-called foreign fighters back home, even more damaged, brainwashed and malevolent than when they left. Alternatively, Daesh seeks to inspire and ignite violent uprising by disaffected individuals or groups among the diaspora of its diverse members. Recent arrests in Australia and attacks in Canada, the UK and elsewhere highlight that a single individual can have strategic effect. But Daesh is made still more threatening because it eschews any prospect of negotiation with anyone. Its default option is to kill and destroy. The Prime Minister's description of Daesh as a 'death cult' is most fitting and apt. Such obdurate evil is rare in modern times. Even the Taliban leadership was open, eventually, to negotiation and compromise.

So there we have it. The Daesh dilemma, and the real danger it poses to humanity, is its ability to harvest, enrage and export malevolence and poisonous disaffection and mayhem, without regard for borders or boundaries. Daesh has been described variously as a disease or cancer. Perhaps a more fitting analogy is of a parasite feeding off and sheltering behind an unwilling host, one of the world's great and legitimate religions, which is Islam—overwhelmingly a faith of love not hate, peace not war and enlightenment not terror. Daesh is to Islam as night is to day. What is certain, however, is that this parasite is hell-bent on killing and barbarity, and this is precisely what this bill is designed to help prevent in Australia.

Notwithstanding the coalition's intention, the need for heightened vigilance by all Australians must inevitably increase immediately and be sustained over the longer term. Whether they know it or not, homeland security is now, more than ever, the business of every individual Australian, regardless of where they were born or their individual pathway to citizenship. We are all in this together, and by our collective Australian multicultural unity—one made better, richer and even more resilient by our national diversity—we must, and we will, prevail.

Let me now briefly touch on this bill's key threads. Singly and in unison these measures represent a major step on the road to making all Australians safer. I know that some have expressed the view that key elements of this bill are excessive, but, against the backdrop that I have just presented, the government rightly considers them to be both necessary and essential to protecting our way of life. These are exceptional and urgent circumstances, requiring greater unity of effort and agility in our responses. There are approximately 60 Australians fighting with Daesh on the ground in Syria and Iraq, with 100 or more acting as enablers in Australia, through funding, recruiting or other facilitation. There are those who have fought with Daesh who are now back in Australia, and other regional countries, with new skills and knowledge, and they are at the vanguard of Daesh's efforts to decentralise the mayhem and export their brutal, hate-filled ideology.

I congratulate our Prime Minister for his composed leadership in response to these matters. I congratulate the Attorney-General and the Minister for Foreign Affairs for their efforts. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his bipartisanship. The measures in this bill fill those most pressing gaps in our current legislation, and the key features of the bill include: a series of new offences for 'advocating terrorism' and for entering, or remaining in, a 'declared secure area'; broadening the criteria and streamlining the process for listing of terrorist organisations; extending the circumstances under which a control order may be sought, and sunsetting provisions for preventative detention order and control order regimes; ensuring selected law enforcement agencies have the additional tools that they need to investigate, arrest and prosecute those supporting organisations like Daesh; limiting the means of travel for foreign fighters or support for foreign fighters; and strengthening Australia's overall border protection regime.

There are safeguards in place, and we heard the member for Isaacs talk about some of those—safeguards which were unanimous recommended by the parliament's Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—which in my view, finds an appropriate balance between civil liberties and giving our security agencies the means they need to keep us safe.

It was a 200-page report, and had 37 carefully-considered recommendations. I thank our chair, the member for Wannon, and all 11 members of our committee for their thoughtful and bipartisan deliberations. It is important to note that law-abiding Australian citizens who enjoy the relative tolerance and freedoms of our unique civil society need not fear any of these changes, either individually or collectively.

Through this bill, the government intends to achieve or support the following six broad effects: firstly, to support and protect our sovereign national borders; secondly, to support our security agencies, including not least our Commonwealth and state police forces; thirdly, to identify at the very earliest opportunity possible domestic terrorist threats to Australia, including both individuals and terror groups or cells—and as we have seen in recent weeks and months those lone wolf attacks—those single attacks—are becoming very hard to pick up; fourthly, to prevent, to detain or to at least constrain the movement of would-be foreign fighters both from or to Australia; fifthly, to reinforce the need for heightened national vigilance by all Australians to the threat posed by relatively few destructive elements in our otherwise peace-loving communities; and, lastly, to support our nation's counter-terrorist agencies at the front line as they work in close collaboration with allies and partners. The intent of all this is to restore civil normalcy at home and abroad or, in the very least, to contain the ongoing threat posed by the Daesh menace.

Notwithstanding the grim background of this bill, including the barbarity which has been repeatedly demonstrated by Daesh and its craven acolytes globally, I will now conclude on a more positive note. Australia and the wider world are now responding practically to the urgent need to degrade the Daesh forces wherever they are—whenever they are foolish enough to concentrate in the field. This kinetic engagement is and will remain the province of military attack aircraft, of unmanned aerial vehicles and of international special forces for some time. This direct action is now being further complemented as quickly as legislatively possible by policy designed expressly to safeguard homeland Australia. Most encouragingly, all Australians—Christian and Muslim alike—are almost universally united in their complete abhorrence of Daesh and its perverted creed of wanton terror and human rights suppression.

But already in Australia we are seeing welcome signs of heightened communal vigilance and social cohesion. The fact that this is happening across different ethnic and religious communities is the strongest possible repudiation of everything for which Daesh stands. It represents a ray of hope in an otherwise grim story.

On this small positive note, I ask this House to endorse the government's domestic counter-terror initiatives with conviction and to give them widespread bipartisan support. I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

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