With 20 terrorism-related offenders due for release from custody before 2030, Australia’s federal Parliament is debating a bill that would extend and reshape the legal provisions for monitoring them.
That’s according to senior security officials who testified before a hearing with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) Assistant Commissioner Peter Crozier said each of the first 16 of those offenders, due for release by 2028, would be assessed for a control order.
He confirmed the AFP had requested many of the changes, including an extension of the “sunset” clauses for many of the powers police used to deal with suspected or convicted of terrorism offences.
It also makes control orders the primary Commonwealth mechanism for managing terrorist offenders after release, rather than extended supervision orders.
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The bill separately raises the maximum duration of a control order for a 14- to 17-year-old from three months to 12 months, expands information-sharing between states, territories, and Commonwealth agencies for control order decisions, adjusts the process for de-listing terrorist organisations, and broadens Criminal Code protections for U.N. personnel delivering humanitarian and peacebuilding assistance in areas under the control of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Longer Orders For Minors
“Our position is that the three months doesn’t give us sufficient time, and doesn’t give the individual sufficient time, to get the benefits from some of those programmes,” he said, adding that returning to court every three months could affect a young person’s willingness to engage with rehabilitation.
Luke Moffett, acting first assistant secretary at the Attorney-General’s Department, said courts must still be satisfied any conditions imposed are “necessary, appropriate, and adapted” and must consider the best interests of the child.
“These offenders aren’t driven by money,” she warned. “They are motivated by nihilism and sadism.”
Exemptions Sought by Aid Groups
“We don’t want to create a sort of a loophole where someone can don a cloak of humanitarianism and then all of a sudden be exempt from the criminal law,” he said.
A coalition including Save the Children Australia, the Australian Red Cross, the Australian Council for International Development, and Plan International Australia raised that objection in their evidence to the committee.
Separately, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Law Council of Australia, Legal Aid NSW, and Liberty Victoria objected on civil liberties grounds saying the the risk assessment methods were unreliable.
Committee members pressed officials on how often these powers had been used.
Moffett confirmed preventative detention orders “have been used zero times since they were introduced in 2005,” and Home Affairs official Jonathon Savery said the stop, search, and seizure powers have likewise never been used.
He said four control orders had been requested and issued in the past five years, along with eight extended supervision order applications, and no continuing detention order applications.
Senator Susan McDonald, who said she had received many expressions of concern about the powers, told officials the figures “provided me with a great deal of comfort.”
Deputy Chair Andrew Wallace queried why annual reports on use of the powers, required under the law, had not been published since 2023; officials couldn’t explain that, and took that question on notice.
