Counter-Terrorism Strategies in Australia

This assignment examines Australia's comprehensive approach to counter-terrorism. It delves into the legal frameworks, policies, and strategies employed by Australian authorities to combat terrorism, including detention laws, surveillance powers, and intelligence sharing. The analysis also explores the role of community engagement and partnerships in preventing and mitigating terrorist threats. Furthermore, it investigates Australia's international collaborations within regional and global counter-terrorism initiatives.

Running head: COUNTERTERRORISM POLICING POLICY
Counterterrorism Policing Policy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Features of Counterterrorism Policies........................................................................................2
Counterterrorism Policies...........................................................................................................4
Role of Law Enforcement Agencies..........................................................................................7
Effectiveness of Policies............................................................................................................8
Issues Faced in Implementing Counterterrorism Policies..........................................................9
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................11
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
The report focuses on the development and analysis of the counterterrorism policies
of Australia. The terrorist organizations today are developing and adapting to the technology
and using it against human kind. The threat has a far-reaching effect on the society and the
government needs to device new strategies to counter them. The answer to growing terrorist
threat is the counterterrorism policing policies devised by the government against these
threats. The counterterrorism police is the department of the police dealing with the terrorist
threats from the infiltrated terrorists in the country (nationalsecurity.gov.au 2017). The
growth of globalization has brought the world under one umbrella and the world flourishes
with improved trade and communication networks. This phenomenon has also brought a
drastic change in the terrorism strategies around the world. The counterterrorism strategy of
Australia is based on the Counter Terrorist Strategy (CONTEST) of the United Kingdom
(UK) and the counterterrorism policies of the United States of America. The CONTEST
operates in different levels of the policing and providing support and help to in case of any
terrorist activity (Gov.uk 2011). On the contrary, the USA depends on its Homeland Security
for countering its terrorism threats across the country (Homeland.house.gov 2016). Australia
has a three level policing system and they should be trained to counteract any terrorist
activities (www.nationalsecurity.gov.au 2017). The development of threat control strategies
are based on the infrastructures planed by the UK and USA. Australia has recently developed
strategies to develop counterterrorism policing and there are number of areas of development.
Features of Counterterrorism Policies
The counterterrorism practices of a country must focus on the internal policies and
action plans to be developed for the police to follow for the control. The National Counter
Terrorism Plan of Australia focuses on developing strategies against the spread of terrorism

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with the aim of protecting the citizens and prevents the infiltration of the terrorists in the
country (Dst.defence.gov.au 2010). Australia is an island country so it faces a major threat of
infiltration by the terrorist forces. The rise the pro-Islamism movement around the world has
given rise to Islamic terrorism and it increases its foothold in a number of countries including
Australia. The rise of terrorism has different causes, and there are different plans put forward
by the Australia Government to mitigate them (Harris-Hogan, Barrelle and Zammit 2016).
The radical terrorism has affected the country in a number of ways giving rise to increase in
the number of terrorist activities across the country. The attack on the police officer in
Melbourne by a 18 year old youth, Numan Haidar who stabbed two police officers before
being shot dead (NewsComAu 2017). The most important issue that the Australian
government like the world faces is the misleading of youths by the radical Islamic groups.
Numan Haider’s attack too took place after a fatwa by Islamic State to kill Australians. The
rise in the number of terrorist attacks is often due to the improvement in the social media,
which has helped the rise of radical Islam (Estes and Sirgy 2014). Terrorist are using
communication technologies to woo the Muslim youth into performing extremist actions
misguiding them in the name of religious duty. The Lindt café siege in Sydney is another
example of the misguided youth and emotion fuelled terrorism in the country (ABC News
2017). The siege also brought forward the flaw in the police action in such attacks as one of
the hostages was killed in the crossfire. The death of the two people in the crossfire shows the
need to develop strategies to counter terrorism attacks. Most of the terrorist attacks are such
rage fuelled hate attacks by usual citizens rather than from trained terrorists. The anger
against the Western civilization fuelled by the radical Islamic organization is the main cause
of the attacks and the threat has to be dealt seriously. The control over the communication
technology today is tough thing to do but awareness towards these issues should be
conducted to avoid such attacks.

