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

This morning in the House of Representatives the Prime Minister delivered the government's national security statement for 2016. I table a copy of the Prime Minister's statement and I wish to make some remarks in relation to it and highlight certain of the matters which the Prime Minister averted to in the national security statement.

Since this parliament last met on 5 May, the world has witnessed a seemingly constant barrage of terror attacks: 84 people were killed and 201 injured in Nice; 49 people were killed in Orlando; in a church in Normandy a priest was slain while performing mass; 47 were killed at Ankara airport; while 23 died in Dakar. The list goes on.

In the last year alone, there have been around 40 Islamist terrorist attacks against the West or Western interests. These attacks have resulted in over 700 deaths. Many of those are assessed to have been directed or inspired by Daesh. Daesh's attacks against civilians continues across the Middle East and Africa, resulting in the deaths of thousands, mainly Muslims, in those parts of the world. In July we saw the single deadliest attack conducted by Daesh in Afghanistan with around 80 killed and 230 injured by suicide bombers in Kabul. We in Australia cannot pretend that this is a problem of faraway lands; it is a scourge that threatens the entire world, and it is a scourge which we have felt here in our own homeland.

It is now two years since the national terror threat level was elevated to 'likely', a level now known as 'probable'. That increased threat was largely a consequence of the traction that Daesh was getting from a growing number of Australians. Since that time there have been three terrorist attacks carried out in Australia, and in each of those cases—at Endeavour Hills police station in Victoria, in Martin Place and at Parramatta police station—the attacker claimed allegiance to, or was inspired by, Daesh. In those two years our law enforcement and security agencies have successfully disrupted a further 10 terrorist attacks, many of them hours away from being undertaken, and nine of them featuring individuals with some form of allegiance to Daesh.

In this period, 47 people have been charged as a result of 18 counterterrorism operations around Australia. To put that into context, that is over half of all terrorism-related charges since 2001. This government—with the bipartisan support, I am pleased to say, of the opposition—is determined to do whatever is necessary to protect Australians at home and abroad, while at the same time devising laws which impinge as little as possible upon our traditional rights, freedoms and liberties.

Our effort against Daesh is multilayered. It involves, as you know, Madam Acting Deputy President Reynolds, support for military action in the Middle East; and that military action has seen success. I can tell the Senate that, thanks to the efforts of the Iraqi armed forces and their coalition partners—led by the United States of America and strongly supported by Australia—Daesh has now lost close to half of the territory it held in Iraq and up to 20 per cent of the territory it held in Syria. Our best estimates are that its number of fighters has been cut by about one-third. That is no small achievement, and Australia's military contribution in the air and on the ground has been a significant factor.

Meanwhile, we know that the terrorist group's monthly income has fallen by an estimated 30 per cent since the middle of last year. In June, Daesh suffered its highest net territorial losses in over a year, including key ground near the Turkish border and the last city it controlled in Iraq's Anbar Province, Fallujah. Iraqi forces raised the Iraqi flag over Fallujah on 17 June and Iraqi military leaders announced the city's full liberation on 26 June. That progress has been critically important, but it must continue. We must go on. We have not yet had the victory which we seek.

Once the so-called caliphate is destroyed, it is necessary to undertake the equally challenging task of winning the peace; of establishing a secure and lasting peace in areas of the Middle East which have been under Daesh tyranny. We cannot take that for granted. The United States, Australia and our allies are a formidable war fighting machine, but we know from the past that we have had mixed success in re-establishing political order. That is why the Prime Minister and the government have been so resolute that the right soldiers on the right ground are critical to giving the Middle East the stability it needs and the best opportunity for peace to succeed. It is not simply the victory, but the manner of the victory, that is crucial. Daesh needs to be defeated by Iraqis and by Syrians. Our air support, our trainers and our special forces are of vital importance, but it is essential that Syrians and Iraqis take the lead, win the victory and then keep the peace.

I return to the question of our domestic initiatives. The Australian government has redoubled our efforts to build links at home with Muslim communities because we know that it is because of the links we have with and through the cooperation of those communities that we are able to obtain the intelligence we need in order to identify individuals who are at risk—to intervene and to save at-risk people from the hands of the wicked individuals who would recruit them to a path of destruction.

As the Prime Minister has said many times, strong borders provide an important foundation for public trust in our efforts. They are a precondition of a successful multicultural society. Community trust is becoming ever more important as encryption technology enables terrorists and sympathisers to go dark with their electronic networks, and so community cooperation becomes ever more important.

