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PRIME MINISTER

**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**

22 September 2014
THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MP
STATEMENT TO PARLIAMENT ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

E&OE.

Because protecting our people is the first duty of government, its right that I should update the House on
developing challenges to our national security.

I acknowledge the commitment of all MPs to keeping our people safe and especially acknowledge the
support that the Leader of the Opposition has given to the government.

On questions of national security, its always best if government and opposition can stand together, shoulder
to shoulder.

It lets our enemies know that they will never shake our resolve.

Its a sign that hope is stronger than fear and that decency can prevail over brute force.

From me and from all ministers in this government, there will be three key messages:

First, the government will do whatever is possible to keep people safe.

Second, our security measures at home and abroad are directed against terrorism, not religion.

And third, Australians should always live normally because terrorists goal is to scare us out of being
ourselves.

As we all know, there have been major anti-terrorist raids across Sydney and Brisbane.

Our police and security agencies will always strive to stay at least one step ahead of those who would do us
harm; and, so far, we have succeeded.

I cant promise that hideous events will never take place on Australian soil; but I can promise that we will
never stoop to the level of those who hate us and fight evil with evil.

Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than were used to, and
more inconvenience than wed like.
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Regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.

There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protections for others.

After all, the most basic freedom of all is the freedom to walk the streets unharmed and to sleep safe in our
beds at night.

Creating new offences that are harder to beat on a technicality may be a small price to pay for saving lives
and for maintaining the social fabric of an open, free and multicultural nation.

For more than two years, the civil war in Syria, followed by the conquest of much of northern Iraq, has been
sucking in misguided and alienated Australians.

There are at least 60 Australians that we know of currently fighting with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq,
and at least 100 Australians who are supporting them.

More than 20 of these foreign fighters have already returned to Australia.

As a peaceful and pluralist democracy, we naturally shrink from getting involved in conflicts on the other
side of the world.

Sometimes, though, these conflicts reach out to us regardless of anything that we might do now or might
have done in the past.

I refuse to call a terrorist movement Islamic state because to do so demeans Islam and mocks the duties
that a legitimate state bears to its citizens.

It can hardly be Islamic to kill without compunction Shia, Yazidi, Turkmen, Kurds, Christians and Sunni
who dont share this death cults view of the world.

Nothing can justify the beheadings, crucifixions, mass executions, ethnic cleansing, rape and sexual slavery
that have taken place in every captured town and city.

To do such evil and to revel in doing such evil is simply unprecedented.

To demand the allegiance of Muslims everywhere, and the conversion or subordination of everyone else, is
an ultimatum to the entire world.

As we all know, the Middle East is a difficult part of the world where violence is all-too-common a
witches brew of complexity and danger.

Nevertheless, it is in the interests of Australia and the world that we stand ready to join a coalition to help
the new Iraqi government to disrupt and degrade the ISIL movement and to regain control over its own
country.

Nothing remotely justifies the mass slaughter of innocents overwhelmingly Muslims that the ISIL
movement routinely practices.

Nothing remotely justifies ISILs brazen pretension.

The claim that ISILs atrocities and threats are a response to something else is an excuse, not a reason.

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Its important to remember that the September 11 attack predated Americas involvement in Iraq, just as the
first Bali bombing predated Australias.

Groups such as ISIL will cite our involvement but they would attack us anyway for who we are and for how
we live, not for anything we have done.

Its our acceptance that people can live and worship in the way they choose that bothers them, not our
foreign policy.

ISIL kills because it glories in death and because no one has yet been strong enough to stop it.

Its ISILs success on the battlefield, at least as much as its absolutism, that explains its perverse appeal.

Stopping and reversing its advance will help the people of Iraq; it should also reduce its magnetism for
people from around the globe who are looking to join a fight.

Last week, together, the Leader of the Opposition and I helped to farewell the Australian force thats ready
to join the international coalition against ISIL.

Later this week, Ill be in New York for discussions at the United Nations which President Obama will
chair.

Subsequently, the Cabinet will again consider the use of our forces to mount air strikes and to provide
military advice in support of the Iraqi government.

Last week, the Opposition Leader and I separately thanked our police and security agencies for their work to
disrupt an ISIL plot to conduct demonstration executions here in Australia.

For some months, operatives in Syria have been urging their Australian networks to prepare attacks against
targets here.

An urgent review of the safety of parliament house has recommended that the Australian Federal Police take
control of internal as well as external security.

