Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to talk this afternoon on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014. I do not have the advantage of having the sunlight shining on me, as Senator Leyonhjelm did throughout his speech, which was indeed pleasant to look at and certainly was a perfect photo opportunity. Senator Leyonhjelm, I will be at some variance with your views in my contribution today, perhaps particularly on the acts of terrorism on dictatorial people in other countries. We share a similar view on many things, as you well know, but today I think we might diverge.

The first responsibility of government is to the security of its citizens. To deliver on this, the Commonwealth relies on a team of thousands: the military, the state and federal police, and the government agencies and organisations whose people we never see—those amongst us who run towards the bomb blast when everybody else is running away. We owe Australians all reasonable protections, and we owe these people all reasonable tools to keep the odds in our favour.

The national security space requires flexibility and adaptability from all those involved, including from legislators. This bill in effect represents the law adapting in response to the ways in which our enemies have adapted in their fight against us. Outlawing the advocacy of terrorism at home is a sensible and necessary measure in a battle where the key recruiting mechanism has been the rhetorical flourishes of charismatic jihad salesmen. We are banning the jihad salesmen.

Restricting travel to declared regions is both an investment in our own security and an act of a responsible global citizen. It is an investment in our security because those who travel to fight may bring their war home with them and it is an act of a responsible neighbour because we would otherwise be exporting our national security liabilities to other countries. Removing the passports of those with ill will may be enough to stop them from reaching their intended battlefields, but is it enough to ensure they do not take up the battle here instead?

The cancellation of welfare payments for individuals of security concern hardly needs a supporting argument. It will remove the possibility of taxpayers' money being used to fund the very terrorism the same taxpayers' money is being used to combat. That is certainly a sound principle but it is also of great practical importance, because terrorism on the scale of that committed by Islamic State is not cheap. They need money; they need lots of it; and that money has to come from somewhere. Let it not come from here.

The government has cancelled a number of passports to date in order to halt those aspiring to join the terrorism tourism trail. That is the right course of action for Australia's security interests and it is the action of a responsible global citizen. But what happens next? What about the individual who is committed to terror and who is stopped from reaching the battlefield by effective border security but whose aspiration to fight may be far from extinguished? At the very least this leaves our security people with a considerable burden, but a far worse outcome would be one akin to what happened in Ottawa last week. It is reported Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's passport application was declined by Canadian police, who believed he intended to travel abroad to fight, before he attacked the National War Memorial and the parliament of Canada instead. The need for the provisions within this bill is evident.

It is also evident that we should start debating whether we must be much more prepared to imprison those amongst us who want to fight our armed forces overseas, those amongst us with the self-declared intention of overthrowing government and imposing an Islamic caliphate, but who simply cannot reach the battlefield to participate in that fight? What if they seek to conduct the fight here? The evidentiary burden for a passport cancellation is appropriately different to the threshold for arrest and imprisonment, but the risk of jihadists participating in the fight at home is very real. So I suggest that, in addition to the very appropriate provisions of this bill, the time has come for us to debate the appropriateness of being much more inclined to jail the enemy amongst us. I know that this bill has been through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security that Senator Fawcett chairs and that he made a contribution earlier. This process has been scrutinised by both sides of government and the minority parties in this house. I commend the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014 to the house on those grounds.

(Quorum formed)