KYLIE GILLIES:
Good evening, Prime Minister. Thank you for your time. Others have said you've been vindicated by the raids, is that how you feel?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm not interested in vindication. I've only ever set out to do everything I can to protect the security of the Australian public. That's what drove me last week when I saw this intelligence and got these reports. I knew that I had to accept the advice that we could strengthen the capacity of the authorities if we urgently amended certain legislation, and that's why we did it. I knew that by doing that I would be criticised by some, and I was.
KYLIE GILLIES:
Prime Minister, we've seen some violent clashes among members of the Muslim community. What do you say to these people who feel they're being targeted?
PRIME MINISTER:
They are not being targeted. This is not an anti-Muslim action. This is action being taken by the police because they believe the law has been broken. The question of whether the law has been broken will be decided in the time-honoured Australian way - by the courts. I say to my fellow Australians, who are Muslims, you are part of our community, we value you, we want you to fully participate in Australian life but we also want you to understand that people who have anti-social attitudes, people who support terrorism are your enemies as much as they are the enemies of the rest of the Australian community.
KYLIE GILLIES:
Do you feel these raids prove the need for the wider counter-terrorism laws that are currently being debated by the Parliament?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't want, through fear, however remote it may be, of prejudicing court proceedings - I don't want to link these particular actions to other debates that are going on.
KYLIE GILLIES:
Labor says it will support the bulk of the laws but that the sedition measures will undermine free speech. Are you prepared to soften them?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, sedition provisions don't undermine free speech. We've had sedition provisions in the Crimes Act now for decades and they haven't undermined free speech. People will still be able to attack everything that I've done as Prime Minister. People will still be able to say that all of my foreign policies are wrong. People will still be able to engage in all sorts of attacks upon the wisdom or otherwise of what this government has done. But this idea that in some way we're interfering with ordinary free speech, that people won't be able to have cartoons lampooning the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition or the Premier of New South Wales or Victoria - I mean, that is ridiculous. The laws that we are enacting are, in substance, no different from the laws of sedition that have been in the Crimes Act now for decades.
KYLIE GILLIES:
Prime Minister, thank you for your time this evening.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]