Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that on Friday, 28 April 2017 four individuals faced court charged with terrorism offences in relation to a 2016 Christmas Day terror plot to attack Melbourne landmarks;

(2) acknowledges the:

(a) excellent work being undertaken by Australia's law enforcement and security agencies to keep the community safe, including:

(i) 61 people charged as a result of 26 counter-terrorism operations around Australia;

(ii) 38 people convicted of terrorism related offences;

(iii) 41 people before the courts for terrorism related offences; and

(iv) 12 major counter-terrorism disruption operations in response to potential attack planning in Australia; and

(b) importance of providing law enforcement agencies with the appropriate powers and resources to disrupt terrorist activity and protect Australians; and

(3) congratulates the Government for its world leading counter-terrorism strategy, including:

(a) eight successful tranches of counter-terrorism and national security legislation;

(b) significant investment of $1.3 billion to support law enforcement and intelligence agencies to combat terrorism;

(c) tripling investment in initiatives to counter violent extremism to $45 million; and

(d) investment in our law enforcement and security agencies to ensure they have the appropriate powers, skills and resources to fight terrorism.

Before entering parliament, I was a member of the Victoria Police force and, more specifically, of the Victorian police counterterrorism unit. From firsthand experience, I got to see the great work our law enforcement do, working in a cooperative manner right across the country. There are two issues, though, when it comes to legislation, which I have had great concern with. I have made numerous speeches in parliament about preventative legislation and the need to question the person who is being held under preventative detention.

To my knowledge, at a Commonwealth level, since this legislation was first introduced under the Howard government, in fact it has never been used. It was set up for the purpose at the time that, if law enforcement believed that a person was going to commit a terrorist offence, the police would have the power to grab that person and hold them in custody to ensure that no offence would take place. They never had the ability to question a person whilst in custody, which to me was something that, right from day one, I said would be a major issue.

When you look at counterterrorism operations, whether here in Australia or overseas, especially when you have multiple offenders and multiple attacks, these are different from any other normal investigation—even, say, a homicide investigation—because terrorism is so difficult when it comes to an investigation. That is for a number of reasons. Quite often those involved, if they are caught beforehand in the planning stage, do not speak English. Also, if an attack has taken place, evidence is often destroyed. And, when it comes to the police investigation, the going round and executing search warrants and seizing computers and mobile phones and potentially picking up secondary offenders, this becomes very involved. Also, to put it another way, when it comes to the need for the questioning prior to an arrest, if law enforcement are aware of a terrorism plan, compared to, say, a drug-trafficking matter, they never have the grace of waiting to see how it will pan out. For example, in my day in the police force, if someone was trafficking drugs, you could allow the buy bust to go down, pick up those involved, collect the drugs and collect the money. When it comes to terrorism, law enforcement do not have that option. They must go in early.

I will come back to the great work of the police, and I mean this in the most sincere terms. Our law enforcement agencies and ASIO working together cooperatively right across the country have just done an incredible job when it comes to early intervention and being involved in ensuring that a number of terrorist plots have never eventuated. We go back to 2005, when planned attacks at the AFL Grand Final at the MCG were averted just two months before the game after police raids disrupted preparations for the attack. During this case, one of the country's largest terrorist trials was told that the plan to attack the MCG had been foiled. The group then decided to target the Crown casino during the Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend or the AFL preseason NAB Cup football finals early the following year. The key prosecution witness, Mr Attiq, an insider who admitted to using his skills as a credit card fraudster to purchase airline tickets, telephone credit and other goods for the group, told the Victorian Supreme Court that he first learned of the proposed targets about a month after ASIO and police raids on members' homes in July 2005. During conversations with Abdul Benbrika, Mr Attiq said he was told that the money raised to finance a terrorist attack on grand final day in September 2005 had been seized by authorities during the raids. This is one example of the great work that is being done by the AFP, state police and ASIO. It was an incredible investigation. Who knows what would have happened if law enforcement working with ASIO had not been able to stop this attack.

There have also been many other attacks, foiled plots—improvised explosive devices in central Melbourne and areas of Federation Square on about Christmas Day last year, a planned Anzac Day attack and the Mother's Day attack, just to list some of the examples in Melbourne. It is also hard to forget the harrowing scenes of the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney, where Man Monis took the occupants hostage at 2.03 am on 6 December 2014 . A very loud bang was heard as Monis shot towards six hostages fleeing from the building. Police declared the siege over soon after, later confirming that minus was killed in the raid. It was very sad. Our thoughts are always with the victims of terrorism and their family members of those who died and also the three injured.

When it comes to law enforcement, in the Lindt Cafe siege and also during the recent incident in Brighton I take my hat off to the very brave members of the Special Operations Group and their counterparts in New South Wales. I have been told by reliable sources, especially from New South Wales, when members were going into a situation where there was a terrorist, they were sending SMS messages to their partners, basically saying, 'We may not be coming home tonight.' That shows the incredible bravery of these members who are taking out those involved in terrorism related activities. All members of parliament—I know the member for Isaac and the member for Holt, who are in the chamber, have been very strong on this— support our law enforcement agencies. I know the member for Cowan, who also is in the chamber, and I worked together on a MyHack program in my electorate.

This motion today is more about thanking the men and women of the law enforcement agencies right across the country. Since 2001, 39 people have been convicted of terrorism related offences. Twenty-one of them are currently serving custodial sentences, one of whom is a juvenile. There has been legislation go through parliament when people have been concerned about the age of people as young as 14 years of age. Sadly, when it comes to extremism, when it comes to terrorism, age does not seem to matter.

I would like also to mention my great concern about something else that needs to be put in place: community protection intervention orders. These are something that law enforcement need. They would work similarly to a family violence order, especially with young people. Law enforcement do not have any tools in the box to take them before a court to stop people from associating with extremists or going online to view radical material. To me that is something that law enforcement needs to do.

Since 2014 the Turnbull government has invested an additional $1.5 billion to support Australia's efforts to combat terrorism. I know this has the support of the opposition. We recently announced $321 million. We have passed eight tranches of legislation to strengthen the ability of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to investigate, monitor, arrest and prosecute home grown extremists and returning foreign fighters. These agencies include the National Disruption Group; the AFP's online targeting team; Customs' counterterrorism units; the Foreign Fighters Task Force; and the national security operations team, a part of AUSTRAC. ASIO's jihadist network mapping unit is providing vital intelligence to law enforcement to make sure police right across the country have the best information they can get. The National Terrorism Threat Advisory System has been working very effectively, as has the National Security Campaign, the National Security Hotline.

I do mention, I know the Victoria state government is now looking at a pre-arrest questioning. I congratulate it for that. It is going to work similar to preventive detention. My view is that preventative detention, if there is no constitutional reasons, we should have questioning at the Commonwealth level. The problem we are going to have is soon is New South Wales will have pre-arrest questioning, Victoria has pre-arrest questioning so what about the other states and territories? I congratulate the Prime Minister, who has put this on the COAG special agenda with the state premiers to actually look at this issue and address it.

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