Following the Paris terrorist attacks, Malcolm Turnbull has reassured Australians that “while we can’t pretend the risk is not there”, Australia has been a successful multicultural nation with the best national security agencies in the world.
The prime minister said following his talks with both the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it was clear that Isis was was committing a double crime of “mass murder” and “blaspheming Islam”.
His comments were a marked contrast to Tony Abbott’s approach as prime minister. But Abbott followed Turnbull’s ABC appearance on Sunday morning with his first television interview since losing the leadership.
Abbott told Andrew Bolt that Muslim leaders should disavow the religious justification of Islamic terrorists.
“The fact is any death-to-the-infidel mindset is ultimately conducive to the kind of vicious evil that we have seen on the streets of Paris and elsewhere in recent times,” Abbott said.
“And it’s absolutely incumbent on all decent people, but particularly on religious leaders, Muslim religious leaders, to say, ‘This is not part of our faith’. It never should have been and it must not be now.”
The Paris toll currently stands at 129 people killed and 352 more injured – including 90 critically – in the attacks on Friday night on the Bataclan (a city-centre concert hall), the Stade de France and a series of packed cafes and bars.
Turnbull made the point that while the Paris attacks had “rightly” received a lot of attention, there had been attacks in Turkey last month and Beirut on Friday while crash investigators are still examining wreckage of a Russian passenger aircraft downed three weeks ago.
He said terrorism was a “global problem” that required a collective response.
“We can’t pretend the risk is not there,” said Turnbull. “But we have to recognise that the ... security agencies spend their days ensuring that these attacks do not occur, and of course, most of the attacks, they succeed in thwarting.”
“It is the one that occurs, of course, that becomes the tragic destruction of life we saw in Paris. Now, for our own country, in Australia, we have the best security agencies in the world. I am very confident in their collective ability to keep us safe.”
Turnbull was in Berlin at the time the attacks occurred and visited the French embassy there to pay his respects before travelling to Turkey for the G20 Summit, a meeting undertaken in shock at the events of Friday night. The prime minister said terrorism would be a major item on the G20 agenda.
Following reports that one of the attackers was allegedly a Syrian refugee, Turnbull said refugees in Australia were carefully screened. He said briefings from the Australian federal police and the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio) showed terrorist activities were more often linked to second and third generation Australians.
“While there have been some exceptions, the history of terrorist activities in Australia and people of concern in this area is very much for the most part second and third-generation Australians. So the screening of refugees of the humanitarian intake has been very careful.”
But the prime minister said Isis needed to be “defeated in the field” and earlier in the day, he suggested Australia could send peacekeepers to Syria depending on the outcome of the G20 talks.
He said Australian national security policy would not be dictated by terrorists.
“The attack in Paris was an attack on all humanity,” Turnbull said. “We are in a common cause and we have a single common purpose: to defend our values and our way of life, and to defeat these terrorists and their assault upon us.
“To the Australian people, I can say this: we are a strong nation. We are a united nation. We are the most successful multicultural nation in the world. And we are so because of being united in defence of our values.”
The prime minister said actions in Iraq and Syria had showed Isis wanted to establish a “a religious tyranny” that was contrary to the precepts of Islam.
“As the president of Indonesia was saying to me only a few days ago, one that is at odds, completely contrary, to the precepts of Islam that his countrymen and women practise,” said Turnbull.
“As President Widodo said, these terrorists commit a double crime. They are murderers. They are mass murderers. They are barbarians but at the same time, they also defame religion. They defame, they blaspheme, they defame Islam.”
In his own interview, Tony Abbott defended the government’s intake of 12,000 Syrian refugees under questioning from Bolt, who asked why half were Muslim.
Abbott rebuked him for “rushing to judge” the Turnbull government on the first four families who have arrived.
“There are a whole range of persecuted minorities in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East,” Abbott said.
“Yes, there are Christians. But yes, in some instances, it’s Kurds, who are Muslims. It’s Zoroastrians, it’s Yazidis, it’s Jews.
“The point is that we want to take people who have no realistic prospect of peacefully resettling in these parts of the Middle East and obviously what we want to do as a general matter of principle is bring people to Australia who are prepared to join our team.”
Abbott also defended his decision to drop plans to weaken section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which his government justified on the grounds they had to work with ethnic communities due to the terror threat.
“When it comes to section 18C, I made the decision that there was some forms of speech in this country that I don’t want to see at all. I don’t want to see the hate preachers at work. I don’t want to see the advocacy of genocide.”
Bill Shorten condemned the Paris attacks and offered Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition Labor’s ongoing support on national security.
While not rejecting Turnbull’s suggestion that Australia could send peacekeeping troops to Syria, the opposition leader said a peace plan was required before any troops could be sent.
“I think we would need to have a peace plan and peace deal before you can send peacekeepers. It may be premature to conjecture about that until there is a peace arrangement.”
He urged people not to condemn all refugees for the actions of a few after reports emerged that one of the attackers may have carried a passport used to enter Europe via Greece as a refugee from Syria.
“What I don’t want to do is tar all refugees with the same brush,” Shorten said.
“It is important we have security screening, absolutely ... I don’t believe all refugees should be condemned for the actions of one or two, though.”
Shorten was expecting a briefing on the Paris attacks on Sunday. Regarding Australian terror alert levels, he said he would be guided by advice from security agencies.
