Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start first with a preamble and then I will make it clear when my questions begin. My questions will exclusively relate to national security and counterterrorism. I will not be so presumptuous as to start lecturing the minister on terrorism 101 as he lectured our shadow minister for finance. I would assume that the minister knows his portfolio, though I am increasingly becoming aware that that is not the case.

The government has repeatedly said that national security and countering violent extremism is of the highest priority. Indeed, it is something that we have bipartisan agreement on. The minister in his earlier preamble made reference to $45 million in funding for countering violent extremism. Inherent in national security and considering national security as a high priority are countering violent extremism, CVE, and prevention of violent extremism, PVE. They are very important components of that, particularly when it comes to building community capability and the delivery of services and programs to support prevention and early intervention within the scope of countering violent extremism.

I want to move on to the Living Safe Together Grants Program, which was created by this government to build or enhance the capacity and skills of community organisations in countering violent extremism. I want to move on to the delivery of services through the provision of a service directory for families and peers who need help. These are people who in my previous line of work came to me seeking assistance for a person within their family or a friend who they believed was in the early stages of radicalisation. They were seeking assistance with early interventions, not so much full deradicalisation as removing the individual from radicalising influences, removing the radicalising opportunities from them and removing them from radicalising environments. That could be online but could be within the individual's social circle as well. The Living Safe Together Grants Program was created to build or enhance community capacity to be able to do that on the premise that there would then be a service directory for people in that situation who could then access those services in order to assist them and to assist the individual in question at the critical point when early intervention is capable of removing or diverting a young person away from the path of radicalisation.

The thing is, though, that none of those grants were awarded for the actual delivery of services. I will make that point again: none were for the actual delivery of services. Of the 41 organisations that were awarded grants through the Living Safe Together program, only 13 agreed to participate in the services directory—that is, 13 out of 41. And, as was made clear in estimates last week, the funding for this grants program was a one-off and it no longer exists. It was around $1.8 million worth of funding to community based organisations to develop their capacity to deliver services for early intervention in countering violent extremism on the understanding that they would then deliver those services by signing up to a services directory. Clearly, there is a breakdown between the rhetoric of this government in making countering violent extremism a priority and its actions. The fact is that the government is neither interested in nor capable of dealing with the practicalities of countering violent extremism in Australia. It is much more engrossed in looking tough for the nightly news.

So, Minister, here are my questions: What are the community-run services that are currently available to families or friends of someone who is at risk of being radicalised and requires early intervention? What funding is being provided to community based organisations and civil society to actually deliver CVE and PVE services in the community? The LST, the Living Safe Together grants program, was designed to build capacity to counter violent extremism. The grant is no longer in existence. (Time expired)

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