It is over 20 years since the governance, legal and policy architecture and legislation in which Australia’s approach to counter-terrorism was put in place. This has taken place at both a Commonwealth and State Government level. Since then over 50 pieces of anti-terror legislation have been introduced to Parliament. 

At the 2005 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), the Prime Minister and the Premiers agreed that any strengthened counter-terrorism laws must be:

• Necessary

• effective against terrorism; and

• contain appropriate safeguards against abuse, such as parliamentary and judicial review, and be exercised in a way that is evidence based, intelligence-led and proportionate.  

To what extent have these principles been met. Are the policy settings and laws developed over the past 20 years designed to deal with current challenges and how has the political environment shaped them? 

The purpose of this panel is to discuss and review these legal, administrative and policy setting and explore whether there needs to be a rethink of their architecture.  

Panelists include:

• Mark Duckworth, Senior Research Fellow Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies, ADI 

• Rita Jabri Markwell (Birchgrove Legal). Adviser to Australian Muslim Advocacy Network 

• Dr Andrew Zammit, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Victoria University 

• Dr Anne-Marie Balbi, ADI