George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Fawcett. I acknowledge your deep and longstanding interest in this area. I can inform you that today the government has secured the passage of yet another significant piece of national security legislation, as Senator Wong herself remarked in her speech on the second reading of the Criminal Code Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill—the sixth major instalment of national security legislation since September 2014. The government has delivered the most significant program of reform of our national security in the past two years or so, since the passage of the Intelligence Services Act way back in 2001. Those reforms have been in response to the unprecedented shift in our national terrorism threat environment following ISIL's declaration of a caliphate on 29 June 2014.

Honourable senators will recall that on 12 September 2014 the national terrorism level was elevated on the advice of our national security agencies, and the threat level has remained since that time at the equivalent of probable, which means that a terrorism event in Australia continues to be assessed as likely. Since the threat level was raised Australia has experienced four terror related attacks, three of them lethal and one involving serious injury to an innocent man. However, importantly, during the same period our agencies and the police have disrupted 11 imminent terrorist attacks on Australian soil against innocent Australians. Those disruptions are testament to the professionalism and skill of the law enforcement and policing agencies and the fact that this government gave them the powers they needed to keep our community safe.