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Australia faces a major threat being an island country and needs to improve the
security of its borders and other transport services to avoid such attacks in future. As seen in
the 9/11 case in the USA, London Subway attacks in 2005 and the Madrid train Bombings in
2004 the terrorists are increasingly targeting transport services to target large population and
make a global impact. Australia is continuously increasing the security in travel. In tandem
with the UK’s approach of increasing security of the surface transport, system to decrease its
vulnerability to terrorist attacks Australia has devised its own policy to secure the surface
transport system. The Surface transport security cooperation helps in increasing preparedness
in case of terror attacks guided by the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) (Phillimore and
Fenna 2017). The IGA also helps in devising counter terrorism strategies by advising the
ministers, co-ordination of nationwide anti-terrorism capabilities, arranging intelligence
exchange between a number of agencies, providing fund administration advice to National
Counter-Terrorism Committee (NCTC) and maintenance of National Counter-Terrorism Plan
(NCTP) (Nationalsecurity.gov.au 2012).
Counterterrorism Policies
The counterterrorism policing by Australia takes into account the strategies of the UK
and USA to device complete efforts for effective counter terrorism. UK’s CONTEST strategy
is based on four key principles being Pursue, which is an initiative to prevent terrorist attacks,
Prevent which prevents people from becoming terrorists, Protect the people from any terrorist
attacks and preparation to counter any future attacks (Gov.uk 2011). The USA’s Homeland
Security takes a much more aggressive approach in making strategies against terrorism which
in addition to UK’s principles includes plans to cut terrorist’s financial support and battling
the radical ideology (Homeland.house.gov 2016). The Australian strategy too is based on
four principles, which include analysis, prevention, response, resilience. Analysis is the

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investigation of intelligence data by trained personnel to counteract any terrorist activities.
Prevention is targeted at protection of the Australian citizens in the country and abroad taking
all the necessary measures needed and stop them from participating in terrorist activities.
Response is the process of countering the terrorist threat, which would be target-based
response against terrorist activities. Resilience is an ideological approach, which aims at
making a strong community in Australia, which is resistant against any violent ideology
being used against them (Nationalsecurity.gov.au 2012).
The counterterrorism approach of Australia is the mixed approach of UK and the
USA approach of countering terrorism in their nations. It focuses on improving
communication and intelligence sharing from all the law enforcement departments in the
country. The sharing of intelligence will improve in identifying the potential threats to the
country and implementation of mitigating measures for the proper policy planning in the
country (Dst.defence.gov.au 2010). Australia also emphasizes on the sharing of intelligence
between the Commonwealth nations and building an international committee of countries to
counter the terrorist activities and improve cooperation among the countries in eliminating
threats.
The Australian counterterrorism policies are focuses on taking extreme preventive
measures to stop any terrorist activities in the country. The strengthening of the borders is an
important approach towards the counterterrorism activities, which focuses on decreasing the
infiltration in the country. Australia focuses on making the visa biometric based so that any
fake visas or people linked with terrorist activities are denied. The biometric data should be
crosschecked amongst Australian databases and with other partner countries to find any
religious extremism links (Wilson 2014). Crosscheck of databases will also help in
understanding the intent of the person and avoid any untoward incident
(nationalsecurity.gov.au, 2017). Increment in the Aviation security is another step taken by

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the government to counter terrorist activities in the country. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks
and the North West Airlines flight 253 incident Australia needs to device stringent measures
as the terror groups have shown an affinity towards targeting airlines. The government is
focused towards improving scanning and scrutiny technologies in the airports and improved
measures to detect newer plastic explosives and devices (Rose 2015). The NCTC targets
improvement in planning and strategy devising to mitigate such treats within the country.
Critical Infrastructure Protection Program is devised by Australia to protect its important
infrastructure from terrorism threats as the modern terrorism is attacking the economy of the
target nations too. Critical Infrastructure Protection Modeling and Analysis is devised to
forecast the effect of terrorist attack on the economy, infrastructure and the community
(Ouyang, M., 2014).
The major threat that terrorism poses in the digital era is to the cyber security (Taylor,
Fritsch and Liederbach 2014). The government has implemented a Cyber Security Strategy,
which uses a large number of recourses to provide cyber security to the government
organization, the businesspersons and the local population (Min, Chai and Han 2015). The
Australian government has also set up a centre to raise awareness about the social security
called the Cyber Security Operations Centre. Australia focuses towards creating international
co-operation committees with organizations like APEC and ASEAN (Nationalsecurity.gov.au
2012). To manage Australia’s international counterterrorism efforts Australia has appointed
an Australian Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism.
To counter the terrorist threats in the nation, Australia has to enforce the laws
so that any terrorist activities should not go unpunished. The terrorism laws should be more
of the deterring laws to prevent any terrorist activities in the organization. The Criminal Code
Act of 1995 is devised to take action anyone who is involved in terrorist activities be it
support, planning or funding to terrorist activities in the country (Hardy 2016). The regular

