Coalition may expand control orders for suspected terrorists, Brandis says
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Version 0 of 1. The attorney general, George Brandis, has signalled the government may widen the scope of control orders to make it easier for police and intelligence agencies to ban people from being in certain areas or speaking with certain people if they are suspected of engaging in terrorist activities but there is not enough evidence to charge them. Three people were detained under preventative detention orders, in what may be the first time the counter-terrorism laws have been used, after the raids in Sydney last week in which 15 people were arrested and two charged. The preventative detention orders allows police to hold suspects without charge for a fortnight and George Brandis said that while no application had been made for control orders on any of the people detained in the raids, he is open to expanding them. “I do think that the discussion about control orders is an important discussion because there is a gap in the capacity of the police and the intelligence agencies to monitor people about whom there is a serious level of concern, but about in respect of whom there isn’t enough evidence actually to prosecute,” he told Sky News on Sunday. Brandis will take legislation – dubbed the Foreign Fighters’ bill – to cabinet on Tuesday and parliament will also debate a bill this week which increases surveillance powers as part of the government’s national security measures. Brandis and the prime minister met with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) last week and Brandis said making control orders quicker to obtain was discussed, as well as the criteria for them. “The current scope of control orders wouldn’t, for example, be able to apply to somebody returning from war fighting in Syria or northern Iraq if authorities had a level of concern but they weren’t able, or at least weren’t initially upon the return of that person to assemble sufficient evidence to charge them with the offence,” he said. Control orders currently need the approval of the attorney general and to meet 12 issues set out in the act. If the attorney general is satisfied then an application is made to a judge. Two control orders have been issued in Australia since they were introduced. “One issue that the AFP have raised with us is the question of expedited control orders in more urgent cases. They’ve merely raised it as an issue,” Brandis said. He is meeting with AFP acting commissioner, Andrew Colvin, on Monday to discuss the potential expansion of the orders. Brandis also rejected concerns the national security legislation reversed the onus of proof on people suspected of being terrorists and said arguments the legislation allowed Asio to torture people were a “red herring”. The legislation will require people to prove they visited so-called “no go areas” for legitimate reasons such as humanitarian work, or journalism, and not to engage in terrorist activities. The no-go areas will be declared by the foreign minister and Brandis said towns, villages and areas of Syria and northern Iraq would likely make up the zones. “Now this is the ordinary way in which the criminal law works. There is an offence provisions and there are defences and if a person wishes to say that they are entitled to rely on one of those defences, they have what lawyers call an evidentiary onus to put material before the court to demonstrate that the defence applies to them,” he said, citing the exemptions allowed to visit the areas. “That’s not a reversal of the onus of proof.” Addressing concerns the legislation allows Australia’s intelligence agency to engage in torture Brandis said an immunity provision was being granted to Asio, not a power conferring provision. “Asio can only act within its statutory powers and it can only engage in operations that are authorised. In the course of an authorised operation it may be, for example, if an ASIO operative were to penetrate covertly a terrorist network or a terrorist cell and had to, as it were, play along with the planning, technically that ASIO operative might be liable but for an immunity for the offence of conspiracy,” he said. “Therefore there have to be statutory immunities to enable covert officers in particular to do their jobs.” He added: “But the point I make is that because ASIO does not have the power to torture, never would have the power to torture, then conduct constituting torture could never be the subject of an authorisation. So this issue simply would never arise, it could never arise, as a matter of law.” Brandis met with his opposition counterpart, Mark Dreyfus, last week as well as Tanya Plibersek who was acting opposition leader on Friday to discuss the national security legislation. He said he was confident of Labor’s bipartisan support on the measures which could make the passage of the bills through the Senate easier. He said he would be briefing Dreyfus on the foreign fighters’ bill after it passes party room on Tuesday, giving him 24 hours before Brandis introduces it to the Senate. A committee last week rejected making journalists exempt from one of the measures which makes disclosing special intelligence operations a crime. This measure has prompted concerns that journalists could be prosecuted in Australia for publishing Edward Snowden type revelations which could be in the public interest, but still a criminal act under the proposed legislation. A third bill, legislating a mandatory data retention scheme, is also due to be introduced to the parliament as the third part of the government’s national security reforms. |