Following the Las Vegas shooting, the Prime Minister wasted no time re-focusing the Australian debate onto law and order and how counter-terrorism and police operations had been, to this point successful, thanks in part, to legislative and budgetary improvements.
Touring the Australia Federal Police’ Majura Forensics Facility on Wednesday with the Minister for Justice and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter-Terrorism, the Hon Michael Keenan MP, and the Chief Commissioner of the AFP, Commissioner Andrew Colvin APM, OAM, the Prime Minister said he was proud that his Government had “provided a record level of funding to support the forensic work here by the Australian Federal Police”.
The Prime Minister, speaking indirectly to State and Territory Premiers and Chief Ministers, took the opportunity to lay the foundations for the importance of changes to detention laws that would give our police additional time to detain suspects before they are charged, up to 14 days.
PM Malcolm Turnbull being shown equipment after a tour of the AFP Forensics Facility in Canberra #auspol @AAPNewswire pic.twitter.com/l30SyZ0DvO
— Roje Adaimy (@rojeadaimy) October 3, 2017
On Thursday, a specially convened counter-terrorism meeting of the Council of Australian Governments was held in Canberra giving leaders an opportunity to thrash out further consensus in the law and order area.
Speaking at the opening of the meeting, the Prime Minister confirmed the job of respective Governments was to “ensure that we give our police, intelligence and security agencies the tools they need to keep us safe”.
Following the meeting, where a raft of agreements had been struck, it was announced Australian airports would have facial recognition as early as 2018 after the Federal Government secured the support of State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers. Other agreements included allowing Federal authorities access to State driver’s licence photos to enable the facial recognition software.
New offences were also agreed between the leaders, the first, that being an offence to possess “instructional terrorist material” and the second, an offence to make terrorism hoaxes. While understandably careful not to impinge upon civil liberties, Victorian Premier, the Hon Daniel Andrews MP, said “notional considerations of civil liberties do not trump the very real threat, the very real threat of terror in our country today”.
