26th Nov 2014 – Senate Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014 - in Committee - Control orders only if support/facilitation already provided

The majority disagreed with Greens Senator Penny Wright's amendments to the proposed paragraphs that relate to issuing and varying control orders.

The amendments

The three amendments would have replaced sections that allow control orders to be issued or varied in order to prevent a person from providing support for or facilitating a terrorist act. Instead, the amendments would have required that the person has provided support for or otherwise facilitated such acts.

In other words, the bill currently allows for an interim control order to be issued or varied before any support or facilitation has occurred, whereas the amendment would have required that that support or facilitation has already been provided.

Expand control order regime

The expansion of the control order regime that is proposed in this bill is described in the bills digest as "significant and warrant[ing] close scrutiny".

The greatest concern is the lack of clarity relating to what constitutes ‘support’ for or ‘facilitation’ of a terrorist act or engagement in hostile activities in a foreign country, because the two terms are undefined (see bills digest).

Background to the bill

This bill is the third that has been introduced since mid-2014. A number of incidents have happened before and during the course of the introduction of these bills.

There was one of the biggest counter-terrorism operations in Australian history. The Prime Minister Tony Abbott also confirmed that Australia would be sending the military to Iraq to fight the Islamic State (IS) (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)).

The scope of this bill is narrower than the earlier two but, as mentioned above, some of its measures are "significant and warrant close scrutiny" (see bills digest). In particular, the proposed expansion of the control order regime (see above) and measures that would allow the heads of Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) to authorise activities in place of ministers in emergency circumstances.