E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………
NEIL MITCHELL:
Tony Abbott, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Neil, good morning.
NEIL MITCHELL:
What emerged from your discussion with Stephen Harper this morning?
PRIME MINISTER:
We obviously expressed a degree of commiserations at the terror threat that both our countries are facing and, obviously, I had the chance to express my particular shock and horror at the events in the Canadian Parliament yesterday.
I’ve known Stephen quite well now for several years. He made contact with me when I was Opposition Leader. Back in 2006 before he became Prime Minister I met with him in Canada when he was Opposition Leader not expected to win an election and I was Health Minister in the Howard Government. So, we go back a fair way and he’s done great things for Canada, but obviously, Canada and Canadians and their polity was on its mettle yesterday, but I think Stephen, as usual, has risen to the challenge of leadership.
NEIL MITCHELL:
What are the lessons out of this for Australia, because we’re similar in so many ways, even our involvement against ISIS is similar, what are the lessons for us?
PRIME MINISTER:
The lessons are that we must be constantly vigilant, because it only takes a very small number of fanatical extremists who are reckless as to their own life and prepared to kill without mercy or pity to cause mayhem. That’s the difficulty that we all face today. Because of the death cult ideology of ISIL, there are people amongst us who think they are called by God to kill. Now, no God does this, but they’ve persuaded themselves that it’s so and it’s difficult to be constantly on top of this. That’s why we’ve increased funding for our security services, that’s why we’re strengthening our laws so that we can be as on top of it as possible, but it is very difficult to be constantly on guard against extremist fanatics.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Some of the experts I’ve spoken to say that what happened in Canada runs the risk of motivating people in other countries like Australia. Do you agree? Does it increase our security risk?
PRIME MINISTER:
This is the problem: the problem is that there is a copycat tendency amongst these people. But, we were warned a couple of months back that there was chatter amongst would-be terrorist networks of an attack on Parliament and that’s why we strengthened our security a few weeks back. Some people were wondering whether it was worth it, but I don’t think anyone is questioning it today. Plainly, we did need to boost our security and we have.
NEIL MITCHELL:
But does this incident in Canada further increase the security risk in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m not sure that it further increases the risk, Neil, but it certainly is a reminder that the risks are real and that the terror threat is something that we have to be constantly vigilant against.
NEIL MITCHELL:
I was surprised to see the Serjeant-at-Arms was arms was armed in Canada, or had access to firearms. Would you look at extending the availability of fire arms within the Australian Parliament?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have armed police in the building at all times now, Neil. We didn’t have armed police in the building a couple of months ago, but we do have armed police in the building at all times now and we do have a much greater tactical response capacity now than we did before.
So, we think we’re well placed to deal with the sort of attack that we saw in Canada yesterday. I guess the important thing is not just to be vigilant against what Tony Blair has called ‘the fringe’, but also to be constantly doing what we can to tackle what Tony Blair has called ‘the spectrum’, that’s to say the frame of reference, the way of thinking which can justify these sorts of actions. That’s why it’s so important for all of us to constantly say, as indeed Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia – a pious Muslim – keeps saying that the sort of attacks that we see from the ISIL death cult are against God, against Islam and against our common humanity.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Until this happened it hadn’t crossed my mind that our War Memorial could possibly be involved, could be a target. Is it viewed that way do you think? Or do we view it that way and need to protect it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, we hadn’t really thought of that as a target prior to yesterday. Obviously, it is very much a symbol of our nation and what we stand for and I suppose to extremist fanatics it could therefore be a target. There’s the Last Post at our War Memorial every day and I guess if someone wanted to do something gruesome, that’s the kind of thing that could be looked at. That’s why it is important that we are constantly reviewing our security, and we are.
NEIL MITCHELL:
The two incidents in Canada, one of them involved a man who was stopped from leaving the country and he drove into two police and killed one. There is speculation the man yesterday was either planning to go to Syria or had, in fact, even been to Syria some report. We’ve got, what, 100 people in this country who we believe have already been fighting in the area? Does that mean we’ve got 100 potential risks like this?
PRIME MINISTER:
We’ve got 60-odd who we know are in Syria and Iraq. We’ve got 100-odd who we know are supporting those in Syria and Iraq and we’ve got some tens who have been in Syria or Iraq and have come back. Then there’s another 70 or so who wanted to go but we’ve cancelled their passports. So, these are significant numbers and…
NEIL MITCHELL:
But we can’t watch them all, can we?
PRIME MINISTER:
We can’t watch all of them all the time, but we can maintain a high level of vigilance and that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing our best to keep as close tabs on people as we can and as we think we need. And look, to give the security services in Australia their due, we haven’t had an actual terrorist incident other than the event a few weeks back when someone whose passport had been cancelled tried to kill two policemen in Victoria and that was a horrible, horrible incident, but this was someone who was known to us and he was being monitored and he was being monitored with good reason as it turned out.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Is it time to review whether you put a minister in overarching control, a sort of minister for homeland security, a minister for Australian security? Is it time for that?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have very close coordination between all of our ministers with responsibility for security agencies. I mean, that’s what the National Security Committee is; it’s a coordinating committee and all of the ministers who have responsibility for security agencies – the Minister with responsibility for the AFP, the Minister with the responsibility for ASIO, the Minister with responsibility for ASIS, the Minister with responsibility for Customs and Border Protection, the Minister with the responsibility for the Defence forces – they’re all around the table along with the heads of those agencies and I chair it. So, I guess in a sense the Prime Minister is the Minister responsible for national security and it’s a responsibility that I take incredibly seriously and…
NEIL MITCHELL:
But you do have a few other things on your plate. Would you consider putting a single minister, perhaps reporting to you, but in charge of security?
PRIME MINISTER:
As I said, national security is fundamentally my responsibility, Neil. National security is the fundamental and first responsibility of government. This is ultimately why we have a government – to protect our people from threats and that’s what this Government is doing. We are protecting our people from threats at home and abroad and I am discharging that responsibility to the best of my ability.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Prime Minister, a lot of people are asking the question why not just let people who want to go to Syria or go and fight and don’t let them back in, or maybe even see that they’re killed over there. Why not just let them go?
PRIME MINISTER:
I understand that feeling, Neil. I really do understand that feeling and if someone is driven through by hatred and fanaticism and feels a calling to martyrdom, why not indeed let them go and be martyred in a foreign land? The difficulty with that approach is that if they’re Australian citizens they have a right to come back and we can’t stop them from coming back and sometimes it’s difficult to detain them and keep them detained if they come back because it’s not always easy to convict them of offences that were committed with terrorist groups abroad. What we don’t want, Neil, is people coming back more capable of doing us harm than they were before they left and going overseas brutalises them, it militarises them, it gives them far more capacity to do us harm than they had before they left.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Prime Minister, thank you for your time. Do you think we are now in the most heightened security risk we have been ever?
PRIME MINISTER:
Our current threat level is the highest it’s been since the existing system was put in place. We face a range of threats, there’s no doubt about it, but the important thing is for people to live their lives normally. It would be a tragedy if anyone were to change his or her life out of fear, because that is precisely what the terrorist want and we can’t give them that victory.
NEIL MITCHELL:
Thank you so much for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks, Neil.
[ends]