Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Scarr for the question and I acknowledge his keen interest in keeping Australians safe and in national security. Without a doubt, a fundamental responsibility of the Morrison government is to keep Australians safe and to protect our way of life, our freedoms and our values. We may be in the middle of a global pandemic, but the threat of terrorism, as we know, remains in Australia, as it does in other places around the world. Since the national terrorism threat was raised to 'probable' in September 2014, there have been nine attacks and 21 major disruption operations in response to imminent attacks that were being planned on Australians. There have been 138 people charged as a result of 66 counterterrorism operations since 2014, and there are currently 34 people before the courts for terrorism related offences. To respond to these threats, the Morrison government has now passed 22 tranches of national security legislation. As I said, a fundamental responsibility of the Morrison government is to keep Australians safe. This legislation is helping provide security agencies with the tools and the legal framework necessary to protect Australia but also to combat new attempts and methods of violent extremism. We've legislated to better protect Australians in a number of ways, including by creating a presumption against bail and parole for persons who have demonstrated support for, or links to, terrorist activity, but to also enable the continued detention of high-risk terrorists. We take our responsibility to the Australian people seriously.