Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter-Terrorism. Will the minister update the House on the government's efforts to keep Australians safe from the threat of terrorism?

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Tangney for that question and the interest that he takes in national security matters and has taken in the time that he has been here in the House. As he knows, we are very committed to doing all that we can to ensure the safety of the Australian people. Over the past 2½ years, largely as a result of events in the Middle East, the security situation in Australia has deteriorated. As a result of the events in Syria and Iraq, our response has been to make sure that we have done everything we can to secure our security here in Australia. We have worked internationally with our partners, particularly in South-East Asia, and of course we should be very proud of our service people over in the Middle East destroying this terrorist organisation at its source.

Since September 2014 when the terrorist alert level was raised in Australia, we have had 55 people charged as a result of 24 counterterrorism operations. Currently we have 40 people before the courts for terrorism related offences, seven of whom are juveniles. We have also had four attacks in Australia during this period and, because of the great work of our counterterrorism authorities, we have stopped a further 11 attacks.

We have worked with those authorities over the course of the past 2½ years to ensure that they have the powers and the resources that they need to do this job of keeping us safe. During that time, we have passed six tranches of significant counterterrorism legislation through the parliament. We have also invested a further $1.3 billion in the ability of these agencies to do their job.

Today the government has passed through the Senate the seventh tranche of legislation: the high-risk terrorism offenders bill 2016. As members know, this bill strengthens the ability of our security agencies to continue to detain somebody if they have committed serious terrorism offences and, at the expiry of their sentence, they have not been rehabilitated and their release into the community would present a significant danger to the Australian community.

We are not going to allow people who have not been rehabilitated in prison to be released and then go on to harm our fellow Australians. We have worked very closely with the states and territories on making sure that this bill passes, and I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General for the work that they have done in ensuring that this bill has gone through with the agreement of all of the Australian jurisdictions.

This government's first priority is to ensure the safety of the Australian people, and, over the past 2½ years, we have worked with our agencies, we have learnt the lessons from their operations and we have done what is required to keep the Australian people safe.