Tony Abbott says there is no need for Australia to adopt a US-style homeland security super-ministry because he has ultimate responsibility for national security.
The prime minister also rejected the idea that Australians would be safer if would-be foreign fighters were allowed to leave and fight, arguing the government might not be able to stop them returning more radicalised and more capable of inflicting harm.
There had been discussion within the government of the need for a security super-ministry, with some viewing it as a bid by immigration minister Scott Morrison to elevate his role.
But Abbott said it was the job of the national security committee, which he chairs, to coordinate all the ministers with responsibility for security agencies – including the Australian federal police, Asio, Asis, defence and customs and border protection.
“We are all around the table along with the heads of the agencies, and I chair it, so I guess in a sense the prime minister is responsible for national security and it’s a responsibility I take very, very seriously … it is fundamentally my responsibility,” he said.
Since the shooting in Ottawa, Canada by a man who had sought to join fighters in Syria and Iraq but had had his passport cancelled, it has been suggested that preventing would-be fighters from leaving might increase the danger of them acting in their home countries. The Australian foreign minister has cancelled 60 passports in such circumstances.
Abbott, who spoke to the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper overnight, said he “understood” the feeling that “if someone is driven by hatred and fanaticism and feels a calling to martyrdom, why not indeed let them go and be martyred in a foreign land”.
But he said the difficulty with that approach was that Australian citizens had a right to return. Sometimes it was difficult to detain and convict them of an offence if they came back.
The government agreed this week to some changes to its legislation dealing with foreign fighters, now likely to pass with Labor’s backing. The prime minister has said the new laws will “make it easier to keep returning terrorists in jail” and he hoped the bill would pass both houses next week.
“On national security, it’s best that the government and the opposition stand shoulder to shoulder together as we have thus far,” Abbott said.
The legislation would create a new offence of advocating terrorism, toughen penalties for Australians who fight with extremist groups overseas, create international no-go zones for travel without a legitimate reason, extend preventative detention and control order arrangements, and allow police to secretly search properties and notify the person about the warrant later.
It would also allow the collection of photos of millions of Australians at airports, but the committee report called for an amendment to specifically exclude the storage of fingerprints and iris scans.
A bipartisan parliamentary committee last week completed its rapid inquiry into the bill, presenting 37 recommendations to the government, including minor changes to the power to declare conflict zones as effective no-go zones for Australian travellers.
The committee’s report did not call for the scrapping of the no-go zone proposal, which carries a 10-year jail term, but suggested the foreign affairs minister should not be able to declare an entire country off-limits.
It called for a committee review process after each declaration and for parliament to reconsider the law after the next election.
Greens senator Penny Wright said the amendments were “just tweaking around the edges” and she called on Labor to “stop waving through draconian laws without proper scrutiny”.
