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

Mr President, I also offer you my congratulations on your election to your new role. I also acknowledge Senator Paterson's role as the head of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. In answering this question, I also acknowledge the recent death of the UK Conservative MP Sir David Amess in a terrorist attack.

Without a doubt, a fundamental responsibility of the coalition government is to keep Australia and Australians safe, to protect our way of life, our freedoms and our values. Our government will continue to combat and keep Australians safe from terrorism and from violent extremism, regardless of the ideology behind it. We may be in the middle, as we know, of a global pandemic, but the threat of terrorism remains in Australia, as it does 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 143 people now charged as a result of 70 counterterrorism operations since 2014, and there are currently 29 people before the courts for terrorism related offences.

To respond to these threats, the government has now passed 25 tranches of national security legislation. As I said, a fundamental responsibility of the coalition government is to keep Australia and Australians safe. The legislation that we have passed is helping provide security agencies with the tools and the legal framework that is necessary to protect Australia but also to combat new attempts and methods of violent extremism.