“The program has been designed specifically to equip officers with the additional skills, training and resources they need when first on scene at a counter-terrorism or related incident”, the spokesman said.
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Queensland general duties police and traffic officers will be given extra training to deal with armed offenders, including terrorists. Kaldas said “contain and negotiate” will still be used for domestic situations, which can generally be resolved without incident the longer they last, but there was a new urgency required to deal with terrorism incidents.
The revelation of the shoot on sight came from the commissioner after the government claimed that around six attacks in Australia have been prevented over the past 12 months.
The new approach abandons the “contain and negotiate” policy in place for two decades.
“Unfortunately police are in a hard position where they have to kill the terrorist as quickly as they can”, he said.
Since then, radical Islamist groups or individuals have carried out a number of attacks, culminating in the atrocities in Paris on Friday that left 129 dead.
Commissioner Stewart said police were receiving extra training to improve their ability to recognise when it was necessary to kill an offender for the safety of others.
“These brutal terrorists do not negotiate”, she said.
“Now we see criminals acting as terrorists, practicing the type of active armed offender methodology, where they will kill and continue to kill until they are killed or they kill themselves”.
Kaldas stressed the “shoot on sight” order would not be appropriate in all circumstances.
Authorities raised Australia’s terror threat alert to high just over a year ago, introduced new national security laws, and have since conducted several counter-terrorism raids.
A police source has told Fairfax Media that 57 per cent of officers have failed the course, possibly because the training is not structured well.
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Mr Kaldas is due to speak at a press conference in Sydney at 1.30pm AEDT today.
