The recent lifting of the terrorism threat level from possible to probable is a reminder how vulnerable Australia remains to a serious terror incident.
Yet for the most part, Australians remain unaware of how close we have come to disaster and how near the threat of terrorism attack remains. In 2017, Australia came within a whisker of a catastrophic terror attack when Islamic State operatives sought to smuggle a bomb aboard an Etihad flight. Had they been successful, the resulting carnage would have claimed the lives of the 400 passengers aboard the flight. In 2009, a group of men planned to attack one of our military bases and kill as many of our soldiers as possible.
These near misses remind us that Australia carries significant terrorism risk. That we have so far managed to minimise that risk is down to four factors: gun control, comprehensive and unprecedented security agency powers, a higher level of social cohesion and our understanding that our efforts go beyond our own borders.
There have been six terror attacks in Australia involving knives in the past decade. In a more permissive environment, these attacks would have no doubt been carried out with guns, resulting in significantly greater death and destruction. To be sure, Australia has not entirely escaped the scourge of gun violence. In 2015, an Islamic State terrorist shot dead NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng outside the Parramatta Police Centre. And organised criminals have shown remarkable persistence in their efforts to obtain firearms, as the spate of gun violence in Western Sydney attests.
But since the reform of our gun laws almost 30 years ago, it has been extremely difficult for criminals and would-be terrorists to source a firearm in Australia. And it is virtually impossible to obtain the automatic or high-powered weapons that have caused carnage overseas, for example during the Bataclan theatre shootings in Paris in 2015. This is a great credit to the courage of the Howard Government but also to law abiding gun owners who stopped guns getting into the grey and black markets.
As the terrorism threat evolved over the last decade, the government responded by placing extraordinary powers in the hands of the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and other security agencies. New laws generated little political friction and enjoyed the support of both major parties. Very few security establishments in democratic countries have the tools available to them that ours do. These laws have allowed authorities to intervene at the earliest stages of terrorist planning, saving countless lives. Supporting this is the higher degree of confidence the Australian public has in their agencies than we see elsewhere.
Australia has also managed migration better than many similar countries. And the resulting social integration has limited the opportunities for extremists to radicalise larger populations. Given the size of our immigration program, we are ahead in any international comparison for the ongoing strength of our society. The recent riots in the UK show you what it looks like when things don’t work as well.
That said, our immigration system has still enabled the entry of small numbers of people who hold radical views that are violently contrary to our liberal values, and these extremist views have been able to incubate in pockets of our communities. The best intelligence about radicalised members of a community needs to come from that community itself, which is why our police and intelligence agencies work closely with these communities and their leaders. Australia has traditionally taken a forward defence approach to its counter-terrorism efforts. This reflects the fact that both the drivers and the perpetrators of terrorism often lie far from our shores. More Australians have been killed in terror attacks in Indonesia than in the rest of the world combined, so keeping us safe is more than a domestic concern.
This is particularly evident in our own region, where we have played a significant role in helping our neighbours. It is vital that the focus of the past two decades on countering international terrorism continues, because it helps secure Australians’ safety when they are offshore and also helps our neighbours to mitigate domestic terrorism threats. Therefore, notwithstanding successes in recent years to degrade terrorist groups such as ISIS, it is incumbent on the government to continue resourcing our agencies to undertake this international work.
Global events disrupt our social harmony and magnify our differences. The shock resurgence of public antisemitism shows how quickly civilized norms can unravel. Our police and security agencies enjoy high levels of public respect but this can be quickly challenged if any group in society feels that policing is uneven across different communities. Internationally there are cases where minority communities feel overpoliced. But then sometimes the pendulum can be perceived as swinging the other way. In Britain, for instance, a feeling has sometimes developed that police have a ‘two tiered’ approach, with critics saying that political correctness has led them to excessive trepidation with migrant communities, ultimately eroding broader confidence in law enforcement. In the US, the security establishment is perceived by some people to have been co-opted and owned by political parties.
Our agencies, thankfully, have been largely successful in maintaining an even-handed perception. It is imperative that they continue to avoid the political fray.
We must continue to prize our social cohesion, but not through censorship or at the expense of speaking plainly about problems. We need to acknowledge the potential for terrorism without promoting panic and sowing distrust between communities.
The world remains a dangerous place. Our laws always need to be a work in progress and should be monitored and updated if holes become apparent or events expose weaknesses.
We have rightly been focused in the past few years on the shocking invasion of Ukraine and the potential for conflict with China. But the terror threat remains alive and we must continue to play to our strengths to keep Australia safe.