We should not be so delicate as to say that Daesh and Islamist terrorism have nothing to do with Islam. There is nothing controversial about this. It is a self-evident fact that underpins much of our national security efforts at home and abroad. We will not hesitate to label Islamist extremism when we see it. At the same time, there is nothing to be gained by rashly affixing labels and pre-empting the findings of complex investigations. We will work hard to preserve the mutual respect that makes us one of the most liberal and diverse multicultural countries in the world. We must not link all Muslims with the crimes of a terrorist minority. That is precisely what the extremists want us to do. The government is committed to continuing to work closely with Australia's Muslim communities—as with all communities—to identify, isolate and defeat the Islamist extremists who prey upon them. The government has also taken measures, and will continue to take measures, to strengthen our laws to give those who protect us—the police and the national security agencies—the powers they need while always tailoring those laws in a manner to be consistent with our great liberal democratic traditions.

The government has initiated two new important measures to further strengthen our counterterrorism laws and meet the challenges of the evolving threat environment. First, we are developing a post-sentence preventative detention system to enable a continuing period of detention for high-risk terrorist offenders. It will be a court supervised process similar to the arrangements that apply in a number of jurisdictions for sex offenders and for extremely violent individuals. Some three weeks ago, I met with the state and territory attorneys-general. All have given their in-principle support to the development of this legislation, and I thank them for their constructive engagement. I will be introducing this legislation in the next sitting week.

Second, the government has accepted all of the recommendations of the review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security into the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill, which I introduced into this chamber last November. Among other things, the bill will strengthen our control order regime and address the regrettable trend of increasingly younger Australians being susceptible to the lies and propaganda of Daesh and its ideology.

Finally, as Senator Payne outlined in answer to a question in question time today, we will amend the Commonwealth Criminal Code to ensure that the law in relation to the targeting of non-state terrorist actors is made consistent with the law in relation to the targeting of individuals engaged in conventional warfare between states.

I said at the outset that this has been a bipartisan endeavour. The legislation that has been introduced by the government in the last two years has in each instance been taken to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. That committee has acted in a bipartisan manner to improve the legislation. This has been, as I said in one of the parliamentary debates, an example of the parliament doing its work at its best, to examine legislation carefully developed by government, further to fine-tune it in order to ensure that the legislation we ultimately pass through this chamber is the best possible legislation we can have, with the powers our agencies need and the laws that the courts need to have available to them, but protective and respectful, nevertheless, of our liberal democratic traditions. On all of those fronts—on the intelligence front, on the law reform front, on the military front, on the diplomatic front and on the front of community engagement—this government will continue to work to keep our community safe and to fulfil the high responsibility of any government to keep our nation secure. I thank the Senate.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate takes note of the statement.

I thank the Leader of the Government in the Senate for his remarks and associate the opposition with them. The opposition fully shares the government's concerns regarding the threat posed by Daesh to Australia and to Australians. The cooperative bipartisan approach that Labor took to questions of national security in the 44th Parliament will continue in the 45th.

Labor has fully supported the role played by the ADF over the past two years in helping to turn back the Daesh onslaught across Iraq and Syria. But, as many have noted, victory on the battlefield by no means signals the end of the fight. As Daesh forces have been rolled back from the cities and towns, they have increasingly shifted their tactics to continue their fight by other means. As tactics of the terrorists evolve so too must our tactics evolve to continue the fight against them. In this light, the CDF briefed the Leader of the Opposition earlier today on the need to update Australian domestic law to be consistent with international law as to the rules of engagement for our forces. As the Attorney has summarised, domestic law has a narrower definition which has not been updated to respond to such situations, particularly in relation to non-state actors, such as Daesh, which are committed to pursuing warlike terrorist activities. The CDF has highlighted that, whilst under international law forces can strike some support organisations, Australian domestic law potentially leaves members of the ADF open to prosecution as it is an offence for someone to cause the death of one or more persons if those victims are not 'taking an active part in the hostilities'. I note that the CDF has said that rules of engagement designed to minimise the risk of civilian deaths will not be changed.