In this building, there will be more armed police, fewer points of access, and more scrutiny of parliamentary
passes.

I thank the presiding officers, particularly you, Madam Speaker, for supporting and for beginning to
implement these recommendations.

They will mean slightly more inconvenience but considerably more protection for everyone involved in our
national government.

Last week, an Australian ISIL operative instructed his followers to pluck people from the street to
demonstrate that they could, in his words, kill kaffirs.

All that would be needed to conduct such an attack is a knife, a camera-phone and a victim.

Consequently, within 36 hours more than 800 police and security agents were deployed in Sydney and more
in Brisbane to execute 30 search warrants to investigate and disrupt possible plans to commit terrorist acts.

One person has been charged with serious terrorist offences and a large amount of evidence has been
amassed that will now carefully be sifted so that further charges might be laid.

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It was important to respond with great strength to disrupt this imminent terrorist act.

It demonstrates that our determination equals that of those who would do us harm.

We will more than match the resolve of our adversaries in all things except malice; because our military,
police and security personnel have goodwill towards everyone except those who are plotting to hurt us.

Today, I pledge that our security agencies will have all the resources and authority that they reasonably
need.

In August, the government committed an additional $630 million to the Australian Federal Police, Customs
and Border Protection, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret
Intelligence Service and the Office of National Assessments.

Additional ASIO and ASIS officers are being recruited and deployed; biometric screening will start to be
introduced at international airports within 12 months; and more Border Force personnel are now being
deployed to international airports.

Before Christmas, the government will respond to the review of the national security apparatus thats now
underway.

Legislation on agency powers is now before the parliament.

Legislation to create new terrorist offences and to extend existing powers to monitor or to detain terror
suspects will be introduced this week.

We cant prevent from returning home Australians-born-and-bred whove been foreign fighters, however
incompatible with our values their conduct has been.

Unfortunately, terrorists dont reform just because theyve returned home, as the experience with
Australians returning from fighting with the Taliban shows.

My unambiguous message to all Australians who fight with terrorist groups is that you will be arrested,
prosecuted and gaoled for a very long time; and that our laws are being changed to make it easier to keep
potential terrorists off our streets.

For one thing, it will be an offence to be in a designated area, for example Raqqa in Syria, without a good
reason.

The only safe place for those who have been brutalised and militarised by fighting with terrorists is inside a
maximum security prison.

As well, legislation requiring telecommunications providers to keep the metadata they already create and to
continue to make it available to police and security agencies will be introduced soon.

If the police and security agencies can make a case for more resources and for more powers, the
governments strong disposition is to provide them because its rightly expected of us in this place that we
will do whatever we possibly can to keep people safe.

Of course, any such powers would be exercised responsibly, under the watch of the Inspector-General for
Intelligence and Security, the Ombudsman, and the joint standing committees of this parliament.

These are troubling times for everyone accustomed to think that terrorism happens in places other than
Australia or that history has largely overtaken the use of military force.
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Our Australian instinct to assume the best of everyone and our tendency to imagine that we live in the best
of all possible worlds is being challenged as rarely before.

Still, even in what seem darkening times, Im sure that we wont lose our perspective and will continue to
keep things in proportion.

Whatever happens, Australia should remain a country where people trust each other, welcome newcomers
and are justifiably confident that, in most respects, our future will be even better than our past.

Our country must remain a beacon of hope and optimism that shines around the world.

If, in the weeks and months ahead, Australians come to appreciate and savour our unity as much as our
diversity, we will emerge stronger from these difficulties.

Even in these times, there are grounds for hope: in the overwhelming support of Australian Muslims for
strong measures against terrorism; and in the coalition of Middle Eastern countries now assembling to
support the Iraqi government against the ISIL death cult.

With our own Grand Mufti, nearly all Australian Muslims believe that ISIL is committing crimes against
humanity and sins against God

It may be too much to expect that everyone, everywhere might finally accept that every single human being
has the same inherent rights and dignity.

It may be too much to expect that everyone, everywhere might finally subscribe to the principle of treat
others as you would have them treat you.

But it is not too much, surely, to expect that our world might finally and fully grasp that it is never right to
kill people because they have a different view of God.

Killing in the name of God is never right.

Mistreating others in the name of God is never right.

If the all-but-universal revulsion towards the ISIL horror has this result, good might finally emerge despite
the pointless death and dislocation that confronts us now.

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