Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on an increasingly frightening reality that we find ourselves in in the modern era. It is a very sad fact that many people across the globe and here at home seek to do us harm simply because of our way of life, and our tolerant, free, democratic society.

There is, as the Prime Minister calls it, an emerging death cult in the Middle East and its effects are felt right across the globe and here at home. We know in this new environment that there are at least 90 Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria. We know that there are about 30 foreign fighters who have fought in Iraq and Syria, and returned to Australia. We know that in Australia today there are at least 140 Australians actively supporting those extremist groups in their terrible endeavours in the Middle East and we know—ASIO tells us—that they are now investigating several thousand leads. Of those leads, there are over 400 high-priority cases, which is more than double from a year ago. As of last September, 55 of the 57 Australian extremists fighting in Iraq and Syria were on taxpayer-funded welfare from here in Australia.

This is a horrible threat that our nation faces and, sadly, we have felt its effects here with the terrorist act at the Lindt Cafe. I stand with all members of this parliament and, I think, almost all members of Australian society in condemning those acts and passing on our condolences to the victims of that terrible terrorist incident. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, as we emerge in this new world and face the new threats that emerge with it, we have to look at the systems that we have in place and look at where the opportunities for people to exploit our generosity exist. As the Prime Minister pointed out in relation to the Sydney Lindt Cafe, our generosity was taken advantage of. Our generosity was taken advantage of when the perpetrator of that terrorist incident applied for a visa. We were taken advantage of when he applied for residency and citizenship. He was again given the benefit of the doubt and our generosity was again taken advantage of when he applied at Centrelink. We were again taken advantage of when he applied successfully for legal aid. And, once again, there was a terrible hole in our system when this individual, who should have been in jail, was granted bail.

So we do need to have a serious look at our deterrents as a country and at what we are doing to ensure that individuals are not radicalised and that we do not face this serious threat from extremism. The first element of that, of course, is to ensure that we are not allowing young Australians to feel disconnected from our society, to feel that our society is not embracing them and giving them opportunity. That is a cultural change that we have to undertake and one where all agencies of government have to reach out. But we also can do very practical things. We have increased funding to our intelligence agencies by $630 million. We have appointed a counter-terrorism coordinator to work across all jurisdictions and all government departments to coordinate our response to terrorism. That leads to very practical measures where we are increasing our surveillance abilities and doing everything we can to stop extremism taking hold. We are tightening up our borders, as we have done not only through our Operation Sovereign Borders but also by putting more counter-terrorism teams into our airports. We are ensuring that we are stopping the financing of these extremist organisations. We are stopping the online propaganda that is driving this extremism and indoctrination of young Australians. The most important role of any government is to ensure the safety of its citizens, and we all stand ready to rise to that task and ensure the safety of our citizens.