2021-11-23
After passing over 70 counter-terrorism laws in the past two decades, the Government passed the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill into law.
This new law will amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to introduce extended supervision orders, which may be imposed on terrorist offenders released into the community if a court is satisfied that the individual poses an unacceptable risk of committing certain serious terrorism offences.
The Criminal Code already contains a framework for the control or detention of high risk terrorist offenders through a control order. This new law would keep the control order regime and it would exist side by side with the new extended supervision order regime.
“The Greens do not oppose the introduction of an extended supervision order, in fact the Australian Human Rights Commission recommended the introduction of these orders as they are a more proportionate way of securing the community.” Said the Greens spokesperson for Justice, Senator Lidia Thorpe.
“At the very least, the extended supervision order regime should replace the continuing detention order regime. These two extensive powers should not sit side by side. There is no need for these two regimes to exist at the same time.”
“In the last twenty years, this Parliament has passed over 70 counter terrorism laws and many of them create really broad, extensive and often overlapping powers. This means that it is becoming more and more probable that peoples human rights are being impacted due to the snow balling nature of all of these laws.”
“The new extended supervision order regime would add to this country’s already extensive and often unjustified counter-terrorism powers. These powers, once given to police and spy agencies, do not come back.”
Senator Lidia Thorpe introduced an amendment to the Bill urging the Morrison Government to act on the advice of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor but the Government did not agree to these amendments and passed the Bill into law