Thank God we have PM Tony Abbott to save us by strengthening our national security

AS Christians and Jews celebrate Easter and the Passover, the holiest days in their calendars, this weekend with family gatherings and prayer, radical Islamists continue to demonstrate ambiguity of Koranic teaching by slaughtering nonbelievers.

While it is true the overwhelming majority of Islamists’ victims are also Muslims, the nature of the Islamists’ threats towards the West, generally, and Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims, specifically, demands we must ­remain in an unprecedented state of preparedness outside formal declaration of war. In the past week, an attack by Somali Islamist al-Shabaab gunmen at a Kenyan university left at least 147 dead and 79 wounded. The gunmen reportedly asked people if they were Muslim or Christian. The Muslims were released while those who said they were Christian were either killed on the spot or taken hostage. On the other side of the world, a New York court ­remanded two women, Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, who are accused of conspiring to detonate an explosive ­device within the US. According to the charge sheet, Siddiqui, 31, stockpiled tanks of propane gas outside her Queens basement apartment and “is currently in possession of instructions as to how to transform propane gas tanks into bombs”. It’s also alleged she is a former friend of the late Samir Khan, another one-time Queens resident who published an online magazine for al-Qaeda before being killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011, and once sent a letter of support to Mohammad ­Mohamud, who’s imprisoned for trying to blow up a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. Co-defendant Velentzas, worshipped Osama bin Laden and kept a photograph of the September 11 mastermind holding an AK-47 as the background image on her phone. It is just over two years since former Prime Minister Julia Gillard told an audience at the ANU that: “The 9/11 decade is ending and a new one is taking its place. It will be an era in which the behaviour of states, not non-state actors, will be the most important driver and shaper of Australia’s national security thinking.” Labor followed its flawed policy view by running down counter-terrorism funding by slashing the money provided to agencies with key counterterrorism roles by $267 million from $790 million in 2007-08, following the election of the first Rudd Labor government, to $523 million when the ­Abbott government took office. Without the Abbott government’s recent urgent injection of over $630 million in counter-terrorism funding, dedicated funds would have further declined by over $350 million to $438 million by 2017-18. As the Abbott government races to remedy Labor’s flawed ­national security agenda it is self-evident that Gillard didn’t have any understanding about national security. Indeed, not only was spending on national security slashed under Labor but the only action Labor actually did take was to establish (at the ­insistence of the Coalition in opposition) an Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, whose reports and recommendations it ignored. Since coming to office, the Coalition has implemented several of the key recommendations in its Foreign Fighters Bill, including lowering the ­arrest threshold for terrorism related offences and introducing the power to suspend passports — and has since used these powers. Foreign Minister Julie ­Bishop has suspended nine passports and, most importantly, without the lower arrest threshold, it seems unlikely the arrests of two men in Sydney in February charged with acts in preparation of a terrorist-­related attack could have been made. It is justifiably concerned about the violence being conducted by Daesh (Islamic State) in Syria and Iraq and its attraction to deluded young Australians, and the threat they may pose as they return. The Coalition’s reforms to national security legislation — opposed by the Greens and some civil libertarians — are squarely aimed at addressing the most pressing gaps in our counter-terrorism legislative framework, those with the greatest impact on prevention and disruption of domestic terrorist threats. While they improve the ­capacity of law enforcement to monitor, investigate and prosecute individuals of security concern they also close a legal loophole which permits preachers of violence to promote or urge terrorism. The creation of a new ­offence of entering a declared area overseas where terrorist organisations are active ­enables law agencies to bring to justice those Australians who have committed serious offences, including associating with, and fighting for, terrorist organisations overseas. The controversial law ­requiring Australian telecommunications companies to keep limited (metadata) information on record for two years was passed two weeks ago, again, with shrill opposition from the Greens. As David Irvine, the former director-general of ASIO, said, “unless metadata storage ­practices are changed law ­enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts will be severely hampered”. It may seem sacrilegious to be contemplating the threat of terrorism this weekend but fortunately this government does, and as international events constantly remind us, it is wise to do so. That it has now remedied Labor’s dangerous mistakes and given the men and women in our security agencies the tools they need to defeat those who seek to destroy the fabric of our nation and install a hostile culture is something to celebrate if we wish to keep Easter and the Passover sacred.