Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think Australians from Western Australia through to Queensland would hope that there would be some light shone on these reforms and some informed debate. Alas, all we have here is a series of coalition speakers clearly articulating the importance of these changes in further strengthening the ability of our security agencies to respond—and one fairly vocal bloke from the other side who is only here because it is his shift to sit near the dispatch box on the Labor Party side. That is unfortunate because what we really need in here is a clear dissection and elaboration of our reforms. Any reasonable criticism is warmly welcomed. But all we have had is a hysterical and somewhat weird intervention from the Greens. Their comments about these recommendations being the recommendations of a club are plainly preposterous. It really shows how far the Greens as a movement have moved away from the desires of young Australians to see that we remain a free but ultimately law-abiding democracy into the future. It is disappointing that the Greens are not at the table and supporting what are really common-sense reforms. This exposes within the Greens movement a fundamental lack of understanding of exactly how enforcement operates—and that is a challenge for them.

I want to make four points in this speech today. The first one is about the changing environment. Senior security officials have pointed out to us the change that has occurred even in the last couple of years, particularly since the Boston Marathon bombing. There has been a shift from highly planned, elaborate and long time frame based terrorism incidents to spontaneous and almost unpredictable ones. This sets the most painfully difficult and challenging question for our security services. They have to be prepared for one individual, inspired by something they have read online, to grab a knife and in the name of some crazy, despotic movement carry out a crime in this beautiful and peaceful country. That is a challenge that we face as a nation and it is the challenge we are putting to the security forces when we say, 'Protect us from this kind of conduct.' That conduct is obviously performed to create fear and to take away the freedoms that we enjoy. We as an advanced economy are in a constant battle against those who intend to undermine us.

The second point, as British Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out in his recent address to this chamber, is that the internet—and I see that the parliamentary secretary is in the chamber—in many ways remains an ungoverned space. David Cameron put a challenge to us as a developed economy and a member of Five Eyes about the degree to which we can continue to brook such an ungoverned space. We obviously have a challenge in social services to engage every young Australian and give them opportunity. But let us accept that as a multicultural economy and as an immigration based economy, we have large numbers of young people often coming here definitely with hope but not always with the trust they will have opportunity to enjoy what other Australians enjoy. Talking to senior security officials, they tell me that our greatest challenge is actually surprisingly homogenous. They are young people. They are of certain backgrounds. They are easily influenced. But the one thing that draws almost 90 to 95 per cent of them together as a common denominator is their lack of opportunity and their lack of connectedness to the real economy.

It is at this level that we can stop just talking about whoever one case is who perpetrates violence in our community and start thinking of our broader challenge—that we leave 130,000 people in this country every year graduating from school but not even skilled enough to get the most basic of entry-level, minimum wage jobs. As long as you have those sorts of numbers entering the welfare system every year, and around 140,000 people transitioning from income replacement as an under 24-year-old to Newstart, then we have, in many cases, young members of minorities who can hide in areas of zero opportunity surrounded by an Australia that can offer so much. We cannot guarantee that that opportunity is homogenously spread amongst every family group and amongst young males who are ultimately drawn to more romantic and exciting pursuits through online connection with vigilante and terrorist groups overseas.

That will be an unending challenge, and the idea that we can intensively case-manage every family and that we can monitor what every family unit does is completely beyond the means and the capabilities of our normal social service organisations. So we are now trust in the intelligence services to be able to first pick up those signs of risk, those signs of dangerous behaviour and those signs that they are engaging in internet chat groups, peer-to-peer groups and engaging illegal and terrorist groups. It is a challenge of enormous complexity but one which, so far, we have done well on.

It really impressed me that a number of months ago those services were able to detail to me that they had identified up to 60 people overseas who had left effectively to be part of military tourism, with no other reason to travel except the thrill and the excitement of being part of a terrorist organisation fighting in a war in a foreign land. This is of enormous concern and many have mentioned it before.

Secondly, we identified, of even greater concern, up to a hundred Australians right here at home facilitating those people. For the first time these reforms go beyond a strictly defined terrorist act to also identify those who are supporting those who are training with extremist groups. This is a very big and important part of the reforms both in the two tranches that have already passed through this parliament and in the changes that we debate tonight.