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review of the laws to improve them according to the latest terrorism activities help Australia
in enforcing laws, which help in taking stringent actions against the terrorists (Pmc.gov.au
2017). The Australian Law empowers the security agencies to take strict actions against the
terrorist threats. This includes giving them rights to interrogate and apprehend based on the
suspicion of terrorist involvement. The law strictly condones the used of torture or other anti-
humanitarian activities and any harm to the suspected person. Surveillance and
telecommunication laws allow the security agencies to use surveillance an interception of
communication to detect and prevent any acts of terrorism (Dst.defence.gov.au 2010).
Australia aims to counter violent terrorism by spreading awareness against the
religious extremist ideology. Australia is multicultural nation and needs to propagate among
its citizens the ideology of communal harmony and mutual cultural respect to counter
terrorism (Pmc.gov.au 2017). The radicalization of individuals leading to the rise of terrorism
should be countered by decreasing any community targeted hate issues, marginalization and a
feeling of exclusion from the community. Australia sees community participation as an
important factor for reducing terrorism (Dunn et al. 2016). The awareness of the community
can help, as the people themselves will raise voice against any religious extremism rising in
the area. Moreover, the people will not be misguided by the hatred spread by the radicals
among the community. Australia devices a policy of including marginalized community in
the economy and active politics to mitigate the feeling of marginalization leading to the rise
of religious extremism (Pmc.gov.au 2017).
Role of Law Enforcement Agencies
The Australian Federal Police works in cooperation with local police services to
improve counter terrorism abilities. The relationship between the different organizations
working against terrorism is institutionalized through Joint Counter-Terrorism Team (JCTT),

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which has officers from both Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and
Australian Federal Police (AFP) (Mullins 2016). It also has cooperation with international
organizations and different countries around the world in addition to its Afghanistan initiative
to decrease the terrorist activities in the country. Australian government has started a
Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Training Program (CTITP) to improve the intelligence
gathering and sharing capabilities across organizations.
Effectiveness of Policies
The counterterrorism strategies employed by Australia help in protecting the nation
from the terrorist threats. The number of terrorist attacks in Australia is constantly declining
and the strategies implemented by the government are responsible for them. The aim of the
government in making Australia a terror resistant country is successful considering the fact
that there is a decrease in the number of religious extremist crimes in the country. Australia
has taken a stance in decreasing the terrorist activities around the world and takes measures
by sending soldiers to different terror ridden countries like Afghanistan and Sudan. The
Global Terrorism Index Score of Australia, which is 2.742, shows the success of the
counterterrorism policies of the country (Economicsandpeace.org 2016). The sharing of
intelligence and the proper communication technology between the different law enforcement
bodies will help in quick action and proper planning of the counterterrorism activities. The
strengthening of the borders and immigration laws will help in stopping any infiltration,
which may lead to terrorist activity (Economicsandpeace.org 2016). Proper implementation
of the law and adequate supervision in law allows the law enforcement bodies to take actions
to counter any terrorist threats. The awareness among the local population helps in the
Australian idea of stopping terrorism with the help of mass partnership from the people. It
also helps in stopping the people from the marginalized communities from being misguided

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to perform terrorist activities. International partnership against terrorism stops the terrorist
forces from infiltrating in the country and helps in devising adequate extradition policies
(Pmc.gov.au 2017).
Issues Faced in Implementing Counterterrorism Policies
There are various issues that Australia faces while enforcing these policies in the
country. The people of all communities do not always welcome the laws. The scrutiny of the
communication system is an extremely important measure to prevent any terrorist activities in
the country. This is becoming increasingly difficult as the communication procedures are
becoming more and more complicated and the induction of the encryption in the latest
communication technologies. Moreover, the government faces criticism over scrutinizing the
data of the common population. The control over the border areas and keeping a tab over the
people who have entered the country is extremely difficult for a country like Australia due to
its location and the vast empty areas in the country. The immigration and visa policies of
Australia also face criticism for being strict. The sharing of intelligence requires a state of the
art technology and trained employees to handle them. The understanding with the different
countries needs many negotiations to come to a proper conclusion and be implemented in a
functional way. The ideological approach to build a terrorism resistant community faces
many hindrances in the practical approach. The convincing of people to adjust in the
multicultural environment is tough, as many communities do not easily accept it (Cherney et
al. 2017).
Conclusion
Therefore, the essay shows the different policies devised by Australia to counter the
terrorist activities in the country. Australia takes very adaptive and modern approach
counterterrorism activities taking a cue from the CONTEST policy adopted by UK and the

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USA’s approach of countering terrorism based on the Homeland Security’s policies. The
Australian approach is a mix of these two approaches, which seeks to not only identify and
mitigate terror threats but takes the war to the terrorist themselves by planning and
participating in a number of counterterrorist activities around the world. The improvement in
the awareness of the people in the country has greatly helped in mitigating the terrorist
activities in the country. Australia’s initiative to have a global alliance against terrorism
might prove fatal for the terrorist organizations trying to infiltrate the nation. The
counterterrorism strategies of Australia face a number of issues too due to change in its
foreign policies and its strict anti-terrorism stance. The various issues faced by the people due
to the policies should be overlooked considering the overall profitability due to the
counterterrorism policies of Australia.

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References
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