Australia on Tuesday outlined plans to tighten counter-terrorism laws further, including restricting the movements of suspects as young as 14 in the wake of a deadly attack by a teenager this month.
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Mr Baird also wants judges to be able to consider information that can be withheld from the suspect.
The new measures follow the shooting of a police accountant by 15-year-old terrorist Farhad Jabar in Parramatta a fortnight ago.
NSW Deputy Premier and Police Minister Troy Grant says the state government is committed to equipping police with “the tools they need to prevent terrorism, gather evidence in response to a terrorism act and protect society from those who intend harm”.
On Monday, NSW Premier Mike Baird wrote to Prime Minister Turnbull urging him to implement more aggressive new laws, commenting: “The terrorism environment in Australia is shifting quickly, with younger people becoming involved, and we need to respond just as swiftly”.
Indeed, Mr Turnbull and Federal Attorney-General George Brandis had already agreed to reduce the age when suspect youths can be hit with “control orders” from 16 to 14 – and provided Mr Baird and other state leaders with draft legislation last month.
He did note there will be safeguards for minors that will limit the “capacity of police to question or deal with minors in a way which is regarded-given the age of the person-to be unreasonable”.
“You may think it has a few relevance to the events in Parramatta, but it is something that has been in the works between the attorneys general and justice ministers in every jurisdiction for a few considerable time”, he said on Tuesday.
“There have been preliminary discussions at officer level but no agreement has been reached”, Mr Pakula said.
But the Turnbull government has since raised potential difficulties in acceding to Mr Baird’s request, declaring such a move would be likely present constitutional obstacles.
Responsibility for detaining suspects, and their subsequent punishment if they are found guilty of a crime, lies with the states and territories, although the commonwealth had instigated harmonising disparate laws during the Howard era.
Baird wants this changed to an initial four days, extendable to 28 days.
Currently, they can be held for four hours before a court application must be made to extend the period to eight days.
“It is very hard to see justification in extending control orders to people of this age”, Corbell said, adding that children of that age could not independently form the intent required for political and religious extremism.
Bret Walker South Carolina, a former independent national security legislation monitor, said there is “justification” in lowering the age of those who can be covered by a control order but he warned that authorities could also justify lowering it further when “something is perpetrated by someone even younger”.
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“It seems like it’s more driven around the whole policing issue, and it continues to focus on that issue”, the president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Samier Dandan, said in Canberra.
