Public spaces that attract crowds are set to receive security upgrades, such as physical barriers, bag screenings and possibly heavier police presences under proposed national counter-terrorism measures.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will discuss with state premiers on Friday a national strategy for protecting public venues large and small, and other sites that could be threatened by terrorism, including rudimentary attacks using vehicles and knives.
State governments will ultimately decide how to implement the strategy - which will also involve private operators of venues - and how to balance greater security with the freedom to enjoy public spaces.
But it is expected to lead to strengthening in areas including bollards and barriers, security at entrances to public venues and decisions around how police and deployed.
The strategy is being developed by the Australian and New Zealand Counter-terrorism Committee - which is made up of senior federal and state officials - in close consultation with state governments.
Fairfax Media can reveal that the federal government is continuing work into understanding how mental illness and criminal histories can make people vulnerable to violent extremism and has been talking to peak health bodies about how they deal with people at risk of radicalisation.
Mr Turnbull's meeting with state premiers at the Council of Australian Governments comes after Yacqub Khayre, who had been acquitted of terrorism charges in 2010 but was also a drug addict with a history of criminal violence, killed one man and shot three police officers before being shot dead himself in Brighton, Melbourne.
The Prime Minister put the states on notice on Tuesday over the need for parole law reform after it emerged Khayre was on parole following a jail sentence for a violent 2012 home invasion.
"He had a long record of violence," Mr Turnbull said. "He had been charged with a terrorist offence some years ago and had been acquitted. He was known to have connections, at least in the past, with violent extremism. But he was a known, violent offender. How was he on parole?"
The federal Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator, Tony Sheehan, will update the Prime Minister and premiers at Friday's meeting in Canberra on the progress of the national counter-terrorism strategy. The strategy is expected to be completed by July and has as one of its priorities protecting places of mass gatherings.
It follows last weekend's van and knife attack by Islamist radicals in London and, before that, a suicide bombing targeting teenagers at a Manchester concert.
After the Nice, France truck attack last July, Mr Turnbull announced a review into securing public spaces but also into how extremism combines with mental illness and criminality in so-called "lone wolf" cases of terrorism.
Fairfax Media understands this work has been continuing under Mr Sheehan and has involved intelligence agencies, the Health Department, the Attorney-General's Department and the states as well as health and community groups.
NSW announced in April the establishment of a fixated persons investigations unit that concentrates on people vulnerable to extremism because of mental health problems. Queensland also has a fixated threat assessment centre staffed jointly by police officers and mental health clinicians.
Levi West, a terrorism expert with Charles Sturt University, said that while the approach was well-intentioned, it may not make it easier to prioritise people of concern.
The trigger for close scrutiny was typically an identified intention or motivation to carry out violence in the name of religious extremism, he said. "Secondary data" about criminal backgrounds or mental health wouldn't help identify high-risk subjects in advance.
Instead, he said, such unpredictable attacks showed "there is a ceiling on how much of that you can prevent".
"It's not ASIO or the Australian Federal Police's fault. If a guy decides yesterday that he's going to take a kitchen knife and go to downtown Melbourne ??? there's nothing we can do, sure-fire, to prevent it, short of ensuring that everyone who fits his category ??? is happy and well-adjusted," he said.