Labor commends the government for bringing this matter before parliament today. We do believe it is vital that members and senators continue to be able to discuss such matters. In the interests of transparency, it is important to keep the Australian people, whom we represent, fully informed of these vital matters of national security. As has been alluded to, in the last parliament Labor supported—and, indeed, improved and amended—some four rounds of national security legislation, and members from both parties of the committee to which the Leader of the Government in the Senate refers, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, worked together to deliver more than 100 amendments to the original legislation. We would anticipate that any future legislation be also referred to the PJCIS for inquiry and report before any vote on the legislation takes place. The opposition also looks forward to being further briefed by the government on the details of the proposed arrangements.

The loss of many innocent lives has become a horribly familiar story in too many places—from Paris to Nice, to Orlando, to Istanbul and endless cities and towns across Iraq and Afghanistan. The Prime Minister earlier today, in another place, warned that:

It is quite possible that the next mass casualty attack on Australian victims will be somewhere in Southeast Asia, where Daesh propaganda has galvanised existing networks of extremists and attracted new recruits.

I know I speak for all in this place when I express my profound hope that this prediction does not prove true.

One factor in defeating this threat will be our strong bilateral relations in this region, which are our strongest asset as we review and strengthen our capabilities in countering violent extremism. Our bilateral relations with Indonesia serve as an example of this type of cooperation. Both parties of government work very closely with Indonesia on matters of security and counterterrorism. Further afield from the region, Australian foreign policy also addresses security issues in global and multilateral forums. Our term on the UN Security Council was an asset for Australia in making an even greater impact on these issues internationally. Our aid program is also an arm of this effort, not only in terms of countering violent extremism but also in terms of our defence against epidemics, climate change and financial crises, all of which pose threats to our security. In these areas, our aid program helps further and protect Australia's interests.

The recent defeats of Daesh forces in Iraq and Syria have been important steps. But as we have learnt from the terrible toll of the terrorist attacks in the name of Islamic State, these defeats alone will not defeat the threat. As the tactics of the terrorists evolve, they must be met. And, as we meet them, we will never forget what it is we are fighting to defend.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have recently handed over the defence and veterans portfolio to Senator Ludlam, who is tied up, so I will speak on his behalf. Senator Brandis, before you flee the chamber, I would like this put on record. Perhaps you could explain to the Senate at some stage why Martin Place was a terrorist attack. I would be very interested, especially with your legal background. My understanding was that that is very much disputed. In fact, the circumstances surrounding that situation were extremely complex, including through the coronial inquest in Sydney. I would be very interested as to why you have got up here and used that as one of your motivations, because we would like to get more detail on that particular issue.

The Labor and Liberal parties have yet again sidelined the parliament and the Australian people by quietly agreeing to changes to war crimes legislation, shortcutting debate and expert analysis. The Greens' foreign affairs and defence spokesman, Senator Ludlam, said today:

These changes seriously alter the governance of ADF personnel in combat. They change the definition of a war crime. It's a highly charged, complex topic in which civilians in war zones on the other side of the world have no voice.

We'd like to hear from the ADF about why they feel these changes were needed. What actions are they trying to take that are being prevented by existing war crimes legislation?

Parliament should have a far greater role in debating the use of military force, and the implications of those deployments.

The Greens have always argued for parliamentary war-powers. Senator Ludlam went on:

These are some of the most important decisions a nation can make—

And that is what parliamentarians should be doing as one of their key roles in this place. Senator Ludlam said:

Australian forces operate under much more stringent rules of engagement than many of our allies including the US. Anything that creates a risk of that changing needs to be carefully scrutinised.

It is worth pointing out, on this issue, that Australia is one of the last Western democracies where we can send citizens into conflict zones without recourse to parliament. So it is good that we will get a chance to debate this when Senator Brandis brings this to us next week.

Before I finish up—and we will have more to say on this next week—I want to say that you are coming in here and using examples of terrorism occurring on Australian soil as justification for changes to laws, when those examples are disputed. Certainly with Martin Place, nobody has any doubt at all that the individual in question, Man Haron Monis, was mentally ill. He was a violent criminal with a history of criminality. He reportedly set fire to his wife. He was a very complex character. To label his act of violence, which was a huge tragedy for our nation, as being politically motivated—that has not been established. I have raised it in this house before. The problem with calling people terrorists is that there is no internationally accepted political definition of that word. If it implies political motivation, then the subject is, by nature, highly subjective. Let me make it very clear for the record: Monis was a violent criminal and what he did was tragic and unspeakable, but to come in here and use that as an example of an act of terrorism to give our military special powers, fighting on the other side of the world, I think undermines the case already put by Senator Brandis. So I would like him to come in here next week and clarify why he believed that was an act of terrorism.

Question agreed to.