Effectively, what we are doing here is enhancing those control order regimes to enable the AFP to seek control orders in relation to an even broader range of individuals who are of a security concern and to streamline that application process. Again, we are in here having a debate about elements of this legislation with not an echo or a peep from the opposition about the merits or otherwise of this legislation. Second, we are facilitating ASIS to support and cooperate with the ADF on military operations. That has been very clearly defined in the legislation—the degree to which that information is vital to the ADF in performing their role but in no way allowing them to encroach upon what are their terms of engagement. Lastly, we are enhancing the arrangements for the provision of an emergency ministerial authorisation—I think this has been adequately detailed by the previous speaker. This is particularly around enabling them to activate a control order in relation to those who are enabling or those who are specifically recruiting for those causes.

These are enormously divisive issues. I am not going to beat around the bush: what has occurred over the last few months is at the heart of even greater tensions between mainstream Australians and some of our ethnic minorities. I am also prepared to say that it lies at the heart of the recent debate brought to this place about the wearing of a burqa in public and—heaving forbid—trying to ban the wearing of a burqa for people who visit this great building. These were completely unnecessary distractions that a mature country should have been able to see right through and not in any way entertain what I think was a frivolous and puerile debate. But we got caught up in it, and I was compelled to write a piece in The Daily Telegraph, saying we have much greater things to worry about than the way a woman chooses to dress and certainly what she chooses to wear when she visits this building.

Above what we wear is what is inside. I completely respect the pre-eminence of a security official to clear everyone who enters this building, as they should every private building according to the security requirements. Anyone who enters any private building can be checked by the relevant security staff who are employed to do that very job. But once you are cleared, by definition, you should be able to go on your way and wear precisely what you chose to wear that day. At any time security officials can elect to again screen you. I have no problem with that. This legislation allows the experts to make those calls. It should not be up to us to make calls about how an individual chooses to dress.

Many of these debates were activated, even animated, by the fear in the mainstream Australian population of fomentation within large minorities in this country, in particular, that young people were being drawn to and ultimately engaged in wars for which Australia should be playing little part and certainly not engaging with a group like IS. Well, it has happened and people have left the country already, and still there are people attempting to leave. That is a measure of the challenge that we face in bringing this to a halt.

In the last few months, the message is absolutely clear, thanks to the previous two tranches and this legislation tonight. You cannot be confused and you cannot be mistaken: if you leave our shores and engage with this group, you are breaking the law and you will face enormous consequences. You will face potential prosecution. There is no reversal of the onus of proof. But if you have been to these regions and you cannot provide adequate reasons to explain why, then you are at risk of prosecution, and I think every Australian would say that is utterly reasonable. If you are going to travel to these particular regions, then you need to be able to give some reasonable explanation for why you are there, and I think Australians would expect that.

The final point that I make is one of youth engagement. In many cases, as a nation of multiple religions proud of our cultural diversity, there will be very little change that we can bring about with religious internecine and sectoral differences from outside. Ultimately, if we are going to fix the greater problem that is racking most of western Asia, these changes must come from within. These changes must come from those community groups themselves. It is not enough for those of us outside of those groups to become increasingly more hysterical or more shrill about it. We cannot change many of these elements in this debate from the outside. We have law enforcement that will identify those that breach our social expectations and our social norms of what is reasonable, peace-loving behaviour, and those laws are there.

But, ultimately, we need to go one step further. We need to support freedom-loving, peace-loving members of those ethnic minority groups to look within themselves and be the early warning system to identify youths going off the tracks. It does not matter what they are facing, whether those challenges be drugs, law-breaking, violence or, as in this case, engaging with terrorist groups, we most rely on those closest to those individuals. We cannot turn those people against us. If those people are communicating with us and are free to report and are confident that they can do so, we have a chance of helping these young people. At the moment, what we have seen are significant changes that the coalition has delivered to allow ASIS, our information services and security services, to do their job better. I am very proud to be part of a government that have an ear listening to those agencies and that are utterly committed to delivering to them the reforms and the legislation that will enable them to do their job into the future as well as they possibly can.

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